The Arbitrary ChuckJerry

There's a New York Times editorial today about increasing the gas tax. First of all, this editorial doesn't say it explicitly, but I'm under the impression that oil prices in the US are kept artificially low somehow. I can't think of a mechanism between Saudi Arabia and the US that would keep prices artificially low, so I'm wondering how that's possible. Someone help me out here.

Secondly, the article says that, "A bolstered gas tax would raise huge amounts of revenue, roughly $1 billion for every penny of additional tax." If that's true, that seems like a no brainer. Especially since we're at a time where the prices are temporarily higher than normal. If the tax is implemented while the general cost is coming down, then it won't hurt consumers much or even at all. In a different article I read, someone suggested raising the tax one or two cents for every ten cent decrease in average cost per gallon. This editorial is suggesting keeping the prices at their current artificially high rate, which would probably be a mistake, in my opinion.

This gas tax thing goes right to the top of the list of taxes that absolutely need to be raised. The other one on the top of the list is the social security tax. The social security tax needn't be increased, per se, only extended to apply to salaries higher than like $90,000, which I believe is the current limit, but don't quote me. These two taxes really seem like things that will pay for themselves if and when they are enacted.

I'm not in favor of simply increasing taxes across the board, and probably some of them should be lowered or even eliminated, the estate tax for example, but let's put some thought into these two ideas that goes beyond the "I won't raise taxes" political jargon.