Double Journey

I keep hearing ideas about a gas tax holiday. Every time I hear it, it makes me shake my head at the idiots we have to choose for our politicians. Simply put, this will never work.

First off, let’s talk about the size of the break. For those that don’t know. The federal gas tax is $0.18. With gas at $4.00 a gallon (and rising) this amount to about 4.5% break. Not shabby but not great. Most time lines call for a three month hiatus. Now I’m a pretty typical driver and I drive a typical car. I fill up on gas about once a week. Maybe 5 times a month. When I fill up, I put about 14 gallons of gas in my car. Doing the math

(14 Gallons*$0.18/gallon) * 5 * 3 months = $37.80

So this “big break” saves me a total of about $38. With gas at $4.00/gallon this saves me a little over a half a tank of gas over 3 months. Great!

But that isn’t why this is stupid. Simply put, there is no way that the end user will ever see the full benefit of this holiday. Econ 101 tells you that the incidence of the tax IS NOT the same as who pays the tax. Simply put, just because you pay the tax doesn’t mean you are the one who is really bearing the burden. Let’s say the repeal the tax. Should you expect an immediate $0.18 drop in gas prices? A “yes” answer assumes that the consumer bears all the burden of the tax, but that is rarely if ever true. Most likely, the gas station owners also bear a burden of the tax. In which case, the price of gas will fall even less. It may very well be the case that gas station owners bear ALL of the burden of the tax, in which case, gas prices won’t fall at all and only station owners will actually profit.

I literally learned this in my Econ 101 class so I’m not sure why our highest politicians don’t quite get this.

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I have a co-worker who has decided to leave my company after only about two months on the job.  I can actually empathize a lot because there were times I wanted to leave in the past few months due to mounting frustrations with a few things at my company.

It raises an interesting question, should you leave a job early on if you feel unhappy in the first few weeks or months.  There are two sides of this argument.

On the one hand, you don’t want to make a premature decision.  A new job can be difficult and deciding to leave a job too soon may be a rash decision.  Normally, there is an adjustment period, and you should allow yourself to figure out how to work in the new environment.

On the other hand, the first few weeks you should be the most excited about your job.  You are learning new things and you hopefully escaped the reasons that may have caused you to leave your last job.  If you are miserable the first few weeks on the job, is there really hope things will get better when normally they just get worse?

I obviously made the decision to stay, and for me I think it was the right decision.  I definitely hit some friction, but I gave it some time and now I am starting to hit my stride.  No doubt, many of the problems I faced are still there.  I ironically have the exact opposite of what I had at Microsoft and what caused me to leave there.  The grass isn’t always greener on the other side though and I have found that extremes are bad no matter how you slice it.

However, I can’t blame my co-worker for leaving.  After all, the “penalty” you pay for leaving a job you just started is probably pretty low. Chances are you haven’t even adjusted your lifestyle to match your new job.  You probably haven’t moved if your job was relatively close by or you haven’t made a switch like your spouse getting a new job.  You don’t even have to put this short stint on your resume so the “gap” in your resume will likely be non-existent.
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