Start getting real creative, workerbee! I don't meen to sound un empathetic but it is going to take a whole lot of that "american ingenuity" to repair the false and insecure steps which have lead out country to this bad energy policy.

And I agree Mr Bernstein about both Hilalry and Barack getting after McCain for his Vodoo economics.

"The federal gasoline tax helps pay for highway projects in nearly every town through a dedicated trust fund. In the past, such proposals for gas tax holidays have not fared well as lawmakers and state and local officials prefer not to see changes in their revenue source."

Hmmm, don't we need that money to say, repair crumbling overpasses? As I understand it, there's a lack of funds for highway repairs and maintenance, not a surplus.

My first thought when I heard this proposal was "what gets cut"? Like mordecai, I was hoping it wasn't crumbling bridges. Yup, good politics and bad policy. Our media needs to bluntly ask McCain the questions of what gets cut and how does he assure the savings go to consumers and not oil companies. I hope his advisors have thought about the answers to those questions and can respond without hesitation.

Once again proof that the Republican Party is ideologically bankrupt as well as morally bankrupt, and if they continue in the White House, they'll leave our country fiscally bankrupt, too.

This is awesome news. I’m not sure how this works because technically he isn’t President yet, but hopefully he can work this out with Bush to make this a reality. I see 3 main proposals and each one should help in its own way.

1. Lower corporate tax from 35% to 25% - “High tax rates are driving many businesses and jobs overseas — and, of course, our foreign competitors wouldn’t mind if we kept it that way,” McCain said in a speech in Pittsburgh. Now some people may complain, but with less taxes these business can start hiring more American workers. Actually, I’m not sure what businesses we still have, but this is very good news for them.

2. A new tax system - McCain said that Americans don’t mind paying their fair share, but that Americans are drowning in the complexities of the tax code. His plan would simplify taxes by creating another tax system and giving tax payers the option of filing under either system depending on which is better for them based on their gross income and witholding. For some Americans the current system will be better, but for other the new one might make sense.

3. A gast tax holiday - Between Memorial Day and Labor Day the federal gas tax would be suspended. For an average driver like myself I drive 50 miles per day and with the air conditioner going my Jeep Grand Cherokee gets about 8 miles to the gallon in the city. The federal tax is 18 cents per gallon. What that means for me is an extra $1.08 in my pocket everyday. Now as any Supply Sider can tell you I will use that money to buy more gas and drive more. This will create more jobs for people working at gas stations, cleaning streets, car washes, etc. As more of us are able to drive more we’ll be stroking the fires of this economy. The total cost is $10,000,000,000 which may sound like a lot, but in a country this size that’s only the cost of a month of the war in Iraq.

I have to give McCain a big A+ for these proposals. Economics may not be his expertise, but it is ideas like these that will help avoid any possible recession.

weaker dollar and more inflation

your cries of anguish, although heartfelt (and, indeed, touching) are about seven years too late.

Where were you when the horse left the barn, as the national debt doubled, as the current account deficit soared, as the productivity gains from information technology were usufructed to the obscene increase in the wealth at the top?

If I want to give the owning class a haircut, does that make me Sweeny Todd?

An 18.4 cent cut in gas prices would put us back to 2 weeks ago, for a few days.

The fed would buy the debt, print more dollars, decreasing the value of the currency, resulting in investors buying more oil to offset inflation and the gas tax cut would disappear faster than a Karl Rove email.

ExxonMobil and the other sisters will almost certainly pocket a good chunk of that gas tax cut. Ask any economist.

This is a stupid, foolish idea and one can only hope that it's not followed through upon. If it is, I certainly hope that the blame for the next bridge that collapses is pinned squarely upon Bush and McCain.

Of course, as Jared noted at the beginning this is great politics. The cynical core of McCain's proposal is that there won't be any gas tax cut. That would require Congress to approve it, and they will do the responsible thing and refuse to. In refusing to do so, the GOP will be able to bash the Democrats as doing nothing to help Americans cope with rising gasoline costs.

If we really wanted to address the true causes behind rising gas costs, we'd get the fuck out of Iraq and otherwise quit stirring the pot in the Middle East, we'd restore fiscal sanity to Washington D.C. by ending the costly war in Iraq and allowing Bush's tax cuts to expire, and we'd start doing something to wean this country off its petroleum addiction.

Do the math. Less political turmoil in the Middle East + an end to the dollar's slide in value + less demand = lower oil prices.

This would, unfortunately, require the average American voter to grow the fuck up and stop mindlessly supporting any politician who promises them something for nothing. Sadly, I won't be putting my money on that happening anytime soon.

And Inflation is the most pernicious tax of all as it punishes savers, workers whose wages are fixed at minimum, certain asset owners whose asset values do not rise as rapidly as the rate of inflation. At least with progressive taxation, the ones profiting the most from the economy are paying proportionately their due. Why is a diminishing $ not punishing the rich but is in fact, making them richer? That has to do with the upper-stream, trickle down nature of money, yep, TRICKLE DOWN ECONOMICS. At the money spigot, when $1 buys x amount of oil, that $1 spent can buy MUCH MORE than when it trickled down to the bottom where those massive amounts of $ start chasing the finite amount of oil, so $1 buys first x, then 3/4x, 1/2x, 1/3x, then 1/4x amount of oil. Who are the people gathered at the spigot spending buckets on themselves? You can see them splurging on Lear Jets and busily converting their soon to be useless $$$ into tangible assets.

what do you think the poor should do?

Well, for starters, figure out that they are poor, that they have been screwed, and that there is a thing called "class consciousness"

The ameliorative adjustments of the New Deal having successfully postponed this realization saved the ruling class from itself.

Apparently the ruling class is now so consumed with greed that they have turned their back on FDR, the saviour they never really recognized.

Ah, that leaves only Marx for me, brilliant, genius, prescient mind with incredible foresight to portend the screwed up "economics" we find ourselves in today. Every word he uttered is true. The problem is with all these megalomaniacs hitching onto his brilliance to bring about an ideological form of serfdom. Tony Benn puts it best, we need a democracy to bring about praxis - the paradox remains that any concentration of power in the hands of a small group of men would inevitably lead to corruption, dictatorship or fascism.