英文文章分析：Biden’s Gas Tax Holiday Wouldn’t Make Much Difference

本文虽然不是editorial社论文章，但其风格是很相似的，段落简短，这不仅是报刊文章的风格，也使得观点更为明确突出

President Biden says he’s still committed to reducing U.S. carbon emissions to net zero in the near future. At the moment, though, his overriding priority is to ensure an ample supply of gasoline at reasonable prices.

I’m reminded of the appeal to God by St. Augustine in his youth: “Give me chastity and continency, only not yet.”

圣奥古斯丁的这句话是什么意思？这句话跟他的成长背景有何关系？这些问题都是在批判性阅读时需要搞明白的。如果文中没有答案，那就需要自己上网寻找答案

The White House maintains there’s no inconsistency between wanting more oil now and wanting less later. “We can walk and chew gum at the same time,” a senior administration official told reporters this week, according to Axios. That may be so, but the mixed message is confusing and demotivating.

On Wednesday Biden asked states to suspend their gasoline taxes, while asking Congress to suspend the federal tax for three months. I wrote a newsletter in March arguing against suspensions of state gasoline taxes.

The only good thing I can find to say about Biden’s plan is that on the federal level it wouldn’t make much difference, at least in the short term.

文章的thesis单独列出，清晰表达，让快速浏览报刊的读者不会错误。同时，读到这里，同学们就可以开始思考一下，本文作者的观点是否有些过于理想化？零碳排放真的能如他希望那样，一声令下全国义无反顾地投入吗？批判性阅读和写作就是要对原文的观点提出自己的评断

Here’s why. Suspending the federal tax of 18.4 cents a gallon would reduce the average price paid at the pump by about 4 percent (assuming the entire savings were passed on to drivers). But gasoline accounted for just 4.5 cents of every $1 spent by consumers in April, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. So the net effect on the price index for all goods and services would be only about two-tenths of a percent in the month the plan went into effect. And the benefit would be undone when the holiday ended after 90 days.

本段采用的是典型的“算账”论证方法，用数字来说明为什么取消联邦汽油税对老百姓没什么实质影响

Worse still, the actual benefit to consumers would be smaller than two-tenths of a percent because refiners and gas stations would pocket some — perhaps most — of the savings from a gas tax holiday. That’s not because of evil corporate machinations; it’s just market forces at work. Refineries have very little extra capacity, according to utilization data collected by the Energy Information Administration. So they can’t significantly raise output if a tax holiday raises demand for gasoline.

By the iron law of supply and demand, if the demand for gas exceeds supply at the tax-free price, the price must move back up to around where it was before to bring the market back into balance. That would mean bigger profits for refiners and retailers.

这两段可以看为一段来进行分析：它的organize pattern是我们课上讲过的典型的cause and effect，同学们可以复习一下

“We can cut the tax but it might not change the price,” said Betsey Stevenson, a University of Michigan public policy professor who served in the Obama administration as chief economist in the Labor Department and later as a member of the president’s Council of Economic Advisers.

用数字论证完后，同时引用expert opinion来论证。如我们课上所讲，选取evidence的时候要混合使用

So Biden’s plan wouldn’t help consumers much. The silver lining is that it consequently wouldn’t hurt the environment much. “The bad thing about the policy is also the good thing about it,” said Roberton Williams, an economist at the University of Maryland.

Biden’s proposal is mainly symbolic, to show he cares. It’s of a piece with jawboning（jawbone是什么意思？）oil industry executives, releasing oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve and his planned trip to Saudi Arabia next month to ask the Saudis to pump more oil. “Ultimately,” Stevenson said, “this isn’t an economic move as much as a political move by the president to show that he’s doing everything he can to bring down gas prices, even if it’s just a few cents.”

这两段都是只用expert opinion来论证，可以看为是上面的延续。注意，这里对thesis有一些延申，指出Biden政策的背后实意。是否跑题且不说，但并没有太多的evidence来支持）

从下段开始，可以看为有些“跑题”了，跟thesis —— “取消汽油税的好处不大”——并没有太大联系，而是开始论述其坏处，以及Biden应该采取怎样的能源政策。这也是报刊文章跟一般essay的区别，它往往会包含不少标题主题之外的信息，以及大量的呼吁性建议

But that doesn’t mean the proposed holiday is harmless. The message it conveys is that the gas tax is bad for consumers — when in fact the United States and other nations should be raising taxes on fossil fuels to compensate for the air pollution and global warming they cause. The revenue from higher gas taxes could be passed along to the public through reductions in more harmful taxes, such as those on working and investing.

本段建议听起来很好，但实施起来实际可行吗？

“Consumers need to understand that it’s risky to be dependent on gas, because its price is so volatile,” Williams wrote in a follow-up email. “If the government steps in any time that gas prices go up, it keeps people from learning that lesson.”

本次汽油涨价是属于一般性市场价格变化，还是不正常的罕见？如果是后者，不正是应该政府出手的时候吗？Is it a “lesson” or a punishment to the public?

When Biden castigates oil executives for not producing more, as he did in a letter this month, he opens the door to their entire pro-production agenda: lifting development restrictions on federal lands and waters, speeding up permitting and the like. The American Petroleum Institute is understandably trying to get some leverage out of this episode. “Ahead of his travel to the Middle East next month, we urge the president to prioritize unlocking U.S. energy resources that are the envy of the world instead of increasing reliance on foreign sources,” Mike Sommers, the president of the institute, said in a statement responding to Biden’s letter.

注意学习本段引用反方expert opinion来论证自己的观点

Biden would be better off pivoting to policies that would not blunt the fight against climate change.

本段既是清晰表明本文的“第二个thesis”，也是一个过渡段落，让读者知道下面内容跟前文相比有所变化，都是属于呼召性的建议，call for action

One idea is to keep the gas tax at its current level, but provide relief to groups that are harmed the most by high gas prices, such as low- to moderate-income drivers and people in rural America, who have to drive more miles per day on average. That approach preserves market incentives to balance supply and demand while still helping some of the hardest hit.

发政府补助似乎成了疫情以来美国的常态，但最近政府自己都承认，前段时间大发补助福利，直接影响了美国当前的物价飞涨。所以，本文这个“汽油补助”真是一个good idea吗？

To be sure, getting the aid right is tricky. If you’re too precise, so that people get exactly what they need to offset the higher cost of gasoline, you end up insulating them from higher prices and they over-consume. If you’re not precise enough, you hand out a lot of aid to people who don’t drive at all and give not very much to people who drive a lot, which invites grumbling. There is no perfect answer.

Another good idea is to focus on reducing demand for gasoline rather than increasing the supply of it. The beauty of that approach is that it’s time-consistent: It helps in both the short and the long runs. A reader of this newsletter, Jeff Perlowitz of Park City, Utah, wrote to me, “My idea is that every state should immediately declare any and all mass transit free.” (That would be instead of declaring state gas tax holidays, as several have done.)

免费公共交通，这不就是变相的“发补助”吗？谁最后真正来为这些补助和福利买单？

Drivers can save money without government intervention through common-sense measures such as combining or eliminating trips, joining car pools, taking public transportation and — this one’s simple — driving more slowly. According to the U.S. Department of Energy, fuel efficiency declines rapidly at speeds over 50 miles per hour. “Obeying the speed limit, accelerating and braking gently and gradually, and reading the road ahead can improve the fuel economy of your vehicle by 15 percent to 30 percent at highway speeds and 10 percent to 40 percent in stop-and-go traffic,” the department says. If you drive 75 or 80 miles per hour on the highway, you’re worsening the problem of high fuel prices, not to mention raising the risk of a bad accident.

这段内容也是与thesis关系不大的建议，属于报刊文章的特点。我们在平时写argumentative essay的时候，要避免这样的跑题内容

I get that Biden is in a tough spot. Even without politics it would be hard to get the glide path to net zero exactly right: winding down investment in fossil fuels, but not so quickly that the nation runs out of energy. On top of that, high inflation — and in particular high gas prices — could hurt Democrats’ chances in the midterm elections this fall, which would itself lessen the chance of getting responsible climate policies. Given the political situation, Robert Stavins, an environmental economist at Harvard Kennedy School, says that it’s understandable for Biden to take a brief break from his focus on fighting climate change in order to appear to help motorists. “Sometimes kicking the can down the road is the appropriate thing to do,” he said.

本段属于典型的building common ground，站在Biden角度来思考

Maybe. But Biden knows that climate change is a clear and present danger. He has to be careful about taking his foot off the gas.

结尾呼应开头的thesis，同时用了一个双关 pun，但同学们在平时写作的时候，使用双关pun修辞手段要谨慎，很多美国读者对pun是持反感态度的。