Lee Iacocca on Chrysler and the Future of Detroit

CNN Money had an interesting interview with Lee Iacocca. A couple interesting blurbs:

AT: Do you blame the Japanese for Detroit's decline over the past couple of decades?

LI: I've taken on the Japanese forever. Toyota's a great competitor. Nissan's coming on strong. Honda's always been great on engineering. They're good companies, but they had advantages. It's unfair competition. Their market is closed to us. They still manipulate currency. When they come to this country they don't have unions, and that's tough to compete against. Sometimes I think their trade practices are predatory.

AT: In the '80s you suggested raising the gas tax.

LI: Yes. I went to see Reagan and said, "Let's put a 50-cent-a-gallon tax on gasoline. That's $50 billion. We can cut the deficit in half." He said, "You've got to be out of your mind. You don't tax gasoline." And he laughed. So we never did it. Our state and federal taxes add up to about 46 cents a gallon, compared with $5 in Europe.

A 50-cent gas tax? Why not? There's nothing that says people have a god-given right to cheap transportation. Of course, our economy depends on it. And in general more taxes are bad. Still, by having artificially low gas prices, we encourage its waste.