The current worries over gas prices give us an interesting insight into our planned future.
It will come as no surprise that the highest gas prices in the nation are in California. It’s true that the state gas tax is high there, but it’s lower than in Pennsylvania, where gas is $1 cheaper. California has other fees and charges, but they’re not enough to explain why prices are so high.
One major factor behind California’s high prices is that local law and politics won’t allow the building of new refineries, so the gas has to be shipped in — and that isn’t a cheap thing to do. California also insists on using special blends for gasoline for both winter and summer, blends that are different from the rest of the country.
California’s not actually large enough for this strategy to be efficient — economically efficient, that is. So this factor pushes up prices once again. It’s even possible to have special blends for certain metropolitan areas and so on, worsening the problem once again.
It has long been said that as California goes, so goes the nation. California has been run by the more irritating form of liberals for many decades now, so perhaps we should take stock of where this gets us. If the gas market is any useful guide, which it is, progressivism makes us significantly poorer.
Not only are we taxed more but the prevention of competition lowers our living standards by raising our costs once again. Finally, the tax revenue doesn’t go toward investing in anything useful — it simply pays for more people in offices to plan yet more things that make us poorer once again.
Oh well.
