Everyone benefits from good roads and lower gas prices. Look around you. Every item, every component of that item, and the raw materials that comprise those components were at some point transported—more than likely in a truck. We need to connect the dots between the price of gas and the price of eggs.
Transportation is the universal component of every good and service. When you increase the cost of transportation, you ultimately increase the price of everything. Raising the price of gas amounts to a universal, regressive, inflationary value added tax on every good and every service.
The gas tax doesn’t end at the pump. It reverberates throughout the economy. It impacts everyone. The added cost at the pump becomes increased prices across the entire economic spectrum. The unintended consequence of raising the price of gas is that everything becomes more expensive because production and distribution become more expensive. This matters little to the affluent, insouciant “Let them drive Teslas” crowd. But it does matter to those struggling to get by day-to-day, whether they drive a car or not.
The notion that the people who “use” the roads– i.e. drivers–should bear the brunt of paying for them is flawed. We all benefit from the efficient production and distribution of goods and services. We all suffer the consequences of high gas prices. We must find a more equitable and less pernicious way of funding infrastructure improvements than myopically and reflexively raising the price of gas.
William Espino, Carlsbad