"You are trying to kidnap what I have rightfully stolen" --Vizzini, The Princess Bride
(Necessary disclaimer for those incapable of abstract thought: Not all left are loonies. Not all loonies are left. Not all loonies OR left subscribe to the concept I am blasting here. And there are a few righties who do. But because the title bar doesn't allow me 5,000 words to qualify everything I put in my title, I've condensed it. I also used the term "loony left" to distinguish them from the regular left, who are not quite this insane. I must go now. My head hurts).
At least one member of the loony left (see disclaimer) has proposed a windfall profits tax on big oil. The idea is that somehow this will balance the scales, and will keep big oil from selling gasoline at high prices.
As absurd as this idea is, it's basically a back door way to get what some on the left (see disclaimer) have long wanted: massive taxation to drive the cost of gasoline up to force us to alternative energy sources. The problem with this tax structure is it is regressive, the very opposite of what we should want for America. The wealthy, who can afford to outfit their homes with solar panels, windmills, and all sorts of alternative energy gadgets, will not be hurt by this. The poor will. And it will hurt every sector of the economy.
One need look no further than the New York Yankees to see why. Some years back, baseball, in an attempt to force economic parity, instituted a luxury tax for teams exceeding the salary cap. This did not phase the Yankees in the least. Their salaries actually went UP, and it hurt small market teams who could no longer afford big ticket players because they couldn't afford the burdensome salary cap (reason #526 in my "Big Book of Why Bud Selig Sucks", in stores near you.) Basically the "tax" was regressive, and the poorest were hardest hit.
Tax is, in all instances, passed on to the end user. Rent a home? You're paying the landlord's property taxes. This is why rents get so high. Buy a car? Don't even get me started on the laundry list of taxes you're paying, beginning with the tax you pay simply for the privilege of driving! Buy groceries? You're paying for the taxes from the field to the table, including the unemployment taxes and workman's comp of every individual that brought it there. Because the simple truth is, businesses must turn a profit, even if they are good at disguising it. And they are in it to make money for themselves as well.
A windfall profits tax would drive gas prices up and everything along with it. Meaning real wages are likely to stagnate or even go DOWN in terms of real earnings. Which, again, doesn't hurt Joe CEO but it does hurt Joe bluecollar.
It's nice to envision this fancy little world where everyone bicycles everywhere they go. But it just isn't practical in the US. We are too big a nation, with too many rural pockets for that ever to be practical. But the loons who present these types of scenarios are oblivious to that; in their perfect world only the wealthy should be afforded the luxury of space; the rest of us should be crammed into crowded tenements, where crime, violence, and substance abuse run rampant. That's the type of world that would be necessarily created by taxing gas up over 5 dollars a gallon (which WAS, I might add, seriously presented by several members of the Sierra Club).