The Gasoline Tax: Ecological Transition Through Economic Asphyxiation!

The cruise ship Costa Concordia ran aground off Giglio Island after hitting underwater rocks on January 13, 2012. (Filippo Monteforte/AFP)

Imagine, as the Costa Concordia cruise ship was sinking in 2012, the restaurant manager asking passengers not to forget to pay their bill.

Absurd?

Yet, that is, more or less, the logic adopted by our government.

In a country paralyzed by crisis, where only inflation is progressing, the State, desperately seeking to finance salary increases for its civil servants and more or less adapted pensions for retired military personnel, has found the solution: increase VAT by 1% and tax gasoline by three hundred thousand pounds per can.

After all, why not?

In a system where impunity reigns and accountability is an administrative fiction, it would undoubtedly be indelicate to ask leaders to return embezzled funds. As long as we're at it, we might as well extract from a people who have shown a remarkable ability to take it without flinching.

What, after all, is more noble than paying taxes to support a public sector where some employees are as stealthy as a B-2 bomber, invisible 29 out of 30 days? Or those who prove that there is life after death, still receiving their salary long after their administrative burial?

And then, if the unemployment rate is around 40%, this gasoline tax will ultimately only concern those who work. The unemployed, for their part, are not supposed to roam the roads doing nothing.

The motivations for these taxes are impeccable: opposing them would almost be ungrateful towards those who maintain the illusion of a semblance of a state. Or even worse, towards an army whose some high-ranking officers, instead of enjoying a well-deserved retirement, have agreed to sacrifice themselves once more, by presiding over us. Shakespeare wrote, and he was right: «Blow, blow, thou winter wind, Thou art not so unkind As man's ingratitude», especially since the new taxes do not affect the fuel that warms us from the winter wind…

And let's stop seeing the glass as half empty. As the saying goes, just take a smaller glass for it to be almost full.

Certainly, a real taxation of the use of public maritime domain, cigarettes and carpets (which some leaders smoke) would have been more coherent. But the gasoline tax will at least have the merit of reducing the number of motorists, smoothing traffic flow and, consequently, lowering pollution.

This government innovates! It has just invented ecological transition through economic asphyxiation.

However, we have shown great maturity regarding the laws against which we express indignation.

Let's remember: in 2019, the mention of a six-dollar tax on WhatsApp was enough to ignite the country, dissolve the government, and fill the streets.

Today, a tax approaching twenty dollars monthly, coupled with a VAT increase, passes without a hitch. Our revolt takes place on social media, but at least it's free, and this, thanks to a sense of responsibility and general mobilization around a national cause, which we had ardently defended in 2019!

Ultimately, our rulers have perfectly applied the concept of inverse solidarity: extracting from those who cannot afford to stop, in order to finance a state that, itself, is at a standstill.

The difference with the Concordia is that when the ship was sinking, water or access to the sea were not yet being billed, whereas in Lebanon, we are sinking but will be in order….