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Increasing Gas Taxes will not stop consumption. People will just pay it. Gasoline for many is a fixed cost. Driving gas prices through the roof without a Market adjustment will drive the economy into the toilet without the market being able to adjust. If gas prices rise, (as they are now) the profit generated from that allows for greater supply and more R&D into supplying more. Additionally other industries are given greater means to provide more technology to solve the problem. Taxes take the market's ability to adjust away. It is a simplistic short sided approach to a complex problem. The Market is the only vehicle to solve complex problems.
The solution is now and has always been R &D into better technology to solve the problem. Whether that problem be greater supply to alleviate price or greater MPG to address demand. GM right now has created Hybrid Tahoes and Suburbans to address the greatest setback with these models. Americans will not go back to driving subcompacts. At least those of us with families. So the politicians and the "greenies" can try to pass all the laws they want. And the rest of the Americans will be here to kick them out of office.
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