It is one thing for a big storm to upend ships in the Black Sea pouring their cargoes of oil into the waters there. It is another thing to have to rethink your position about taxes when you think of the money pouring OUT of our country to the oil rich nations that sell their oil to us. It is the same thing as taxation, points out Tom Friedman in today’s NY Times. Instead of paying a tax at the pump we pay the higher and higher prices that go to Venezuela and Saudi Arabia. Oil is troubling the waters here in the U.S. because we use the T-x word as a pejorative in the same way as the “N” word and one must not do that. The less government crowd will have your head if you bring up the possibility of taxing oil for our own purposes such as paying for the war and its consequences.
As I understand it, the reluctance to tax is a built-in American response to self-government. We want democracy and we want representatives to represent us in the House and Senate but we do not want them to tax us to pay for basic things although we wink at their miss-use of privilege in taking care of special projects that will ensure their election next time.
What results from this reluctance to tax is to throw the initiative over to the hurting gas buggy industry. Maybe they will get us out of this mess by building cars that use renewable fuels. But, that was already seized upon by the canny Asiatic car makers who give us hybrids and are working on working models of cars powered by the sun and diesels using cooking oils for go-power. What is missing in telling this story is the helplessness of the rust-belt parts of the country where unemployment is a fact of life. Instead of gearing up to avoid dependence on oil, these industries have thrown in the towel or have gone overseas where labor is cheaper. Just to avoid taxes.
From the same NY Times is a story of how the King of Saudi Arabia has bought one of those huge airplanes that hold up to nearly 500 passengers (packed in like sardines) as a his private plane sitting on some Arabian sand. The oil burned in that plane on one transatlantic trip would heat the homes of the northern United States for one winter.
Something is wrong in the values of the players on the world stage today. We want to continue to live as we have (but now some states have no water for their people) and do not want to deal with future crises that have already proclaimed themselves. Pouring oil on troubled waters does not solve the problems.