I happened to notice a tweet passing through my feed referencing an article in the Burlington Free Press about gasoline prices remaining high in the Burlington area. Apparently gasoline in Vermont averages about $2.41 per gallon, higher in the Burlington area, while the national average is $2.05.

The liberal response to this is, of course, to propose new legislation. In this case the legislation would require wholesalers “to report each year the number of gallons sold to each dealer and the gallons provided to dealers controlled by the wholesalers. The wholesalers also would have to reveal the gallons sold from a bulk storage facility or depot directly to an end user.” While the article does not specify to what end the information would be gathered, there is a pretty good clue found later in the article.

[Christopher] Pearson said the need for the bill continues and was further documented in a Jan. 8 Burlington Free Press story reporting the profit margin in northwestern Vermont is twice the national average.

“That is astonishing. Tens of millions are being taking out of neighborhoods,” Pearson said.

So one can assume that ultimately the goal would be the imposition of price controls on those gas stations that the government deems as having “too high” a profit margin, whatever that means. This puts me in mind of news from Venezuela over the last couple of years where the government has sent the national guard into some stores with orders to forcibly lower prices that they deemed “too high,” sometimes forcing reductions in prices on the order of 70%. I don’t see Vermont going to that extreme but the principle is the same, that the government can determine how much profit a business or individual can make or what prices they can charge. If they can do that with gasoline stations, what about bakeries, ticketing outlets, shoe stores, carpenters, or hotels?

Now for the “liberal logic.”

The sponsor of the legislation noted above is Representative Christopher Pearson, a Progressive from Burlington. In addition to this legislation, Pearson also supports a state-wide carbon tax. The version of this proposal I have seen most talked about would be phased in over 10 years and would initially take $35 million per year from individuals and ultimately be on the order of $300 million per year.

As part of this proposal, Pearson would want to include a mechanism that would return some of this money, but not all, to “working families.” I find this to be a typical tactic of the statists: pass laws that make something more expensive and then create a program to help those that can no longer afford it to show how compassionate the government is.

This is largely the case with food in this country. Government policies since the Great Depression tend to keep food prices high, in Vermont think the Dairy Compact designed to keep milk prices high for farmers at the expense of consumers, and then create programs such as food stamps to help buy the now more expensive food.

In the end I doubt that Pearson is actually concerned that people in Burlington are paying higher prices for gasoline since he is willing to impose an additional tax on it to get them to use less, which is what the higher price would do on its own. Rather he is concerned with who is seeing the profits from such prices. I suspect his true feelings are closer to this altered form of his quote above.

“That is astonishing. Tens of millions are being taking out of neighborhoods by private enterprises when it could be taken by the government.”