For raising the gas tax to $2 per gallon Diana Snelling ChE 384 12/6/07

Price of Gasoline as % of GDP Group 1: Poor countries who export oil: <1.5% Group 2: Wealthy countries: 4 - 8% Group 3: Poor countries who import oil: >10% US is placed in “no man’s land” at 2.5%

Conclusions Price of gasoline is not at present set by the free market The government needs to tax gasoline to account for the externalities of this energy Smaller government would be possible without our “addiction to foreign oil”. New cleaner transportation technologies suffer competing with an artificially low gas price set by the our government