Tax My Gas Now

After 9/11, American people are asking for sacrifice and the answer they got from their President is to shop more and to go to Iraq.

Seven years later, we have only gotten deeper into debt, and deeper into our addiction for oil. Today, petroleum price breaks record every other week and people are paying nearly $4/gallon for gas at the pump, unthinkable just three years ago. Oil refiners’ profits break record quarter after quarter and that giant money sucking sound is from OPEC. Moreover, 8 out of 10 Americans expect gas price will even go higher to $5 and food shortage due to high energy prices and crop substitution forces poor people to go hungry world wide.

OPEC and oil speculators think that because our economies are built around oil, the demand for oil is inelastic therefore they can control the supply side to control the oil price. They are wrong: we have the motivation and strength to break our addiction and we will.

We will ally ourselves with other oil importing countries all over the globe to form OPIC(Organization of Petroleum Importing Countries). We will collectively levy an anti-cartel and anti-global-warming sales tax of 30% or more on gas at the pump. Some of our potential allies already do so, like the EU. While others, like China and India, has oil policy similar to USA; they must be persuaded for their own interest to join OPIC and control their ravenous hunger for oil.

If this policy is enacted, we expect that for a short time, the gasoline price will go up by 30% to $5-$6. But in the long term, taxing gas may ironically help gas price come down, by reducing demand and by stimulating the development of gas alternatives. In addition, the high gas tax policy has the added benefit of modulating the wild swing of gasoline prices, reducing speculation on oil prices, and hence reduces devastating effect of oil price swing on business planning and investment.

The revenue from 30%+ gas at more than $150 billion a year can be spent for any or all of following:
1. investment in alternative energy R/D and infrastructure
2. development of public transportation and energy conservation efforts
3. alleviate the gas tax's disproportionate effect on working class by giving back as tax rebate, not tied to gas, but free to spend on any thing.
4. reduce budget deficit and strengthen the dollar

This policy will likely have the best effect on oil price, if applied in conjunction with other OPIC countries. However individual state governments and countries can still go it alone and spearhead the implementation. In fact EU countries have long adopted a high gas tax policy and used the revenue to support public transportation and education, and today are leaders in many areas of renewable energy.

Therefore, We, the undersigned, call on the Governments of US, China, Japan, India, EU and other petroleum importing countries and/or local states and legislatures to form an Organization of Petroleum Importing Countries (OPIC) to coordinate our gas taxation policy, in a manner as to lessen our dependence on gasoline, to lessen OPEC's control over petroleum pricing, and to increase our investment in alternative energy and energy conservation.

In short, we call on the above governments to act in our true interest, to increase gas tax, and use the revenue to support energy conservation, alternative energy or other worthy causes like education and tax rebate for working class.

This is the only way we can wean of oil, not by subsidizing gas, not by going into wars, not by spending billions to build military bases all over the Middle East, but to ask us to sacrifice, so that one day we may truly be free of an illegal cartel (the OPEC), of terrorism funded by oil money, of global warming and of world hunger.