Who the hell do you think you are? Who gave you a golden scepter and crowned you king?
Sorry. That is how I reacted last week when I saw a piece from a pundit. From his dias he issued a missive: We need to keep gas prices above $4. If the price falls below that we need to tax gas more heavily. To get us back to $4 or more.
When he and his pals calculate the tax money they nearly swoon at the sight of Nirvana. They assure us the politicians would put the tax money to the most wondrous uses. Right. Lots of precedent for that.
I rail against him because he is an elitist. He figures he and others know what is best for thee. They know how much you should pay to drive to work. The market does not know beans. THEY know better than any market place. Knowing this, they are prepared to slap a tax on your behavior. Or slip your tax money into the pocket of somebody else. (Like farmers and ethanol producers.) Because they know, they just KNOW, this will be better for you.
I rail against guys like this because they cannot foresee what problems their meddling will create. They only look as far as the nearest paradise. For example, they never looked beyond the paradise of ethanol to see their meddling would cause food prices to soar.
This falls under the Law of Unintended Consequences. These elitists like to break that law. You pay the consequences, and little do they care.
The elitists want to tell you how much you should pay for gasoline. They want to tell you what car you should drive. They have us bribing car makers to make certain models. They would like to punish with a tax if you if you buy an SUV. They would like to force people to take mass transit. Algore wants to punish you for - gasp - leaving a carbon print on the carpet.
The organizers of my local farmers market want to ban any food that is not grown organically. They do not welcome venders who use fertilizers.
Isn’t this a tad elitist? That is what I asked one of them. She assured me that she KNOWS what is healthy and unhealthy for people. She KNOWS that those non-organic farmers would sell food at lower prices and people would therefore buy it. And this would not be good for them. Yes, that is much more than a tad elitist.
The left wants to tell you what you may hear, by restricting talk radio. They want to bring back the sort of “fairness” regulations that smothered political discussion in the past. They KNOW that you - swaddled in innocence - should not be listening to certain programs.
The left wants to restrict various information from reaching classrooms. They re-write textbooks and syllabi to achieve this. Lately they have filled young minds with dire predictions for the earth. They KNOW we are running out of resources. They KNOW the earth is a hotplate. No discussions please.
They KNOW what you should and should not eat. They cry out for taxes on foods that fatten us up. They have managed to get some cities to ban certain foods.
When you look further left you find more force, more muscle. Under socialism and communism the elitists KNEW what you should listen to and watch. No private broadcasting, thank you. Our extreme leftists would love to restrict broadcasting in this way. They don’t have enough support. So we get watered down stuff - like rants against Fox News and Rush.
Socialists and Communists used force (still do) to make people behave in ways the elitists KNEW were best for them.
It is with glee I read that Raul Castro has decided that force does not work in growing food. He is allowing Cuba’s farmers to grow more food for profit. Just think. For over 50 years the Cuban commies just KNEW what worked best in the food market. The Chinese ended starvation only when they allowed their farmers to grow food for profit. That was decades ago. I guess the state-owned Cuban media did not carry that news to the elitists there very quickly. I just KNEW it would not.
From Tom ... as in Morgan.

For more columns and for Tom’s radio shows (and to write to Tom): tomasinmorgan.com.