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President Obama Calls for End To Oil and Gas Subsidies

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What about subsidizing those companies producing residential wind and solar power generation equipment? And obviously some kind of caveat that the money can only be used for the production of these products, and not other products these companies may also make. I'm not "for" subsidies, but if they are going to be there regardless, put them where they do the most good.
 
What about subsidizing those companies producing residential wind and solar power generation equipment? And obviously some kind of caveat that the money can only be used for the production of these products, and not other products these companies may also make. I'm not "for" subsidies, but if they are going to be there regardless, put them where they do the most good.

The problem with them is that the subsidies would have to be enormous (difficult in this environment) to ever get the prices of the energy from these sources to be cheaper than fossil fuels (coal and oil). Another option is to raise gas prices tremendously, like they have them in Europe, and then offset the revenue gains with a reduction in the payroll tax so that a regular wage earner isn't negatively impacted by the new high fuel costs. As described in the article below, it has the dual benefit of discouraging things we'd like to minimize (burning fossil fuels), encourages people to minimize oil usage, and encourage or rewards more people for their work.

Hendrik Hertzberg: Obamas Gas Gaffe? : The New Yorker
 
Putting in a hard floor on the pump price of gasoline, @Arnold Panz, just creates a natural pricing point for all gas stations. They will simply collect greater margins rather than cut their nominal price and send a bigger check to Washington.

Industry experts discuss future of automotive industry, electric cars

Tarpenning [co-founder of Tesla Motors] recognized Japan’s success with setting a price floor on gasoline after the oil scare of the 1970s. The price floor forced Japanese automakers such as Toyota and Honda to engineer more efficient cars to meet consumer demand.

Larry
 
Japan’s success with setting a price floor on gasoline after the oil scare of the 1970s. The price floor forced Japanese automakers such as Toyota and Honda to engineer more efficient cars to meet consumer demand.
Fair enough--sustained high prices will help reshape consumers' vehicle choices. But a price floor won't help tax receipts, but instead just boost oil refiners' profits.
 
That's not what's going to happen. Any supply restriction (geopolitical short term, medium term peak oil + booming demand in asia) and the prices will spike sharply. This will result in a recession causing the prices to drop. Lather, rinse, repeat.

I agree. I meant more in terms of collecting federal gas tax. It's about 17 cents/gallon or so no, next year it should he 20 then 25 then 30....etc This would effectively be a floor price and the tax revenue would at least hopefully outpace inflation or that could be on top of inflation actually.
 
Putting in a hard floor on the pump price of gasoline, @Arnold Panz, just creates a natural pricing point for all gas stations. They will simply collect greater margins rather than cut their nominal price and send a bigger check to Washington.

I think the proposal is based on the price of a barrel of crude oil, so the tax would kick in at a certain amount based on the price of crude. Of course, any individual gas station owner can charge more (as they do now in high rent locations), but I don't see how an owner could manipulate this tax if it's implemented at such an early stage of the process.