Maybe it’s the nitrogen bubbles in my brain or the afterglow of reading Bob Samuelson’s column today, but I finally feel willing to float a trial balloon in the Corner which, I admit, has been launched more times than the Goodyear blimp: Increase gas/oil taxes.

Admittedly, current high oil prices have caused pain for some and are probably a drag on the economy in significant respects (the airline industry, for example), but the negative effects certainly don’t track with the predictions of doom and gloom which typically accompany fuel tax proposals. Clinton’s 4.3 cent a gallon tax elicited howls that the economy would go off the rails, for example. Well, now gas prices are much higher than they were in 1996, though still lower — adjusted for inflation — than they were in the early 80s. And, more to the point, the economy seems to have absorbed high gas prices better than most would have predicted.

Anyway, since it’s impossible to deny that our dependence on Middle East oil — or our dependence on foreigh oil, a lot of which comes from the Middle East — skews our foreign policy in undesirable ways (and enriches folks we’d rather see make their money from ordinary development), it seems worth considering a tax system which weans us of oil as much as possible. Demand from China and India will be putting upward pressure on oil prices for decades to come. And since I’m increasingly sympathetic to consumption taxes in general, it seems to me a fuel tax is a good place to start. I kind of like Charles Krauthammer’s idea to peg oil prices at a stable level and try to keep to keep it there by adjustung taxes accordingly. If oil prices skyrocket, lower the tax. If oil prices plummet, raise the tax — But keep prices at a sufficiently high — or “realistic” — level to encourage more efficiencies and investments in alternative fuels and to protect the economy from volatility as much as possible. I’m not talking about a net hike in taxes. I’d be delighted to see a cut in other taxes to accomodate the rise at the pump. And I have no problem whatsoever with investing lots and lots of money in nuclear power.