Dough Flow

I hate to say it, but emotionally, I think that Clinton and McCain are right about the gasoline tax. Intellectually, I think they're wrong, but down where my wallet lives, I'm thinking yeah.

The spur for this comes from a poll in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune on where people were planing to spend their rebate check. The options were a) Invest/Bank it, b) pay bills, c) Spend on something fun, d) Give it to charity, and e) Other. I was guessing that most people would either invest/bank it or buy something fun. Together, the percentage of people selecting those options came to about 41%. The single biggest selection, though, was Pay Bills -- about 48% said that was what they'd do with it. I'm assuming that thats a straight 'pay something that wouldn't have gotten paid, or been delayed'. And that makes me think that gee, maybe the gas tax rebate wouldn't be all that bad an idea. These people are hurting.

As I said, intellectually, I think its a bad idea. Each person wouldn't get all that much -- we buy about fifty gallons of gas a month, so, assuming that the tax is 18 cents a gallon, thats about nine bucks a month. I wouldn't laugh at it, but it wouldn't go far in handling bills and such. Collectively, though, the government loses a fair chunk of change -- money that (usually, barring political shenanigans) goes to maintaining the transportation infrastructure -- whats occasionally referred to as 'our sadly decaying roadways'. They certainly need the help. And though I don't expect to see a maglev route running up US 15 any time soon, the likelihood of that drops when you've got to balance repairing what you've got and building something new. Very few politicians would be willing to stick their necks out on that kind of thing. So the government needs the money.

But so do these people, and, person for person, I think they need it more. After all, unlike the other side, they can't print it, and they can't run a deficit. Thats got to be worth something, I think.