You talk the talk but do you dare this walk?: A big tax on gasoline?

The USA has a large fiscal deficit; it has a huge current-account deficit; it is by far the world’s biggest oil consumer; it seems aware about the problems of the environment; and it has confessed an addiction that has made it dependent on foreign oil supplies. Any other sensible country would, in similar circumstances, increase the taxes on gasoline consumption and substantially help to solve all the above-mentioned problems. Would you as a leader dare to raise the issue of a tax on gasoline?

I am a foreigner... so what?

I am not an American citizen and so I cannot vote, but in this small global world that should not really matter, since it is just as important for all us foreigners to try to make certain that at least the American voters know fully well whom they will be voting for. Never forget that we are all indigenous to this little planet earth and so in fact your backyard, depending on the lens we use, might very well be in my very own backyard, and or vice versa.

I will of course never opine on the answers, that could be taken as meddling in your own internal affairs, which is the last thing I want to do.

Anyone interested?

Any university or foundation who might be interested in having someone like me on their team to work on issues like these please say so, and let’s talk. Nonetheless let me warn you that though I have an MBA plus over 30 years of working experience, that includes having been an Executive Director at the World Bank (2002-2004), I have no PhD. Sometimes I have even been toying with the idea of promoting a “Guaranteed free of PhDs’ University”. . . But then who knows, I might even go for a PhD at your university!

Who am I? - The United States of America and I (1)

My mother is from Sweden and my father was from Poland, and I was born in 1950, in San Cristóbal, Venezuela, close to the Colombian border.

In a world where everything is radicalizing and so many believe that if you are not 100% for, you have to be 100% against, I need to make a very personal comment about the United States. My father, as a Polish soldier taken prisoner of war by the Germans, spent five years in concentration camps, from the last of which he was liberated by American soldiers. I was brought up on a pro-American diet and for many years counted To Hell and Back, the 1955 movie that recounted the life of Audie Murphy, America’s most-decorated soldier in the Second World War, among my favorites. There is no way on earth that I could suffer from any sort of real anti–United States of America phobia. If I criticize, make recommendations, or observe some things that I believe could be improved in the United States, I always do so as a sincere friend who truly wishes for that much-admired country to live up to those very high standards of which I feel it is capable. And when it doesn’t, I am just a much-saddened friend, but never a foe. The United States should not ignore the fact that out there it has many true friends who truly wish it well. It should never confuse them with all those who are plain bootlickers.

Also, if the ongoing globalization is to stand a chance to end in something good for the world, this will also very much depend on the willingness and the ability of the USA to do the right things right.Let us not also forget that we all are also indigenous to this small planet earth, this last as you are all too.

1. From Voice and Noise, Booksurge, 2006

You talk the talk but do you dare this walk?

A big tax on gasoline?

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I am a foreigner... so what?

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Who am I? - The United States of America and I (1)