[deMolay]

Amazing how MSM is catching on. http://www.newyorker.com/talk/financial ... surowiecki

[Plantagenet]

The New Yorker suggests that rising oil prices will create a public demand for higher oil taxes to reduce the demand for oil.

I think the opposite is likely.....rising oil taxes will create a public demand for LOWER taxes and more access to cheaper oil.

But there isn't any cheaper oil to be had.

[wisconsin_cur]

The New Yorker suggests that rising oil prices will create a public demand for higher oil taxes to reduce the demand for oil.

I think the opposite is likely.....rising oil taxes will create a public demand for LOWER taxes and more access to cheaper oil.

But there isn't any cheaper oil to be had.

I agree with PA's assessment on what people will want and why they will not get it. What happens after that? That is the part of the equation that keeps me up at night.

[EnergyUnlimited]

I agree with PA's assessment on what people will want and why they will not get it. What happens after that? That is the part of the equation that keeps me up at night.

In fact that lets me sleep very well.
Shitty and dysfunctional global economic system will chaotically collapse.
The faster, the better.

[MD]

This isn’t an idle concern, since recent history demonstrates how damaging skyrocketing oil prices can be. Indeed, blame for the current recession can be laid in part on the spike in the price of oil between June of 2007 and July of 2008, when it peaked at nearly a hundred and fifty dollars a barrel. A study by James Hamilton, a macroeconomist at U.C.-San Diego, reached a startling conclusion: given the already weak state of the U.S. economy in 2007, the sharp increase in oil prices might have been enough, on its own, to tip the economy into recession, even without that year’s blowup in the credit markets. It wasn’t just that, as many people assume, higher gas prices functioned as a tax increase, taking money out of people’s pockets. More important was the fact that four-dollar-a-gallon gasoline dramatically changed the way people spent their money.

No kidding?

That comment alone deserves a couple hundred eye-rolls.

[ivanillich]

The New Yorker suggests that rising oil prices will create a public demand for higher oil taxes to reduce the demand for oil.

I think the opposite is likely.....rising oil taxes will create a public demand for LOWER taxes and more access to cheaper oil.

But there isn't any cheaper oil to be had.

The article suggests no such thing. In fact, it admits exactly this claim, that people will not want higher taxes. It merely suggests that higher taxes are a good thing despite the public outcry. And expresses the hope that people will learn. Of course, that's just a hope.

"But, rather than leave so much of our fate to chance, we’d be better off doing what politicians always say they want to do: lessen the U.S. economy’s dependence on oil. One step toward that would be to phase in a gas tax designed to smooth out oil’s spikes and plunges by keeping the price of gasoline fixed (the tax would rise when the price of gas fell, and vice versa). Raising gas taxes is, of course, a solution that politicians—and voters—hate. But perhaps another oil shock or two will change that.But, rather than leave so much of our fate to chance, we’d be better off doing what politicians always say they want to do: lessen the U.S. economy’s dependence on oil. One step toward that would be to phase in a gas tax designed to smooth out oil’s spikes and plunges by keeping the price of gasoline fixed (the tax would rise when the price of gas fell, and vice versa). Raising gas taxes is, of course, a solution that politicians—and voters—hate. But perhaps another oil shock or two will change that."

[EnergyUnlimited]

Raising gas taxes is, of course, a solution that politicians—and voters—hate. But perhaps another oil shock or two will change that."

But you see, taxing already expensive oil will result in accelerated shutting down economy.