How About AGas Tax Hike To Force People To Drive Smaller Cars? And What Can Be Done To Save America?

According to GM's (I mean government motors) CEO a gas tax hike would be a good thing because it would nudge consumers into buying smaller cars like the wonderful Chevy Volt:

General Motors Co. CEO Dan Akerson wants the federal gas tax boosted as much as $1 a gallon to nudge consumers toward more fuel-efficient cars, and he's confident the government will soon shed its remaining 26 percent stake in the once-bankrupt automaker.

'I actually think the government will be out this year — within the next 12 months, hopefully within the next six months,' Akerson said in a two-hour interview with The Detroit News last week.

He is grateful for the government's rescue of GM — 'I have nothing but good things to say about them' — but Akerson said the time for that relationship to end is coming because it's wearing on GM.

'It's kind of like your in-laws: It was a nice long weekend. We didn't say a week,' Akerson said with a laugh.

And while he is eager to say goodbye to the government as a part owner of GM, Akerson would like to see it step up to the challenge of setting a higher gas tax, as part of a comprehensive energy policy.

A government-imposed tax hike, Akerson believes, will prompt more people to buy small cars and do more good for the environment than forcing automakers to comply with higher gas-mileage standards.

I for one would be willing to pay gas tax to solve a non existent crises. As you know the American government bailed out GM and fired their old CEO, I still remember the headlines that stated a President Fired a CEO of a private company that I thought I would never hear in America-- and replaced him with one more to President's Obama's liking. This might not be surprising, but the main point of the matter is that it shows how big business colludes with government to squash competition and uses the government to create regulations that benefits the business. It is similar to the financial sector that received a bailout by the government. The people in government that bailed out the banks were once CEO's of some of these very banks and are now in the position to regulate them. Is it surprising that they would use the government regulations to benefit their former business? This is the same situation that arose when the government first started regulating businesses--this started under Theodore Roosevelt-- like the railroads: those in charge of regulating the railroads once worked in the industry and when they worked for the government they used government regulations to give the big businesses an unfair advantage over their smaller competitors by creating regulations that smaller businesses could not comply with while at the same time staying in business. Today we have GE, GOOGLE, GM, and a host of other big business that collude with the government. Looking into this subject in more depth will make one look differently at big business and realize that America is not a capitalist system. A lot of the complaints against capitalism and big business by its opponents fail to see that it is this relationship between big business and government that is the real cause of the evils that they attribute to former.

Switching the subject to unfunded liabilities, Unfunded liabilities total about 107 trillion dollars according to this news article, I have heard between 60 to close to 200 trillion dollars. All the promises made by the government to take care of us can simply not be kept:

The latest Social Security Trustees Report tells us that the program will be insolvent by the year 2037. The combined unfunded liability of Social Security and Medicare has reached nearly $107 trillion in today's dollars. That is about seven times the size of the U.S. economy and 10 times the size of the national debt.

The question is will Americans react like the Greeks when the government teat runs dry or will they be able to endure hardship? According to recent developments in the debate to reform medicare, the answer is no. This is not any real news, but the author does pose an interesting question about what can be done to save America:

People ask what can be done to save our nation from decline. To ask that represents a misunderstanding of history and possibly a bit of arrogance. After all, how different are Americans from the Romans, Spaniards, French and English? These were once mighty nations standing at the top of civilization. At the height of these nations' prosperity, no one would have predicted that they'd become third-rate nations, especially England. If during Queen Victoria's Jubilee in 1887 had a person suggested that England would become a third-rate nation and later challenged on the high seas by a sixth-rate nation (Argentina), he would have been declared insane. One chief causal factor for the decline of these former great nations is what has been described as 'bread and circuses,' where government spends money for the shallow and immediate wants of the population, and civic virtue all but disappears. For the past half-century, our nation has been doing precisely what brought down other great nations. We may have now reached the point of no return. If so, do we deserve it?

A record number of Americans are dependent on the government for food stamps or "bread" and more Americans are concerned with "American Idol" and pop culture or "Circuses" than the important issues of the day. Reading history and comparing it to current events makes it hard to be optimistic about America's future. America is at a crossroads. Americans need to wake up and a cultural revolution needs to occur in order for our Country to be saved.