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Boy, you can always tell when a commentator is a New Yorker, Bostonian, etc. through and through. They persistently show their tin ears (the otherwise most estimable Reihan Salam) by pitching for increased gas taxes as a major budget solution. Even those who are not economically illiterate make this mistake, painting themselves irreversibly as Northeastern big city people who don’t have to make a living in the real world (Greg Mankiw and his full-throated cries for “Pigou Taxes”, that is, getting the riff-raff in flyoverland to fund the budget by not driving cars the way people do not in Boston).
The US economy with its renaissance in manufacturing and other unskilled labor tasks is recovering because energy costs are finally low enough to make up some difference versus third world labor costs. Families and communities finally prosper because they can be transported reasonably, people in miserably cold parts of the country can heat their houses.
Hey, we have subways and lots of cash for Uber, let’s raise energy taxes and we can even say that we are not troglodytes regarding Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming at the next Yale Club meeting!
No wonder the Trumpians embraced a juvenile cave man as opposed to someone perceived as coming from The Better Class, e.g., Jeb, etc.