The Simplest Step Biden Could Take to Ease the Gas Burden for American Workers

We did it for COVID, why not to save democracy in Ukraine?

There truly are no winners in war.

The sacrifices made by the average American in support of Ukraine’s existential struggle don’t even rate as a pittance compared to those of the Ukrainian people. Even the Russian rank and file, many of whom oppose Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, are suffering far greater hardship as they bear the brunt of stiff sanctions from the West.

Still, Americans were already struggling to keep pace with inflation and exploitive price gouging from the supermarket to the department store. The price they’re now being asked to pay at the gas pump due to the Biden administration’s ban on Russian oil imports is quite real and potentially crippling.

As of this writing, the average price of gas in the United States is $4.31 a gallon per the American Automobile Association. Prices in California have been reported as high as $10 per gallon. For regular unleaded. That’s an increase of 117% from just two years ago.

As past generations learned in World Wars I and II, war time conditions call for war time measures. Unlike the Greatest Generation who willingly increased their work hours, moved from “low productivity” jobs to more grueling “high productivity” ones, and in many cases returned to the workforce from retirement or child rearing, today’s workforce can greatly improve the long term sustainability of the oil ban with the simplest of sacrifices. To some, it wouldn’t be a sacrifice at all.

President Joe Biden should ask all U.S. based companies to transition all jobs that can reasonably sustain it back to 100% remote work immediately and indefinitely.

The Infrastructure is in Place

More than a third of the American workforce transitioned all or part of their work to remote during the height of the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic. That’s not including the workers who were already working regularly from home.

The transition for many employers was initially bumpy. With months, and in some cases years, to hone processes and beef up infrastructure, many companies began seeing productivity from their newly virtual workforce exceed pre-pandemic levels.

A global survey from May 2021 found 61% of organizations reporting either equivalent or improved productivity since the implementation of remote work practices.

Workers Prefer It

For many workers, another extended period of telework is no sacrifice at all. FlexJob’s 2021 survey found that 58% of workers favored a transition to full-time remote work. An additional 39% desired a hybrid model mixing in-person and remote options.

Who can blame them? The sudden elimination of round trip commutes that can now span upwards of 3 hours daily in major metropolitan areas allowed many to re-engage with family, explore fulfilling hobbies, and attend to long neglected personal health and fitness (Hello, Peloton!). The elimination of even a modest 1 hour round trip commute amounts to 5 hours per week — roughly 20 hours a month — of newly found leisure time. Workers rediscovered the life in life. Why would they want to hand that back to their corporate overlords for no additional compensation?

The primary “hardship” would probably be absorbed by employers themselves, faced with another extended stretch of paying for exorbitantly priced office space that goes largely unused. Similarly, some veteran senior leaders never quite adjusted to managing remote teams and will likely recoil at having to do it again.

Yet, with a 2021 Mercer study finding close to 70% of organizations interested in adopting some form of hybrid work model, the above pitfalls are likely already being addressed. As leases expire, many companies will likely use the opportunity to downsize and repurpose space. Intrepid HR departments are probably already developing training programs to help managers adapt to the intricacies of virtual leadership. Those still unable to adapt were likely teetering on obsoletion anyway, having failed to evolve into 21st Century business practices in myriad ways.

What About Those Who Can’t Telework?

The COVID telework wave did reveal one particularly steep social and economic cost. The unplanned switch to remote work ripped open America’s barely salved wound of economic inequality and doused it with seasoning salt.

The majority of college educated, largely urban, white collar workers could easily port their work laptops home, convert the media room to a makeshift office, and continue their corporate duties without missing a beat.

Most working class Americans in essential fields like service, retail, and construction had no choice but to continue trudging to work, often via the moving germ incubators known as public transportation systems. Their financial solvency depended on interfacing with potentially infected customers and co-workers. Nurses and health aids routinely worked extended shifts and 7 day weeks surrounded by infectious COVID patients. For many in the American working class, the choice was as stark as it was chilling: risk losing your livelihood or your life.

Thankfully, the socioeconomic disparity stemming from the Ukraine crisis doesn’t hold life and death implications. If Putin nukes the US, the computer programmer coding away in his basement will be just as incinerated as the charge nurse grinding through a 12 hour shift in the ER.

But workers forced to continue commuting 5 days a week as gas prices skyrocket would carry the lion’s share of the economic sacrifice that Americans are being asked to make in support of Ukraine.

That’s simply not fair.

If it lasted for an extended period, it would almost certainly exacerbate the social divisions that Putin has long exploited to unravel America.

There’s a simple solution. Use the tax system to do what it was meant to do: redistribute wealth.

The leisure tax

Congress could pass a “leisure” tax for the duration of the oil ban and corresponding telework.

The tax would be based on the amount the average teleworker saves by working from home. A pre-oil ban gas price — say, $2.75 per gallon — could be used as the baseline. The difference between that amount and current gas prices multiplied by the number of miles the average American commutes per pay period would be taken out of the teleworker’s check, and redistributed into a pool that would be disbursed to onsite workers via quarterly stimulus checks.

We know how Americans love stimulus checks. As with companies’ telework infrastructure, we also know the federal government has systems in place to get checks out quickly and efficiently.

In actuality, a variation of such a system should probably remain in place beyond the duration of the oil ban. Telework is a luxury, and it’s only going to become more common for white collar workers going forward. With costs of gas and car maintenance greatly reduced by remote work, it also becomes a backdoor pay raise only available to segments of the workforce already among the most privileged.

There’s little we can do to offer many working class Americans the same luxury. It’s simply not possible to draw blood or douse a fire remotely. But we can at least use the money saved by the white collar transition to telework to provide fair(er) compensation to those unable to take advantage of one of the 21st Century’s most worker-friendly innovations.

At a moment when the existence of an entire nation and the very survival of democracy around the globe is at risk, quibbling over gas prices is the epitome of a First World problem. Still, the US’s ability to continue supporting Ukraine through exhaustive sanctions against Russia depends on the fortitude of the American people to sustain the sacrifices asked of them.

As of this moment, the most tangible such sacrifice is the exorbitant cost of gas.

The more we minimize the impact of gas prices on the lives of Americans, the longer they’ll be inclined to continue standing with Ukraine. As war time measures go, the simple continuation of a practice many have already been exercising for the better part of two years is literally the least we can do.