Soma seeds. Soma online sales….

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.

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

As for horrendous taxation, I'm not really sure what you are referring to. Perhaps it is subsidization(http://www.icta.org/doc/Real%20Price%20of%20Gasoline.pdf), which definetely insulates people from commodity prices.

Also, Per made an observation that a rise in gasoline won't affect the relative price in Europe as much as in the US. It should be obvious that a $1 rise in gasoline from $3 to $4 is a 33% rise and a rise from $7 to $8 is only a 14% rise. And I think one could read further into his point that since a lot of investment is irreversible (I can't wave my hands and make my Explorer a Civic), Europeans may benefit from the costs they bore by being better prepared now. I am not advocating we have the government routinely try to forecast future prices and tax them before hand, but Per didn't advocate that either. I think Per's point was that a "distortionary" tax may actually lead the economy better prepared.

Interestingly, you actually don't even need to care about many externalities to want a positive gas tax. There was an article in J of Public Economics showing that because gas and leisure are complements, and with pre-existing taxes on labor, even with no externality the gas tax should be nontrivially positive.

Perhaps the European policies are not horrendous after all? If you'd like to overcome confirmation/selection bias you should at least consider ideas that don't confirm your priors.

It does make sense though, that people on the lake will respond less. For one they have already payed a large fixed cost by buying a boat and sometimes a home and a dock.

But perhaps by your reasoning, boaters weren't so affected by gas prices because they already pay a big premium at the pumps on the lake anyway. Gas was over $4 on the lake last winter.

Afraid of a little competition, aren’t´ we?

And so now you need to make up your mind whether you are discussing oil or gasoline.

I think what drives a lot of environmentalists is that realization, at least intuitively, that there is no price on public goods.

Also, while its possible that the one can make mistakes trying to be green, do you really think it is so hard, so prone to error that people trying to be green are worse for the environment than people who don't care? While I'm sure not every choice is right, I'd bet that the average super cognizant person is better for the environment than the average person.

/muirdiot

100% against environmentalism.

If you asked for more socialism, Maxine Waters agrees with you. Watch and be amazed.
Check out reactions of other people in the frame – priceless.

http://en.sevenload.com/videos/5R0Ex3l-Waters-oil

Another one that just makes my stomach churn is radio spots that So Cal Edison is running these days, urging us to get our air conditioners serviced, because if we all did that, it would be like taking 100,000 cars off the road. Say they have 2,000,000 customers. So that's like each of us taking 1/20 of a car off the road for $150 out of our own pockets. (a) Everyone isn't gonna do it. And (b) everyone isn't going to do it. I bet even the Prius owners won't do it. This isn't a religion, it's a cult. A religion does not ask its followers to do objectively stupid things for the common good.

You're confusing hindsight for foresight.

That price represented the objective state of the world then. Neither you nor anybody else could have predicted how the following 10 years would roll out nor can you predict how the next 10 years will.

But it's now so bad, because of market prices we don't need you or your 'foresight' (read 'hindsight).

ok, fair enough…people make consumption decisions based on prices…not the political machinations behind the prices. though wouldn't distorted prices yield poor information?…such that reasonable individual choices add up to less than desirable results?

separately, i don't know how one can get away with labeling a response to price signals 'green.' if prices drop and consumption goes up that wouldn't seem to be green. or maybe prices continue to rise and the next best alternative to burning gas pollutes even more? dr. boudreaux says we can't even calculate that reliably. so what's green exactly?