Finally, an Economist Supports Hillary's Gas Tax Holiday

Following up on Saturday's post on the gas tax holiday proposed by Senators Clinton and McCain:  after Clinton on Sunday punted when ABC's George Stephanopoulos asked her “Can you name one economist — a credible economist — who supports the suspension?” (video here), the Freakonomics blog reports today on the various unsuccessful efforts to locate an economist to defend the idea:

This makes me proud to be an economist. In any election silly season, you can usually find someone willing to support just about any kind of nonsense. ...  But it appears that the economics profession just isn’t that silly.

Bryan Caplan (George Mason) at EconLog offers to "Shill for Hillary":

Hillary's having trouble finding an economist to back her suspension of the gas tax. But she need look no further - I'll rise to the challenge. Here's my economic case for the tax cut:

1. The American people want to "do something," and Hillary's tax cut will at least do little harm ... [and has] a good chance of politically crowding out price controls and worse.
2. If (due to highly inelastic short-run supply) 100% of the tax cut goes to producers, that's not a bad thing. It helps to balance out the long-run disincentive effects of populist measures. ...
3. The short-run elasticity of supply in probably near-zero for the world market, but Hillary's tax cut affects only the U.S. So as I argued previously, American consumers will at least get a moderate piece of the tax cut: If one part of the world cuts taxes and the rest doesn't, then gas flows into the lower-tax area, and consumers in that area benefit. ...

With arguments like these, I doubt that I'll be getting any phone calls from Hillary's team. Her proposal is defensible; it's just not defensible using arguments that the American people wants to hear.

(Hat Tip: Chronicle of Higher Education.)