A couple years ago, when gasoline was $2 per gallon, I mentioned in passing that the US ought to tax gas so that it sells for $3.50 or $4.

Really, it was a throwaway line. Just “Wouldn’t it be good for the country if we could start to get away from using so much gas just to sit in traffic, and tax gas so that there would be some money to pay for the next generation of transport systems?”

Something like that…

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Wow. Did the readers email me on that one? The tamest emails were along the lines of… “I’ll never read you again” and that kind of stuff. The heavier ones were that I’m a statist, socialist, Marxist, Commie Bolshevik who wants people to give up their freedoms at the point of a gun.

Now, three years later, we have the $4 gas, but all the money is going to Vladimir Putin and King Abdullah and Hugo Chavez and the list continues…

Too bad. If we had taxed it, we might not be in such a world of energy strife right now.

Byron King
Energy and Oil