Not So Fast on Natural Gas Exports
Posted at 10:15 a.m. on Dec. 11, 2012
Matthew Yglesias explains why proponents of exporting America’s newfound natural gas supply might need to crunch the numbers before rushing to implement such a proposal.
“Blocking gas exports would be, in effect, a tax on natural-gas production in order to subsidize users of natural gas. On the household level, we know that utility consumption has a strongly regressive bias… a tax on natural-gas production to subsidize consumption of natural gas and gas-fired electricity plans is a distributively progressive program.”
“We’d be bolstering the incomes of the poor and the middle class while promoting a more diverse economy via a de facto tax whose incidence would fall largely on land and thus have little incentive-side impact.”
