politics are yukky.

but this post is about common sense. and maybe a little (lot of) math (arithmetic).

so certain people in washington (or on the campaign trail, as it may be) are calling for the gas tax holiday-thing. are you kidding me? but, as stupid as it is, i've been biting my tongue (or my blog-tongue, at least) about this, since it's just politics as usual.

but then a quote from hillary tipped my over the edge.

“I believe it would be important to get every member of Congress on record,” Clinton told supporters at a rally in southern Indiana. “Do they stand with the hard-pressed Americans who are trying to pay their gas bills at the gas station or do they once again stand with the oil companies?

“I want to know where people stand and I want them to tell us, are they with us or against us when it comes to taking on the oil companies?” she added.

taking on the oil companies? i know hillary wants to levy/tax/charge/whatever the oil companies to recuperate the lost revenue from suspending the gas tax, but, um... couldn't they just, in turn, raise the price of oil and recuperate their losses, leaving us pretty much where we are right now? (this, of course, is assuming that the cents-per-gallon taxes quoted are absolute taxes, and not variable based on the current price)

and lets assume this works. suspension of the gas tax results of gas that's 18.4 cents cheaper than it would otherwise have been. what does this do?

lower prices at the pump could result in more road trips. which is exactly what we need if we're actually in a gas crisis (as some corporations would have us believe). i keep seeing comments that this does nothing for "long-run conservation." what does it do for conservation at all?

it might stimulate the economy, though.

so... how much does this actually matter? i mean, i know that prices nearly 20 cents per gallon lower would certainly make *me* feel better about gas prices. but really, how much difference does it actually make?

i have a 14.4 gallon tank in my car. by my fueling habits, my average fill-up is usually somewhere between 12 and 13 gallons. it's usually on the lower end of that range, but let's say i've been driving everybody to lunch or something.

13 gallons/fill-up * 18.4 cents/gallon = 239.2 cents/fill-up = $2.392/fill-up.

even if i fill up once a week (i don't), this amounts to less than $5 per paycheck.

...

what a band-aid.

***

so there were a bunch of assumptions here.

1) that the tax holiday will even be effective (that the price of gas won't rise to compensate for the tax)
2) 13 gallons per fill-up, 30 miles per gallon (let's face it: in this country, this is pretty efficient. it shouldn't be, but it is)

for comparison, at 75 mph (applicable to road trips):

for a conservative estimate on me, using 30mpg
(75 miles/hour) / (30 miles/gallon) * (18.4 cents/gallon) = 46 cents/hour

for a conservative estimate on the toyota landcruiser (epa estimated 13/18 mpg city/hwy), using 15 mpg:
(75 miles/hour) / (15 miles/gallon) * (18.4 cents/gallon) = 92 cents/hour

it looks like, in the worst case, you're spending about $1 on the gas tax for every hour you drive.

*note: in case you're thinking about accusing me of using a toyota to skew the fuel-efficiency numbers, a chevy suburban is epa estimated at 14/19 mpg city/hwy. i really tried to get the lowest numbers i could... so i just rounded down to 15 hwy.