Time to raise the gas tax

[leftysergeant]

Nope. What I do say is that being penny wise, pound foolish works well for the cameras and pontificating politicians, but ends up with greater deaths due to, among other things, slowing development.

That statement is not supported by facts operating in this time/space continuum.

This is patent nonsense. We do myriad things without "every precaution" being taken for predictable risks.

And Big Pollution did a lot of stuff without taking precautions, but got rotten worthless Shrub-era left over scoundrels to sign of on documments to the effect that they had taken those measures. Liquidate them.

I'll give you a good example. The government was considering forcing airlines to not allow people to carry babies on their laps (no ticket cost), and instead require that airlines force the people to buy a ticket and use a baby seat.

The increase in cost for such families would drive more than a few to drive instead of fly, thus vastly increasing the chance of death for the baby and everyone else.

Not a factual arguement.

So "cost-benefit analysis evil" is a lovely rhetorical meme, derivative of Ford's famous bottom line analysis deciding it was cheaper to let people die and pay them off than fix the problem. But that's not what I'm talking about.

Scummy old Blankenship does cost benefit analyses all the time and figures it is better just to pay the fines.

Liquidate Massey Energy.

 

[Puppycow]

About the cost of those externalities:

Some of the best work on this subject has been done by Ian Parry, a senior fellow at Resources for the Future. His calculations -- plus some data from other sources and studies -- suggest that adding all the quantifiable costs into the price of oil would increase the cost of each gallon by about $1.65. According to the Energy Information Administration, the average price of a gallon of gas was $2.72 last week. It should really be as high as $4.37.

That, however, is almost certainly an underestimation. There are plenty of costs that we just don't know how to put a price on. How much of our military policy is dictated by our need for secure oil resources? How much instability is created by our need to treat oil-producing monarchies such as Saudi Arabia with kid gloves? How much is the environment worth in a poor country that would prefer oil investment to air-quality regulations?

Or take the spill in the gulf. What's the economic value of a whale? Of a pelican? Of plankton? The nation's been horrified by the photographs of oil-soaked wildlife, but how much is not being horrified actually worth to us?

 

[Beerina]

That statement is not supported by facts operating in this time/space continuum.

Umm, yes it is.

That theory made predictions set against environmentalist gloom-and-doom predictions, loudly and in front of cameras, and was validated over and over again.


We've been over this in various other threads, too. The health care threads: massive regulations and price controls do, indeed, slow down the per capita production of new drugs in Europe. Even European companies produce more depending on whether they also sell in to uncontrolled markets like the U.S.

Every regulation and tax, good or bad, costs money, either directly or in lost profits. This increases investment risk and thus slows investment, thus slowing progress.

The best a detractor could claim is the benefits gained outweigh the downsides. But proof of that is rare. See again that link. No, hot air is not proof. Anecdotes are not proof. Well-reasoned political ideas are a theory, not proof. Test them?

Please?

 

[leftysergeant]

Care to provide some evidence of that, Beerina?