DUH!

Very well said Sandy.

Ha Ha Ha!

"The drop in driving was small -- the average American drove 13,657 miles per year in 2005, down from 13,711 miles in 2004."

Wow, a 0.4% drop in driving mileage in response to an ~100% increase (I'm making that particular number up, of course, although it's the correct order-of-magnitude) in price! What an overwhelming correlation!

"The share of U.S. household budgets going to gasoline and oil has been relatively stable for decades, at 3.8 percent in 2006, compared with 3.4 to 3.6 percent in the 1960s."

The last year showed that large gas price fluctuations just don't matter significantly to the economic health of either the average individual family of the nation as a whole (although it did allow a small number of silly innumerates to pretend to have an economic justification for their purchase of a hybrid car).

Double the price of gas with taxes and you'll get meaningful reductions, as the fall with trivial price increases demonstrates.

Not a math major, were you? The gas price pretty much did double in the past couple of years. And there was no fall, as the article makes clear. So to think that one doubling leads to zero effect, but another doubling would lead to "meaningful reductions" is pretty silly. You're on much safer ground in arguing for your old position that the price of gas doesn't matter to the economy so we might as well tax the hell out of drivers.

Double the price of gas with taxes . . .

Double my meaningful TAX CREDITS for not driving as much first, then we'll talk about whether Washington D.C. needs more of my money, thanks.

Consumption taxes reward you for not consuming. You'll get to keep your income.

If we could teach the Government the same lesson about SPENDING, the net result would be the same. So, rather than sending them more money [for whatever altruistic end you may suggest justifies the your means here] let's work on that project first, shall we? How do we reward the Government for NOT consuming tax dollars?

Vote Libertarian. The numbers that party gets reflect the true voter concern over spending.

Run a candidate on a platform of higher gas taxes and see how you do. You'll be fighting the Libertarians for that 0.05% of the electorate.

OJ: You said TAX. Most voters [the non-libertarians apparently] have figured out that, by the time Sam's confiscated the money, quibbling over how it's squandered is rearranging the deck chairs.

And they don't care. Taxes and spending are too low to matter much to most.

No kidding? So let's raise both since nobody cares.

When haven't we?

Right....just because we can.....

High gas prices won't change behavior - people believed, correctly, that they could come back down; what will change behaviour is a guarentee that they'll stay high.

Taxes.