The American Spectator

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Your Tax Dollars at Work

3.17.06 @ 12:01AM

LETTERS TO HOME
Re: Shawn Macomber's Iraq reporting:

While he was in Iraq, Shawn Macomber interviewed my husband, MAJ Darrell Green, who is an active duty soldier working with the Iraqi Special Police Commandos. Ever since then, I have read everything he has written. He truly has a gift of painting a picture with his words and I can "see" parts of Iraq through his writing (I think that his articles on Kuwait and riding the Rhino were my favorite). I just wanted to take a minute and let you know that I truly appreciate everything that you have posted by Shawn on Iraq. He did a great thing by being there...at least for one Army wife in Texas! I just thought you should know how much his work is appreciated!
-- Jeanne Green

PAVED WITH BAD INTENTIONS
Re: Eric Peters's The Real Gas Price Gouger:

Here in Wisconsin we frequently see stickers on the gas pumps that draw a motorists attention to exactly what the taxes are on each gallon of the currently $2.49 fuel he or she is purchasing. I think those notices should be larger and more prominent on the pump. Since he is a writer in the automotive field and has brought up this particularly outlandish tax level, I would ask Mr. Peters to consider compiling an "Owners Guide to tax expense on your next vehicle." Take a new Buick LaCrosse or BMW 5 Series and show us all how much money, cents per mile, the new owner can expect to leave on the roadway as he or she drives through Wisconsin, Connecticut, New York or all 50 states, as that vehicle travels along getting the EPA advertised mileage. My bet is it will make some toll roads look almost attractive.

Thanks for the great article.
-- Roger Ross
Tomahawk, Wisconsin

I agree with the author (Eric Peters) that gas taxes are ridiculously too high, but do not agree with his analogy of gas and food. Gas taxes are supposed to pay for the roads we drive and there is no such requirement for food and therefore no food tax has been proposed. But I am waiting for a "fat tax" to fund unconstitutional health care related to it.
-- James W. Clark, CPA
Greenville, North Carolina

Mr. Peters does an excellent job of articulating a point that has bugged the whatever out of me for longer than I care to remember -- or at least articulating one part of the economic point. I am afraid that most folks have simply come to think of the taxes as something that they can do nothing about, therefore why even think about it. I also find it odd how many folks think that the taxes on automotive fuel are no larger percentage of the price than for any other product -- they got to be in la-la land with that.

There is, however, another huge part of the problem that Mr. Peters does not address. Every -- yes, every -- product that we buy has imbedded in its price the cost of transportation to market. Every product that we buy -- yes, every one -- at some point in the chain is transported by a wheeled motor vehicle. So the cost of a gallon of milk is overly inflated by the exorbitant taxes on the diesel fuel for the truck to haul it from farm to bottler, and again from bottler to distributor, and again from distributor to retail store. Now if a gallon of milk costs in excess of $2.00 -- which it does -- how much of that price represents an overcharge because of fuel taxes. Seems to me that milk could be priced at the $1.00 to $1.50 without any loss of profit to anyone -- except for the taxes imposed on the transportation segment of the product cost.

None of this even touches the same exorbitant taxation rates for those who heat their homes and/or cook with oil or gas. None of this touches on the taxation rate on fuel for boats/ships for both pleasure and commerce that do not use the roads, or the airplanes that fill our skies, or the trains that are run with diesel fuel. This also does not address the double taxation cause by the transportation tax costs driving up the retail price of the produce, resulting in higher than otherwise sales tax -- in states that have such.

Then there is the petroleum tax driven cost to produce and market a gallon of ethanol -- the so called petroleum free, renewable resource. I have seen a creditable estimate that it takes over a gallon of petroleum to produce one gallon of corn derived ethanol.

A good case can be made that the taxes imposed by government, at all levels, on petroleum and its products are the most pernicious taxes levied on the American public, albeit in a relatively hidden manner. One might argue that the governmental units look at this tax as a "sin tax." The sin being the usage of petroleum in any of its forms.

End of rant.
-- Ken Shreve

Normally I would emphatically agree with the theme of this essay. However, I believe that the price mechanism should be used to depress vehicular (specifically automotive) fuel demand and force the country to do what CAFE did in the late '70s/early '80s and what the country should do today (if it were not for lobbyists and related special interests).

The expanded revenues either could be a "profit" which, one would hope, would stimulate more exploration and production (E&P) or a tax. However, if one believes even remotely in "peak-oil," then the expanded E&P may not result in significantly expanded production -- at least in areas of the world not generally hostile to the U.S.

Perhaps tax increases is the better way to depress demand with the following caveat -- the increased cash-flow DOES NOT end up in the General Revenues but, rather, is spent on technologies that will quickly generate petroleum substitutes. For example, technologies presently exist to convert coal to vehicular fuels. South Africa has done this for more than half a century and the Germans did it in WWII. NOTE: the U.S. is the "Saudi Arabia" of coal.

Letter to the Editor

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Taxes, Transportation, Health Care, Bill Clinton, Television, Business, Social Security, Environment, Hollywood, Movies, Constitution, Law, Supreme Court, Iraq, Africa, Libertarianism, Energy, Oil