Which actually brings us back to what Jordan says. He is halfway there. Progressive taxation is indeed critical. The other half of that is large scale public investment - really large scale in the hundreds of billion. A lot of these could indeed have benefits that meet the larger need while immediately helping people. Highly subsidized (even 100% subsidized) insulation and weather sealing packages. The average combined heating and electric bill is not much lower than the monthly cost of filling gas tanks, and a lot of the rural poor pay more in utility bills than they do filling gas tanks. We really can't do much to lower the cost of filling a gas tank but we can do a lot to save people money other places - and not just in the energy field. Single payer health, does lower your bill at the gas stations, but puts money in your pocket to make up for it. In the longer term, Al Gore's proposal to 100% phase out fossil fuel electricity over ten years would help rural residents. Alan Drakes proposal to upgrade freight rail so as to shift 85% of long haul trucking to rail. (And that would save oil as well.)Over the really long run electrifying all or most ground transport and largely decarbonizing industry via efficiency improvement and electrification.