Leave the Economy to the Idiots

April 30, 2008 in Economics, News, Politics, rants, thoughts
Tags: clinton, economists, federal reserve, gas prices, Hillary Clinton, John McCain, McCain, obama, oil, politicians, presidential candidates, public policy

I have my fair share of critical remarks for economists in general. I’ve mentioned before that my econ professor a few years ago gave me a B on a paper where I theorized that constantly increasing energy prices would leader to inflation that could not be controlled by the Federal Reserve. He, like many economists, is misguided. That’s part of the reason I disliked my economics degree program. It was mostly a bunch of bologna.

However, there is one other segment of the public policy industry that is even more… well, they are just idiots when it comes to economics. This group is known as politicians, particularly presidential candidates. In an article today, Reuters reported that McCain and Clinton both support a “gasoline tax holiday“. The idea would be to suspend the federal tax on gasoline over the summer.

Folks, it doesn’t get much more idiotic than this! This would drive the demand of the gasoline up, while nothing would happen to the supply. The net result is a continued rise in gas prices, putting more money into the pockets of Exxon and friends (to give them even greater profits). Then gas prices would shoot up almost 20 cents instantly after Summer.

Obama’s points should have just shot up at least 10-20% since he didn’t support this moronic policy!