September 02, 2005

Georgia Suspends State Gas Tax

Woo-Hoo!

Good news! Georgia Gov. Sonny Perdue today announced that, effective at midnight tonight and running until the end of September, no state gasoline taxes will be collected. Perdue expects stations to drop their prices up to 15 cents per gallon within hours. Those stations that don't pass on the savings to consumers will be singled out for investigations by the Department of Revenue and Office of Consumer Affairs.

I suppose it's not necessary to mention that Gov. Perdue is running for re-election next year and he timed his announcement to run live on Georgia TV news broadcasts. It's also probably not necessary to mention that the suspension in tax collection is more a political play than an economic benefit.

Hey, but it's better than nothing.

Posted by: Mike Pechar at 06:31 PM | Comments (8) | Add Comment
Post contains 136 words, total size 1 kb.

1 Dumb move. Price controls, suspending taxs etc do nothing but interfere with the natural supply/demand balance. High prices cause less demand which cause higher supply and a lowering of cost. Let the system work. Tinkering always produces the opposite of the desired result.

Posted by: traderrob at September 02, 2005 06:51 PM (3al54)

2 Yes, but people like tinkering, even if it only serves to make things worse. This is why Congress is allowed to exist.

Posted by: Improbulus Maximus at September 02, 2005 07:20 PM (0yYS2)

3 Isn't taxing it in the first place "tinkering with the market"?

Posted by: abberblab at September 02, 2005 08:37 PM (kJcST)

4 Over a period of time the base tax becomes integrated into the commodity value structure. Only raising/lowering that tax would have an "artificial" effect and disrupt the supply/demand equilibrium.

Posted by: traderrob at September 02, 2005 09:22 PM (3al54)

5 How to bug the envirmentalist wackos repeal all gas tax so there wont to all that moola for their dumb programs what a bunch of wussies

Posted by: sandpiper at September 02, 2005 10:11 PM (QtdTZ)

6 At least he's not doing like in Hawaii, where they're putting wholesale price caps in place. Yeah, *that'll* keep the gas stations supplied! Columnist Thomas Sowell once made a good point that price is not the same thing as cost. Price is what pays for cost. Most people don't understand that, and most politicians count on most people not understanding that.

Posted by: The Sanity Inspector at September 02, 2005 10:54 PM (Q5C2f)

7 Yep, price is not the same as cost, and money has no value, but is simply representative of value. It's all part of the pesky free market supply and demand thing, but the average liberal idiot has no knowlege of such things, as they all studied Marxist Economics in college.

Posted by: Improbulus Maximus at September 03, 2005 12:01 PM (0yYS2)

8 Yeah, taxes should follow their natural course without interference from legislators. With the tax in place four days ago, there was no gas in this city (Augusta,GA). Fortunately, it disappeared so quickly there was't much time for price gouging. The cause wasn't exactly an economic law, neither was the absence of gasoline solved by one. They fixed the pipeline. Gasoline is now back and (somehow) it's actually twenty cents cheaper than it was this morning. But since Sonny Perdue had to go and get himself involved in the natural order of things here, I'll keep you all posted on the inevitable hoarding, scarcity, and price increases in the next few days.

Posted by: abberblab at September 03, 2005 09:12 PM (kJcST)

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