(02-01-2010 11:34 PM)Rebel Wrote:  

(02-01-2010 11:31 PM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote:  

(02-01-2010 11:16 PM)Rebel Wrote:  Ok, you have a degree in law. I have a degree in business. I'm telling you what it WILL do, and that is kill the economy. Less jobs, promotions, and raises are always a side-effect of policies like that. Will it recover? Well, only if the rest of the market prevails and increases as well. ....but it will take a long time. Increases like that don't happen overnight. We didn't go from .5 cent cokes to 1.20 cokes overnight. It took 40 years. You willing to put people out of work for 40 years? If not, what's going to take up the slack when companies that rely on petrol, which there are thousands, have to start laying off?
I don't get this about your "Libertarianism".

Let's take your coke example. Let's say we're still selling coke for a nickel but it costs a dollar to make it. Is it really good for the economy to keep selling it for a nickel, or should we let the cost go up to the $1.00+?
There are arguments both ways, but keeping it at a nickel will certainly lead to misallocated resources which will harm the economy in the long run. If you always look for short term gratification, then you'll keep the price at a nickel, but in the end that will screw you. That's where we are with oil. We keep the price artificially low with tax breaks, and that leaves us extremely vulnerable to OPEC.

Doesn't cost 7+ dollars to make a gallon of gas, Owl, using your analogy.

If you go all-in with costs, it probably is around $4/gallon, which is the range I'm talking about. But a lot of the real costs aren't reflected. So we overconsume. Which makes us vulnerable to OPEC. If we were paying $1,000/year more for gasoline, but getting $1,000/year back in other tax savings, we'd be in the same place, so no devastating impact on economy. And we'd find ways to use less, meaning less money to OPEC, less money to Putin, less money to al-Qaeda, less money to Chavez.