And, apparently hasn’t heard of people who believe in incentives. I’ve read this a couple of times and maybe I am still missing something. Is he saying what it sounds like he is saying?

In discussing a Financial Times column proposing an increase in the gas tax, he writes.

Let me draw an amusing analogy. Imagine you wanted to tax cigarettes higher, but were worried how smokers would react. You assume all of them smoke a pack a day, which amounts to 365 packs per year. So if you raise the tax on that by $2 a pack, and give them a rebate for $730, would that make them smoke less?

This idea seems a little bit out there, for smokers or drivers. I guess the idea that the government would be paying its citizens to not do something just seems a little too hard to swallow.

. . . Any cost savings incurred from not driving after the tax would also have been a cost savings that they would have incurred before. Now that savings is greater, but they didn’t care about it then, why would they care about it now? I just think people care more about convenience. [emphasis mine]

Now, just to be clear. What I find shocking here is not that Indiviglio doesn’t believe that people will reduce their consumption of gasoline in response to a modest increase in the relative price of gasoline.  Hey, estimates of the elasticity of gasoline vary.

Nor, is it that he seems to believe proponents of gas taxes are fools. Hey, everyone is entitled to an opinion.

However, I’ve read his post a couple of times and it really sounds like he’s shocked that anyone would believe in the basic idea that relative prices change behavior.

Has read anything that his editor has ever written?