is that all it does is depress our economy while doing little to solve the problem. There are millions of people who live in areas where no mass transit is available nor would it ever be even remotely economically viable. Raising gas taxes would do little to reduce gas consumption for people like that.

I had to laugh when I read this paragraph: The most cost-effective policy for trying to reduce the oil revenues received by Saudi Arabia would be some sort of tax that encourages energy conservation. A very high gasoline tax (more than one dollar per gallon), perhaps along with taxes on other oil-based fuels, such as jet fuel, would serve that purpose. Although a gasoline tax would make our economy less efficient and reduce our GDP, it would succeed in transferring some revenue from the owners of oil to our government.

The reason I laughed is the author's naive faith in government to do the right thing. It highlights an insideous problem - once the government gets used to those gas taxes, they'd have no incentive to really reduce gas consumption. Look at the tobacco taxes - if government really wanted people to quit smoking, they could outlaw tobacco. But if they did that, billions of tobacco tax revenues would dry up. Instead, they keep raising the taxes (I saw cigarettes selling in New York City last year for well over $6 a pack) and spending the money as part of general revenues. If millions of smokers suddenly quit, you'd hear politicians all over the country screaming. The fact is that governments make far more per pack of cigarettes than the tobacco companies (they get about 40 cents per pack).

I did agree with this paragraph: In my view, the worst policy option of all is to subsidize the use of alternative forms of energy. If other forms of energy are not economical on their own, then taxpayer subsidies are only harmful. The use of subsidized alternative energy does more damage to our own economy than to Saudi Arabia's.

As oil prices rise on their own, alternatives become more economically viable on their own. O disagree with him that high taxes are a good thing.

Artificially raising the price of oil through high taxes would have many negative consequences to the economy, many of them unintended. Consider what is already happening to the airline industry - they're being squeezed by oil prices as high as they are. A single cross country airliner flight uses several thousand gallons of jet fuel. Raising the price further on oil products (he included jet fuel) would force airlines to increase prices, decreasing ticket sales. When airline ticket prices go up, people are more likely to drive instead of fly. The end result is be higher fatalities due to accidents. Airline travel is almost infinitely safer than auto travel. There hasn't been a single passenger fatality in a US airline accident in over 3 years*. In that same period, about 140,000 Americans have died in auto accidents and millions have been injured. Now, if the price of gas gets so high that people cancel their travel, then you'll wipe out countless jobs in the recreation, tourism, and hotel industries.

In the end, the price of energy is a factor in the price of virtually everything we buy, both in production and in transportation.

*There were two pilots killed in a regional jet airliner crashed in this incident back in 2004. They were the only ones on board at the time. Two more pilots were killed in this 2003 commuter turboprop crash.