WE WOULD BE HAPPIER IF .......

“Cheap gas is unfair. Driving creates huge social costs in the form of traffic, health-damaging pollution and global warming that aren’t suffered solely by the person buying the gasoline... If the U.S. were to slowly jack up gas taxes until we’re in the $8 range, life would be better. We’d not only be safer and have reduced greenhouse-gas emissions, we’d probably be happier too... Sure, $8 gas is unfair to poor people, but so is all of capitalism.”

—Los Angeles Times columnist Joel Stein