Are higher oil prices good for you?

Robert Samuelson on MSNBC/Newsweek stated a month ago:

What this country needs is $4-a-gallon gasoline or, maybe, $5. We don't need it today, but we do need it over the next seven to 10 years via a steadily rising oil tax.

Would that market prices (even without the gas tax) were so low a year from now.

Mr. Samuelson cites our negligence of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) as emblematic of the problem:

The SPR languished. In 1992, it had oil equal to 83 days of imports; by 2000, that was only 52 days.

How farsighted we were back then compared to now, right?