[Letters] Scrapping gasoline tax: no solution

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[Letters] Scrapping gasoline tax: no solution

Published: 06 Mar. 2011, 20:30

I couldn’t disagree more with your March 4 column “The gasoline tax should be abolished.” Korea’s gasoline tax is something envied by greens in the U.S., where even a $1 tax per gallon of gasoline (frequently advocated by The New York Times’ Thomas Friedman, among others), is politically impossible.

Gasoline taxes lead consumers to economize on their consumption of what is, after all, a finite and CO2-producing resource. Driving, despite what Americans - and now Koreans - seem to believe, is not a right but a convenience one must pay for.

Korea has embarked, late in the petroleum age, on a dangerous imitation of the United States’ profligate energy use. To cut the one strong environmental measure Korea has in place, in terms of car policy, would be folly.

Andrew Bruske, Yongin, Gyeonggi