My own view is that we should raise taxes on gasoline at the pump rather than broadly taxing petroleum, and that the new tax should scale with population density, so it's higher in urban areas where the negative externalities of burning it are more concentrated, and roughly zero in rural areas.
I wonder if that might not be an easier sell than it sounds in Congress. If urban liberals want to tax themselves and leave the rural conservatives out of it, why should the latter object?
http://www.politico.com/agenda/story/2016/02/obama-oil-tax-b...
My own view is that we should raise taxes on gasoline at the pump rather than broadly taxing petroleum, and that the new tax should scale with population density, so it's higher in urban areas where the negative externalities of burning it are more concentrated, and roughly zero in rural areas.
I wonder if that might not be an easier sell than it sounds in Congress. If urban liberals want to tax themselves and leave the rural conservatives out of it, why should the latter object?