Raise the Gasoline Tax? Funny, It Doesn’t Sound Republican - New York Times

Raise the Gasoline Tax? Funny, It Doesn’t Sound Republican - New York Times:

A piece about the  "Pigou Club," economists who favor taxes on things that have significant externalities, in this case, fossil fuels.

In late September, as [Alan Greenspan] spoke to a group of business executives in Massachusetts, a question was posed as to whether he’d like to see an increase in the federal gasoline tax, which has stood at 18.4 cents a gallon since 1993. “Yes, I would,” Mr. Greenspan responded with atypical clarity. “That’s the way to get consumption down. It’s a national security issue.”

Mr. Greenspan isn’t the only Republican-aligned economist to have discovered, or rediscovered, a fondness for higher energy taxes since leaving government service. N. Gregory Mankiw, the Harvard economist who served as chairman of President Bush’s Council of Economic Advisers from 2003 to 2005, favored a higher gas tax before going to Washington, and has been banging the drum loudly for it since he left. On his blog, Mr. Mankiw has formed the Pigou Club, named for Arthur C. Pigou, the British economist credited with introducing the notion that taxes could be used to correct imperfections in the market. The roster of what Mr. Mankiw calls “economists and pundits with the good sense to have publicly advocated higher Pigovian taxes, such as gasoline taxes or carbon taxes,” includes some of the usual suspects — Paul Krugman, a columnist for The New York Times, and Al Gore, for example — as well as unusual suspects like Gary S. Becker, the economics professor and Nobel laureate at the University of Chicago.

- Sent using Google Toolbar

Sphere: Related Content