The Libertarians

Hi, I’m Megan McArdle and I’m a contradict-oholic

She just can’t help contradicting herself (see here and here). First, while dissing Hillary for pandering to the electorate by proposing to suspend the gas tax, McArdle claims that this election, Americans are most concerned about “the troubled housing market, and the short supply of oil.”

Ok, fine. But then, in an over-written, jargon-filled post attempting to explain why suspending the gas tax is bad policy, McArdle writes:

Oil companies can discover more oil, but they are hard put to increase refinery capacity, because no one wants any refineries near anyone; virtually all of our refineries are decades old, with improvements coming from throughput enhancement rather than new built capacity. The limiting factor on gasoline right now is refinery capacity, not oil supplies.

According to McArdle, suspending the gas tax would allow companies to increase the supply of oil, which is now a bad thing because the real problem is a lack of refineries. Except, I thought Americans wanted more oil?

Anyway, in the next few lines she reveals (finally) her real reasons for not wanting to suspend the gas tax: oil companies “are already making really quite a lot of money. We don’t need to give them even more.”

Ummmm…why not? Clearly, I’m not smart enough to understand, but fortunately Megan is there to decide which industries make too much money -BTW, is she applying for a job at the European Commission’s competition regulatory board?

And then, she adds that the gas tax, by raising the price of filling up your car “encourages people to invest in more fuel efficient cars, which I think iis also good.”

Wonderful, I’m glad McArdle thinks smaller cars are better, but that is just her preference not a logical reason for keeping or eliminating the gas tax.