The Case for a Fifty-Cent Increase in the Federal Gasoline Tax
This morning, after I finished my weekend ritual of wasting another perfectly good hour listening to Car Talk, I clicked on over to CarTalk.com to check on something brothers Tom and Ray Magliottzi (aka: Click and Clack, the Tappett Brothers) had mentioned during the show. While piddling around the site I found a link to an excellent audio rant from younger brother Ray who spoke passionately about why we should boost the U.S. gasoline tax fifty cents right now.
Several states are already mulling increases in gasoline taxes at the state level, but a Federal tax would create a different kind of revenue stream with a different kind of mission.
Both Ray and Tom argue that the revenue raised, somewhere between fifty and one hundred billion dollars annually, would be used to pay for infrastructure improvements and investments in a manufacturing shift in Detroit away from focusing on the automobile to focusing on the production of high-speed trains required by a revolution in American mass transit.
Not only would a gas tax create the revenue stream necessary to boost a lagging transportation and manufacturing infrastructure, it would prevent people from becoming complacent about their gasoline usage and its environmental impacts; like what happened during the energy crisis of the late 1970s.
In short, raising the price of gas fifty cents above where it stands today ($1.55/gal. here in Colorado and $1.80 nationally according to the EIA), would mean gas prices were still half what they were in the Summer of 2008.
I think Click or Clack—whichever one is Ray—hit the nail on the head. Investing in a mass transit infrastructure will mean not only investing in the railroads themselves, but also reinvigorating a tanking automobile industry that could begin putting American-made high-speed passenger trains on railroad tracks across the country.
Image: CC licensed by flickr user JacobEnis
