Thomas L. Friedman’s column today is quite accurate. Pleasantly so. Unfortunately, the requisite Cliche/Mixed Metaphor is actually two cliches, which earned their own paragraph:
Have a nice day. It’s morning again — in Saudi Arabia.
But the rest is good. The alignment of bad writing with a trenchant analysis of the need for a national gas tax is almost as disturbing as the fact that I filled up my mother’s SUV for about $35 even after coasting beyond E.
Why is it so unsettling that this man would be right? Partly, it’s because his column kind of undermines his general thesis, expounded over the years: that private enterprise and free trade are good, so good that the function of the US government should be to do whatever necessary, even make war on and wreck the entire world, to keep us competitive with–meaning richer than and militarily unchallenged by–Asia. Today, he writes:
It makes no sense for Congress to pump $13.4 billion into bailing out Detroit — and demand that the auto companies use this cash to make more fuel-efficient cars — and then do nothing to shape consumer behavior with a gas tax so more Americans will want to buy those cars. As long as gas is cheap, people will go out and buy used S.U.V.’s and Hummers.
There has to be a system that permanently changes consumer demand, which would permanently change what Detroit makes, which would attract more investment in battery technology to make electric cars, which would hugely help the expansion of the wind and solar industries — where the biggest drawback is the lack of batteries to store electrons when the wind isn’t blowing or the sun isn’t shining. A higher gas tax would drive all these systemic benefits.
Permanent change of consumer demand? Whoa now, that’s some serious statism you’re calling for. It almost sounds like the thing we will never, ever have: industrial policy. While Friedman isn’t someone who shrieks “socialism!” at every proposal that doesn’t showcase a tax cut for the haves, it’s still surprising given how he champions unfettered globalization. This would be the very opposite of Letting the Market Decide.
He deserves credit for calling for a national gas tax many times over the years. But this column’s purpose is to challenge what he sees as the political consensus wherein higher taxes are completely unacceptable–a bipartisan credo reinforced by the axiom that you don’t raise taxes during recessions. Why are things this way? Because the Thomas L. Friedmans of the world have been clamoring for years for anti-statist and Clintonian tax structures. As “liberals,” they aren’t inclined to calling people too poor to pay any income tax at all “lucky duckies,” nor do they advocate ridiculous things like abolishing the capital gains tax (particularly in a year like 2008, when nobody has any capital gains). That’s a liberal in the traditional media: someone who peppers his conservative corporatism with horrified protest against the truly hideous right-wing ideas, drawing the line at himself or herself and lecturing the Democrats to inch no further.
Friedman recognized that war(s) in the Middle East would generate millions of people who hate the US and who live, unemployed and uneducated, in corrupt petrogarchies with high birth rates. But, weighing that against the possibility of retracted American wealth and influence, he “reluctantly” supported the neocon wet dreams of the ’00s.
Now, sunnily as ever, he repeats his call for a gas tax, for all the right reasons. And phasing it in at $.10/month over a year is pretty smart, too. But if it looks like even a President Obama, with 82% approval 3 weeks before taking office, might lack the political capital to overcome the resistance, it’s partly because pro-corporate, pro-empire “liberals” with prominent soapboxes have actively tugged the already-drifting discourse rightward for years.
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Also, check this delicious auto-petard-hoisting of Friedman out. Totes hilaire.
Suck the Rainbow 