October 4, 2006 11:20AM # Are Californians Stupid? We’ll Soon Find Out By [Jerry Taylor](https://www.cato.org/people/jerry-taylor) --- SHARE A month or so from now, we’ll get a chance to measure the IQ of voters everywhere in the form of several ballot initiatives. The most telling will be California’s Proposition 87, which proposes to tax the hell out of California oil production as a means of reducing gasoline prices. This, of course, is utter madness, but California has more than its share of economic illiterates, so it’s got a fighting chance. An [op-ed](http://www.ocregister.com/ocregister/opinion/abox/article_1296046.php) I co-wrote on the matter was published today in the *Orange County Register*. For more on this sort of unhinged nonsense, check out a [study](https://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa561.pdf) we wrote earlier this year on oil profits, price gouging, and the relative competitiveness of transportation fuel markets. Despite all the crackpot economic gibberish thrown around Washington over the summer, Congress somehow managed to avoid signing off on anything near as stupid as Prop. 87. Let’s hope Golden State voters are at least the equal of our otherwise brain-dead federal legislators. ##### Related Tags [Energy and Environment](https://www.cato.org/research/energy-environment), [General](https://www.cato.org/general) [![Creative Commons License](/build/cato_2020/images/creative-commons.svg)](http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/) This work is licensed under a [Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/).