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The argument is not to subsidize things we want more of. If you have a good argument for why oil should be subsidized (you don't) then you are free to make it. Just as people make other arguments that savings/health care/education should be subsidized. To try to imply that to be against a subsidy, one has to be against all subsidies is one of the more ridiculous arguments I've heard in awhile.

"So other than hating what ordinary Americans like to do on weekends and at night, what is your point?"

I'm sure the point is beyond your grasp, but the intuition is that leisure is a normal good just as food, movies and pretty much everything else is. As your income rises you want more of all normal goods. We tend to tax labor and consumption (because we can't tax leisure) encouraging people to shift toward greater leisure time. Now, maybe you are for this, because for whatever reason you think people are not good at choosing the appropriate amount of leisure time. That is, in the absense of any taxes, you think people wouldn't participate in enough leisure. This argument is sometimes made in support of high tax rates in France.

But if you think people are good at choosing optimal bundles of leisure and consumption goods. You want to limit the amount that you distort those bundles. In which case, you'd want to tax goods that are compliments with leisure more and substitutes with leisure less.

I know it is in some ways a difficult idea, but it is worth trying to wrap your head around. If you ever want to overcome confirmation bias, you must force yourself to confront ideas you aren't comfortable with.

"Let me add a little additional confusion or enlightenment to this. The price of gasoline in Europe Japan and many other places have, for more than two decades, effectively been above 100$ for the consumer, not because of the price of oil but because of taxes. And so there in Europe, beside their current Euro advantage, they are much less affected by current oil prices than the US since their trough tax “distorted” prices kept their proportion of SUV´s much better under control.

And so now you need to make up your mind whether you are discussing oil or gasoline.
Posted by: Per Kurowski | May 24, 2008 1:24:30 PM"

The extreme high taxation in Europe is the result of most of the continent's devotion to socialist beliefs. Socialist programs such as subsidized public transportation has to be paid for in some manner. Those extrememly high petro taxes are what pay for all those empty light rail commuter cars that you see going up and down the tracks every 30 or 20 minutes all day and night in between rush hours.

If American want a look at how that works, just go down to a rail line that runs AMTRAK as commuter rail and look at the empty cars, go to Denver, Portland, Dallas, NYC, Boston, Washington DC, San Francisco, Houston, etc. and watch the empty rail cars roll by in the off hours.

Thing is, those trains cost just as much to run empty as they do full, and they run empty far more than they do full, or even reasonably occupied.

Making comparisons between Europe and the USA on the price of gas or oil just doesn't work yet, but it is obvious that we in the USA are being forced to adopt the European model of socialism.