Frum: Getting off oil easily is a fantasy
President Obama is right: We can take the U.S. off oil. But he omitted to mention the fine print: Doing so will be slow, will be expensive, and will involve huge dislocations in American lifestyles and business.
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So a politician who wished to move America away from oil would begin by saying something like: “$4 a gallon gasoline is here forever. Even if the price of oil on world markets declines, we’ll impose extra taxes here at home. Make your plans accordingly.”But of course, such a politician would soon be an ex-politician. So nobody ever does say that. What they say instead is what President Obama said this week: It’s the oil companies’ fault for selling us too much oil too cheaply. It’s the car companies’ fault for building the cars we prefer to buy.
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We want to get the country off oil? Tax it.
It’s pretty clear that Mr. Frum is not from the Tea Party school of energy economics!
“Tax it” is a good idea. It fails over and over. People don’t want to pay more, in reality. They mouth the idea to pollsters, but come election time the results say something differently.
Trivial taxes sometimes do get passed, to pay for some project or another.
However, to make the changes needed if one wants to eliminate imported oil will require huge investments, on a scale we have not seen since WWII.