McCain: Experts ride chauffeured limousines
In the same Kansas City Star interview where McCain said Obama was an extremist, there was also this exchange about the gas tax (5:00 minutes remaining).
My two reactions to this are
1) Here we go again. As with the Bush administration on Iraq, global warning & health care, McCain regards expertise as something to be mocked instead of as, well, expertise.
2) Somebody better have a memorable, simple explanation of why the gas tax holiday won't lower gas prices. I've seen Obama muff this and everyone needs to understand why the experts are right. To that end here's my attempt:
Dan Helling: A lot of experts say this is just not a good idea.
McCain: A lot of experts are driven to work in chauffered limousines. A lot of experts live in Georgetown and walk to work.
My two reactions to this are
1) Here we go again. As with the Bush administration on Iraq, global warning & health care, McCain regards expertise as something to be mocked instead of as, well, expertise.
2) Somebody better have a memorable, simple explanation of why the gas tax holiday won't lower gas prices. I've seen Obama muff this and everyone needs to understand why the experts are right. To that end here's my attempt:
Here's why the gas tax won't save you any money. The oil companies already know they can sell all the gas they have at over $4.00 a gallon. If there's no tax, they will still sell all the gas they have at $4.00 a gallon, but they'll pocket the difference. Instead of using the money for infrastructure or energy independence, oil company executives will be laughing all the way to the bank.In any case, I'd like to take a poll. If you are an expert, especially an economist, do you ride a chauffeured limousine to work? If not, why not?
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When someone mentions to you that the 'gas tax holiday' would lower prices all you have to do is point out how the price of oil went up the price of gas went up too, but when the price of oil went down the price of gas changed by just 4c.
Anyone who thinks the oil companies will lower their prices if only we didn't tax their product is a first-class fool ie: Republican.
July 25, 2008 2:15 PM | Reply | Permalink
What I love are the two extremes: they're either riding in chauffeured limos or they're walking. I suspect some of them have chauffeured walks, actually. Maybe they ride something like this:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/cb/Sedan-chair.jpg
July 25, 2008 2:25 PM | Reply | Permalink
Hmm while i theory you are right, however the gas tax is not collected by the oil companies, but rather the distributors. Those folks who pick up the gas from the refineries and then deliver it to the your local station. The issue here is not will it be passed it on they might or might not. This issue is what have we accomplished? A momentary drop in price that could easily be driven right up again by the price drop increasing demand. Next when the holiday is over you get a $.18 jump in price in one day.
As of this moment we have already seen the price drop to $123 per barrel of crude (as of today) because of lowered demand. The truth is we are already starting to get the holiday because of lowered demand. Sadly the price of wholesale which has dropped over $.50 has not been reflected yet at the pump where we have only seen an average drop of 6 cents.
July 25, 2008 2:26 PM | Reply | Permalink
Have you guys not got the memo, Smart people are EVIL. Duh!
July 25, 2008 2:40 PM | Reply | Permalink