As anti-tax as I generally am, I have to admit that there are times when tax policy, including significantly increased taxes, can and should be used to provide certain incentives for people to behave in desired ways.
Starkly contrasting Hillary Clinton's and John McCain's idiotic proposals earlier this year to suspend the federal gas tax, Charles Krauthammer proposes further increasing gasoline taxes because, as we are seeing now, higher gas prices cause consumers to alter their driving and car-buying habits, which in turn puts pressure on manufacturers to produce more fuel-efficient vehicles. It is a market-based approach that would be much more efficient, and more beneficial to the national economy, than a government-mandated corporate average fuel economy or ethanol mandates or suing the Saudis or whatever politically-inspired energy scam is en vogue this week in Washington, DC.
Will people like it? No. Will it be difficult to adjust to, at least in the short-term? Yes, especially for politicians for whom any tax-hike is a career-killer (which is all of them). But it would be effective.
Showing posts with label Hillary Clinton. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Hillary Clinton. Show all posts
31.3.08
Hitchens on the Deeper Implications of Hillary's Bosnia Lies
Having gone to Sarajevo himself in 1992, Christopher Hitchens is not amused by Hillary Clinton's "recollections" of her 1996 trip to Tuzla. Particularly galling to Hitchens is that Hillary's claim to "bravery" during her Bosnia trip references a point in time after which over 250,000 Bosnian Muslims had been slaughtered by Serbian forces while Hillary was focusing on her health-care initiative.
"Yet Sen. Clinton, given repeated chances to modify her absurd claim to have operated under fire while in the company of her then-16-year-old daughter and a USO entertainment troupe, kept up a stone-faced and self-loving insistence that, yes, she had exposed herself to sniper fire in the cause of gaining moral credit and, perhaps to be banked for the future, national-security "experience." This must mean either a) that she lies without conscience or reflection; or b) that she is subject to fantasies of an illusory past; or c) both of the above."
Her claims to be an authority on national security and foreign policy are just as baseless as Barrack Obama's claims from having lived overseas as a child.
"Yet Sen. Clinton, given repeated chances to modify her absurd claim to have operated under fire while in the company of her then-16-year-old daughter and a USO entertainment troupe, kept up a stone-faced and self-loving insistence that, yes, she had exposed herself to sniper fire in the cause of gaining moral credit and, perhaps to be banked for the future, national-security "experience." This must mean either a) that she lies without conscience or reflection; or b) that she is subject to fantasies of an illusory past; or c) both of the above."
Her claims to be an authority on national security and foreign policy are just as baseless as Barrack Obama's claims from having lived overseas as a child.
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