Gasoline/diesel prices hit record highs

Originally Posted by Arainach

Fuck the whiners, make a new variable tax that solidifies the price of gas at a constant $7/gallon. Clearly, the only way to convince Americans to change their habits is to hit them where it counts.

I'm not sure where you'll find enough legislators who are unhappy enough with their jobs to enact this tax, since doing so would be nothing short of political suicide.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

You really haven't thought this through, have you?

If this tax you're proposing were enacted, you wouldn't be able to sneak it through like that; somebody would bring in their own parliamentary tricks to force those responsible to acknowledge it somehow, and then punish them for it. And even if individual legislators couldn't be singled out (except for the sponsors), the party in control of Congress would suffer, since repealing the tax would be an instant national campaign issue that would gain traction with liberals and conservatives alike. It would lead to defeat of legislators from the majority party, who would have acquiesed to passing the tax, the defeat of the President (or his party, if he's on his way out) who signed it into law, and would be the gift that keeps on giving for the minority party, since they can retain control by raising the spectre of the tax coming back to retain control.

Nobody likes being screwed at the pump, and they can easier and more directly hit back if it's elected officials doing the screwing than if it's a corporation.

Speaking of corporations, "Big Oil" gets a break here, since when people complain vocally about how much more they're paying for gas, the government would be the ones responsible for the even higher prices, not the oil companies. They could use their political capital to work to repeal the tax (since they care about their customers) and trade on the public goodwill that it would generate to reap more profit in the future with small, unnoticable price hikes.

So again, this idea is political suicide, and no legislator with half a brain or who cares about keeping his or her job is going to touch it.

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Originally Posted by Arainach

I'm discussing that, in absolute terms, I would prefer an authoritarian government that paid attention and cared over a 'free' one that continued driving us towards starvation, chaos, anarchy, and destruction any day.

And let's not forget making the trains run on time.

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