Gas Price Rage
Everyone is outraged at the price of gasoline, and rightfully so. However, has anyone bothered to put things in perspective?
Granted, $4.00/gallon is worthy of our rage, especially given the political restrictions on accessing the vast resources within our own borders, but people are being stirred into a frenzy by the press and by politicians stupid enough to tell us to just fill our tires and wait for a new scientific discovery to appear via legislation, complete with a nationwide production and distribution infrastructure and new vehicles that magically appear in our garages. Folks are actually complaining that they cannot afford to take a vacation, cannot afford to go out to eat, or even that they cannot afford to DRIVE TO WORK, for crying out loud!
Perspective:
Since Nancy Pelosi announced Democrats’ “commonsense plan to help bring down skyrocketing gas prices” while campaigning in 2006, gas prices have risen from $2.91 to $4.09. Quite a plan, huh? Anyway, if we use an average of 15,000 miles per vehicle and 16 miles-per-gallon, that amounts to a $1,106 annual gas price increase. (And… 16 mpg is well below the CAFÉ standard required for both cars and trucks, making that $1,106 considerably higher than it should be.)
Now consider that many of the very same people screaming bloody-murder about the high price of gasoline, calling for the nationalization of the oil industry and the theft and re-distribution of their middle-class stockholders’ income, and screaming they cannot afford to go to work, are also enthusiastically supporting the election of politicians who have expressed their dedication to raising income taxes by a weighted-average of $1,857/year (among other tax increases)!
I guess it’s not surprising they also believe those politicians when they claim that raising the oil companies’ costs will decrease the pump price???
