Driving back from Beaumont (where almost every house has a nice ‘blue roof’ (tarps covering storm damage from Rita), saw unleaded has now dropped to $2.139 at the TA truck stop, and many places with $2.199.<\/p>\n
The following is by Russell Roberts<\/a>, professor of economics at George Mason Univeristy<\/a>, and author of the most-excellent The Choice: A Fable of Free Trade and Protectionism<\/a>.<\/p>\n The Post Nails it<\/a>:<\/p>\n Unlike the editors of the NYTimes editorial page who think that high prices and profits have no redeeming social value<\/a>, their counterparts at the Washington Post<\/a> (rr) nail the economics:<\/p><\/blockquote>\n When oil prices spike, it is because of scarcity — for example, A tax on windfall profits is less counterproductive but still bad. For The title of the editorial is the lovely, “A Call to Inaction.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Driving back from Beaumont (where almost every house has a nice ‘blue roof’ (tarps covering storm damage from Rita), saw unleaded has now dropped to<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":647,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-395","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-random-news","category-thoughts"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pekNN-6n","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.joewhite.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/395","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.joewhite.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.joewhite.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.joewhite.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/647"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.joewhite.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=395"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.joewhite.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/395\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.joewhite.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=395"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.joewhite.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=395"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.joewhite.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=395"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nscarcity caused by hurricane damage to petroleum infrastructure on the
\nGulf Coast. The best way to manage that scarcity is for producers to
\nmake a special effort to get oil to the market and for consumers to
\nmake a special effort to cut back. Higher prices encourage both of
\nthose responses; rather than complain of price gouging, Congress should
\ncelebrate price signals. By contrast, controlled prices create no
\npressure for extra production or conservation. They just create gas
\nlines: Witness the 1970s.<\/p>\n
\none thing, it’s not as though the profits are socially useless. Even in
\nthe absence of a special tax, they generate regular tax revenue for
\nboth federal and state governments as well as dividends for retirement
\nplans. For another, the profits are a spur to new investment; taxing
\nthem reduces the return that companies will expect to make on new oil
\nfinds or refineries, with the result that there will be less oil and
\ngas available in the future and hence higher prices.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n