Kaaaaaaahn!

From Matthew Kahn's Environmental and Urban Economics:

Environmental economists have convinced themselves of the benefits of raising gasoline taxes. Politicians seem to be slow to embrace this proposal. Why? New Yorker magazine’s James Surowiecki has a good explanation. The New Yorker has better cartoons and sometimes better analysis than the American Economic Review!

PUMP PRESSURE James Surowiecki on why the gas tax won’t budge.
Issue of 2005-09-26

“Of course, in political terms the gas tax’s virtues—simplicity, transparency, immediacy—are vices. Politicians prefer complex systems that allow them to satisfy particular constituencies, reward supporters, and disguise the true costs of things. And, strangely enough, voters implicitly prefer indirect taxes to direct ones. So it may be that the gas tax will remain one of those economically sensible ideas that are doomed to fail.”

Comments

[Just curious]

Is "Kaaaaaaahn!" in this context a scream of excitement, despair, or both?

[matthew kahn]

I feel no wrath for this blog. Instead, I think it is consistently high quality and on point. William Shatner could learn from these guys!

[John Whitehead]

"Kaaaaaaahn!" is the sound you here when env-econ gets scooped by env/urb econ.

Tim even knows the website that will give you sound but I've lost the URL.

Just some fun.

[joshua corning]

You left the best part out.

"This quote highlights a point that pro-economists do not devote enough attention to. When is transparency bad for policy implementation? In the sense that building coalitions to support a particular public policy may be more difficult if people directly see the costs and benefits of the proposal. Another example is social security. This program redistributes money across income groups but people do not know this."

one should note that social security is a wealth redistrobution progrom, which has its own problems, but it also does the redistrobution part badly..ie married women get more money then single women.

I wonder if oil taxation has its problems as well...it claims to promote efficiancy..but that assumes that the technology for efficiancy is not already at an optimal level of development..in which case the oil tax is just aimed at reduceing consuption

[Glyn]

Looking at all the spelling mistakes in the above Joshua, looks like you should be reducing your consumption before hitting the keyboard.