That's always his answer. To whatever question he focuses his ginormous, deep, brainpower on. This time it is in answer to the question of what do we do in response to unrest in the Arab world:
“America, you have built your house at the foot of a volcano. That volcano is now spewing lava from different cracks and is rumbling like it’s going to blow. Move your house!” In this case, “move your house” means “end your addiction to oil.”
So add in a dollar a gallon tax (and apply it to deficit reduction--his only new twist to an old song). This way, we'll buy more hybrid electric vehicles.
We'll ignore that attempts to build our home next to Canadian oil tars or on American lands or waters have been halted by the greens.
Back to the idea that a dollar more in gas taxes will lead to the hybrid nirvana that will free us from relying on oil from the Middle East.
European taxes on gas are much higher ( a couple years old, but I didn't feel like spending more than a minute Googling--it gives you the idea) than even the Friedman green wet dream.
Yet European hybrid vehicle sales are far lower than ours (with a rate less than a third).
But other than that problem, Tom's solution is just swell.
Oh, and why wouldn't higher prices without more taxes do the same thing? What is it about the magic of a tax that makes the higher price of gasoline more significant than a higher price without the tax? Heck, a couple of dollars a gallon per gas ago, I seem to recall people extolling the powers of a 50 cent tax on freeing us from oil "addiction."
Sigh. I won't say that you can't drown in a pool of Friedman's wisdom. But you would have to be drunk and face down to do so.
