Wednesday, April 30, 2008

Entering Old Fogeyhood

I remember when gas was 28 cents a gallon.

I remember squeezing five bucks worth of gasoline in my 1967 Volkswagen Beetle.

I remember thinking it was scandalous when gasoline hit 50 cents a gallon. And $1 a gallon. And $2 a gallon...

Today, I paid $3.65 for gas at a station in Dallas.

I had a discussion a few weeks ago with a friend of mine who is into environmentalism (personally and professionally). She told me that people would start changing their consumption habits when gasoline hit $5 a gallon. I thought it would have to go higher than that, but now I have my doubts. Even at $3.65, it's painful when I have to fill up twice a week.

Now we have the disgusting spectacle of Hillary Clinton and John McCain proposing gas tax holidays to pander to voters.

A gas tax holiday proposed by U.S. presidential hopefuls John McCain and Hillary Clinton is viewed as a bad idea by many economists and has drawn unexpected support for Clinton rival Barack Obama, who also is opposed.

As painful as it is to discover I agree with Barack Obama on anything, I do agree with him here. Unless the gas tax were repealed permanently, this sort of gimmick would only inflict greater pain later. And such a repeal would do nothing for state gasoline taxes, which can be as bad or worse than the federal tax.

Arguments on how to bring down the price of gas vary nearly as much as religious faiths. Personally, I don't actually expect prices to come down much no matter what we do because energy consumption is global and India and China will suck up whatever we don't. It seems to me that this would be a good time for all three candidates to spend more time talking about the range of alternatives for energy as opposed to rolling out gimmicks.