Can someone explain in realistic, practical terms how raising gasoline taxes and further increasing the price of motor fuel will help my family and business survive the immediate future? While I would love to see every American family drive electric-powered vehicles and have solar and/or wind power plant(s) on their own property to keep the vehicle charged, the fact is that such alternatives are simply not currently affordable to the average family or small business. In fact, the current high gasoline prices make it even that much more difficult for families or businesses like mine to commit any resources toward such an alternative.

While the “we can’t drill our way out” crowd say’s increasing the price at the pump is the best solution to “curing my addiction”, unlike recreational drugs, gasoline is a necessity to the daily operation of both my family and my business. Intentionally increasing the cost will not lessen the need for the resource. I cannot simply decide tomorrow to pour water into my family cars' gas tanks instead of gasoline; the cars run on gasoline. I’m all for alternative energy, but you and I need something that can help our families today.  Raising taxes and further increasing the already overly-burdensome prices will do nothing to help in the short term and will probably devastate the possibility of being able to afford alternatives in the future. If there were viable, cost-comparative alternatives available today the situation would be different, but these people’s “financially punish the gasoline addicts until they quit using” “solution” will only break the back of every middle-class and low-income American family, as well as put a very high percentage of small businesses into bankruptcy. Until there is a viable, reliable, cost-comparative alternative to gasoline that I can use to fuel my vehicles without having to make a new five- or six-digit investment, there is no way the American family OR the American small business can afford such a ridiculous “solution”. If we can’t even afford the fuel, how are we expected to afford purchasing alternative-fueled substitutes that are currently available only in small quantities, are unrealizable, bear more than twice the cost of the vehicles my family currently drives, and have maintenance costs comparable to the total cost of our current vehicles?  I simply can't go out and spend or even borrow $40,000 for a new hybrid car that will only increase efficiency from the 28 mpg my '98 Avalon gets to the 45 mpg they promise, then have to come up with another $12,000 in two years to replace the fuel cell after it stops functioning.

Imagine the reality of such a hypothetical scenario. Obama has taken the Whitehouse, and such an energy plan has been implemented. Higher taxes and further-reduced supply have caused the average price of gasoline to increase to $8.00 per gallon. Since, like 287,000,000 other Americans, we don’t live in NYC, DC, or LA, the current availability of public transportation is not practical for our transportation needs (we just don't have an extra 2-4 hours a day to spend sitting on buses). With both of us working and our two children going to school, we are required to drive a combined 284 miles per week. With two family vehicles getting an average 28 mpg, we use an average of 10.12 gallons of gasoline per week, which would cost $81.14 each week or $4,219 per year. Obama’s solution is that if our “addiction” is punished this harshly it will motivate my family to replace our passenger vehicles with alternative-fuel vehicles, but now that the price of gasoline is so high, the resale value of our current vehicles will have plummeted. Furthermore, with the short supply of and increased demand for alternative-fuel vehicles, the price of those vehicles will have skyrocketed, while the cost savings will come nowhere close to covering the increased maintenance costs much less the initial investment.  With a budget already pressed beyond the breaking point and our investment in our current vehicles a complete loss, the money to purchase alternative replacements simply does not exist. It’s just not possible in any way, so our budget will naturally shift to focus only on the essential needs in order to continue being able to get ourselves to work. Being typical of most American families, this will cause retail numbers to plummet in double-digits each quarter. As retailers continue to lose money, their coffers will quickly dry up and retail stores will start closing their doors.  Shopping malls, as a result, will have more and more empty retail spaces, and will be forced to lower their rent, decreasing their revenues.  Once the property owners' revenues have fallen below their costs and the property owners’ coffers are depleted, the mall properties will become vacant, graffiti-covered eye sores on our land. Let your fingers walk through the yellow pages and look at what types of businesses are in your area.  Landscapers, for example, rely on fuel, and increased fuel costs will force them to raise their prices.  As families shift budgets to focus only on essential needs, they will no longer be able to afford to support such businesses, and the reduction of money spent by average Americans on products and services other than gasoline will cause other small and medium sized businesses to lose revenue, fall into bankruptcy and disappear, along with the jobs they provided. With nationwide revenues through the floor, businesses closing, and unemployment through the roof, tax revenues will plummet as well. Money simply won’t be there for social programs or “check-in-the-mail” relief programs, so deficits will increase and government programs will fail and disappear as their budgets are reduced. Within a very short period of time America would move from a slow economy to a full recession to a complete depression, and even the “almighty” government will no longer have the resources to help. The only possible endgame of this energy “plan” is a complete devastation of our economy, and a complete collapse of our society’s lifestyle. 

The only viable immediate answer is absolutely to increase the supply of the resource upon which our current infrastructure relies... oil.  The futures market will immediately respond based on the promise of increased supply, and the market price will drop. The only way to realistically accomplish that in the near future is to increase production. Then, once we’ve stabilized the market to a price point that leaves American families and businesses with surplus resources, we can use our surplus resources to develop and even reward alternatives to the point that they can be competitive with current products, and, over time, people will naturally switch to these alternatives.