Bad idea

So I was driving to work the other day when Lo called me up, irritated because of the stupid gas tax holiday proposal that McCain and Clinton are pushing. The following is a rough transcript from my often unreliable memory.

L: Hey, did you hear about this stupid gas tax thing?

Me: Yeah.

L: It is going to save me like 30 cents a day. Big deal!

Me: Yeah.

L: So stupid!

Me: Yeah.

When my lovely wife and a handful of this nation’s preeminent economist agree that an idea is bad, it is just that. Here are a handful of reviews:

Harvard professor N. Gregory Mankiw: "What you learn in Economics 101 is that if producers can't produce much more, when you cut the tax on that good the tax is kept . . . by the suppliers and is not passed on to consumers.”

Leonard Burman, director of the Tax Policy Center of the Urban Institute and the Brookings Institution: "Every summer, the refiners are running full out. If the price fell, people would want to drive more and there would be shortages. It's a basic economic principle that if the supply is fixed, the price is going to be determined by demand."

Lo: “Stupid.”

See, the experts agree - not a good idea. The Post gets into the details here.