Liberal Talk Radio

On this week’s show, we discussed the silliness of the government-fueled Ethanol boom. Here’s another example of the wackiness that ensues when government policy is aimed at short-term expediencey as opposed to true long-term goals.

Virginia allows hybrids and other low emission vehicles to use carpool lanes. This causes the carpool lanes to get crowded and traffic increases. So the VA government makes a bad situation worse by delcaring that all hybrids bought after June 30 will no longer be allowed in the lanes!

So now basically what you’ve done is made pre-June 30 hybrids a special commidity, whose value will increase over time, creating yet another market perversion. In 5 or 10 years you’ll have chop-shops in Virginia whose sole specialty will be taking a brand-new Toyota Corolla and encasing it in the shell of a dead 10-year-old Prius just so the car’s owner can drive in the HOV lane.

Which gets back to the point we made on the show, which is that the government does not, and should not, want more hybrids on the road, per se. That’s not the real goal. The real goal is to consume less gasoline. So let’s tax gasoline. Let’s phase in a $1/gallon tax, gradually over a few years so people can adjust to it, and let the market re-adjust accordingly.

(Via Autoblog Green )