I know: It's definitely not price gouging (insult away, BTW)

You still suck really hard at attacking, though.

Just to interject some sense here: Developing high-efficiency automobiles could have been done much sooner than it was. That plan was quashed by oil companies and the automakers who were in their back pockets.

 

Hey, I don't mind a little common sense, and any ideas that would help ALL Americans is fine by me. Anyone who stands in the way of that progress, Democrats included, will get more punishment from Ixthar.

Or something like that.

 

Yes, but there is a school of thought that says the New Deal opened a Pandora's Box of government spending and intervention that wasn't so good in the long run.

I don't necessarily subscribe to that school of thought, but it's out there.

 

Let's look at Oz' case here.
He says he lives 35 miles from work. He owns a Pontiac Sunfire, which even in average condition ought to be good for about 26 miles per gallon. If he's working 5 days per week, that means he's driving 350 miles weekly. At 26 miles per gallon, he's using 13.46 gallons of gas per week. With gas about a dollar more than it was a year ago, that means he's paying about $13 more per week on gasoline, about $54 more per month.
It's not ideal, but no American workers are going broke because they're paying $54 more per month.
The reaction to this problem is disproportionate to the problem.

 

$54 a month is $648 a year.

If he makes $20,000, that's more than three percent of his income.

Imagine the outcry from some people if we suddenly had that kind of tax increase across the board.

 

Twoback does an exceptional job of making my point when he didn't mean to.

Oz is spending about $50 more a month on gas, about $650 a year, than he was last year. Extrapolate that out to the millions of Americans who are doing the same. Let's say it's 100 million people (one-third of the population), and the $650 is what the average person is spending more on gas. That means there's $65 billion more going to one industry - oil - and not into other parts of the economy: food, entertainment, whatever.

It's a big economy, but $65 billion isn't a drop in the bucket.

Then never mind higher heating costs b/c of oil, businesses cutting back b/c of increased travel costs, and on and on.

 

And after taxes, that's about the size of a raise a lot of Americans see every year. Your raise for 2006? Place it right in your gas tank.

 

For almost all of the last five years, since I've been living on my own, $50 a month was a pretty big deal to me, too.

And if shit goes wrong for me in the next couple months (car breaks down, have to go to the hospital, etc.), it could very easily be a pretty big deal for me again.

Don't discount $54 a month for people making what they do in this business.

 

Especially for those of us who haven't been around for long and who don't work in big metro areas. And that $648 for the year is bigger than what my raise was. I got about $40 extra a month. $50 is a really big deal in my world.

 

Companies will make profits. When companies see opportunities to increase their profits, they will, if they are smart, maximize those opportunities. Just like you or I would. None of us would turn down a 3 percent raise, even if it meant it was going to cause the company financial distress.

And gas prices are about where they should be, based on inflation over the last 25 years. In my part of the country, gas first hit $1 a gallon in 1980. According to the Consumer Price Index, that $1 in 1980 is $2.54 in 2005 dollars -- or, approximately, the price of a gallon of gas in my part of the country in 2005. Using that same calculation, the $1.71 I was paying in July 2001 (which seemed really high at the time) was less than the $2.34 I should have been paying.

(Of course, these numbers can be skewed to either prove or disprove my point, depending on what year you use as your starting point.)

 

I'm not saying $54 a month is a pittance, but if it were coming directly from our flesh, then no one in this country would be paying for cell phones, cable/satellite TV, high-speed internet or $5 lattes.
My cable bill was probably $50 less 10 years ago. I get a lot more channels that I don't watch, plus a couple that I do (Fox Soccer Channel and ESPN2). I didn't even have a cell phone bill 10 years ago. I didn't have a second phone line for internet.
All I know is, when oil was $12 a barrel in 1997 and my Exxon stock didn't move for the 18 months I held it, nobody was holding a bake sale for that company's board of directors. (Man, I wish I hadn't sold that ...)