When Gas Hits Four Dollars a Gallon, Will It Be Slow Enough for Obama This Time?
While campaigning for the presidency in 2008, Barack Obama spoke to the $4 a gallon gasoline prices Americans were facing by making it clear he had no problem with gas prices at that level. He simply “would have preferred a gradual adjustment” toward that price. In other words, he wasn’t bothered that gasoline hit $4 a gallon, just that it did so too quickly.
Fortunately for the American consumer, shortly after fuel prices had skyrocketed to those levels they dropped enough that when Obama took office they were hovering around $1.81 a gallon. But two years into the Obama presidency, and one offshore drilling moratorium later, prices are well over $3 a gallon in much of the country and climbing fast.
This is all further exasperated by the fact that Obama’s Interior secretary, Ken Salazar (D-CO), has proven himself as staunchly opposed to new drilling onshore as he is toward drilling offshore. That’s right: In places far away from ocean waters, places like Wyoming, Montana, and Colorado, Salazar is doing all he can to curtail the issuance of any new exploratory leases for oil and gas. He says he doesn’t want to expand drilling into places where drilling leases don’t currently exist, which is just liberal-speak for “we’re not going to increase drilling for fossil fuels.”
Hardcore liberals like Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz and her ilk have defended Obama and Salazar’s opposition to drilling by claiming the immediate impact of expanded drilling now would be less than a 1% increase in our oil supply over current levels and the long-term impact would not be felt significantly at the pump for ten years. Yet even if we grant these assumptive numbers for the sake of argument, the question that comes to my mind is: “Why didn’t Democrats want to expand drilling ten years ago?” (If we’d started drilling in ANWR during George W. Bush’s first year in office, we’d be reaping lower prices at the pump right now.)
This issue is frustrating because even a child can see that as demand for fuel grows, the leases we have at present will necessarily prove insufficient to meet the higher demand, therefore causing gasoline prices to soar. Therefore, to make sense of this mess we have to keep in mind that Obama doesn’t want low gas prices to begin with. Remember: In 2008 he wasn’t bothered by the fact that they hit $4 a gallon, just that they did so too quickly.
“So what will such prices do to a family of four that lives off an income of $45,000 a year? It will do exactly what Obama wants it to do: force them to buy a hybrid vehicle or, better yet, an all-electric one.”
Disagree . . . what will it do is force them into bankruptcy . . . quite simple the family living on 45K per year can not afford the added burden of an electric or hybrid vehicle. To begin with they are not what they are said to be . . .sure most of the hybrids show and improved MPG . . . but they still use GASOLINE . . . the total electric require recharging at 100 mile intervals or less depending on the driving conditions and that recharging is a process requiring time. This change to the hybrids is NOT independent of gasoline . . . the use of total electric is not free from the use of fossil fuel. The transition to total electric cars would increase the requirement for electric power production by perhaps as much as 50 times what it is right now . . . unless the construction of those power generating facilities is started right freaking now . . . 7 dollars a gallon gas will only require the income of the family to be re-distributed . . . the available money for food goes down, the avialable money for the mortgage goes down, the avialable money for entertainment goes down. Seven dollar a gallon gas would destroy a lot of people . . . but would it cause a “sudden over night movement to CO2-less energy sources” . . . you got to be crazy to think that it would.
The cost of all consumables is also tied to the cost of hydrocarbons whether in their manufacture or transportation from field to factory to distributor to store to your home. That food that you will have less $ to purchase will also cost much more.
The hybrid vehicle technology moves too slowly, and I think the only solution is to accelerate the changes.
And what’s going to drive that Raquel?…. a Gov’t mandate or fiat?
the boy king will just declare it to be so
Bike?
Third World?
No, thanks but not, thanks.
Kisses to all!
it’s moving slowly because it’s not popular, it’s not ready, it’s not economically feasible for the mass production, etc…
you wish to force evolution and put the power in the hands of the same nimrods that run places like the dmv or post office
Raquel, or anyone saying we need to drive the energy efficent cars..Well, I would love to but you need to buy it for me ,because right now I can’t afford the gas ,let alone a new car. I’m on disablity and cannot afford to live. this administration doesn’t seem to be interested in the needs of people like me. After two years of less money paid into SS and the cuts to come there will be less need for cars so there you go!
There simply is not enough money left in the world to give away to every person or program who for one reason or another, claims it a necessity to be given the earnings of others, many who are just getting by themselves.
The goverment chain letter promising endless handouts has run its course…the jobs are gone, the illegals are here, the economy is running on fumes and fools govern us.
So, you have a computer and internet connection…but you can’t live. Hmm
What I never see discussed is the electricity needed to charge the batteries of these cars. The electrical demand for daily charging will double the utility bill of the average household. Plus not only will you have that additional expense but are we not told every summer of the overload demand on the national power grid? What happens if even 10% of the population switches over? The typical neighborhood can’t handle that increase much less nationally. Also consider that since 45% of the electricity in the US comes from coal powered plants, since the smelting process employed to produce the metal used in the batteries is one of the most polluting processes on the planet, what exactly is being saved?
The additional demand on the national electric grid just to power a 25% U.S. population of electric vehicles is well documented. We are not privy to that information however. Jeffery Imelt, CEO of General Electric knows full well what that additional demand would be and what the additional hydrocarbon would be. He and Obama’s posse worked those numbers before Obama was a household word.
Cap and Trade, Green Technology, Modern Infrastructure, GM Bailout are all part of their grand plan to make America Socially Green. Andy Stern, Richard Trumka, Mary Kay Henry and the rest of the union bosses are all on the same team w/ Obama.
Cap and Trade to reduce hydrocarbon by making the use of oil impossible.
Green Technology to develop solar homes and better electric cars.
Modern Infrastructure to support 100 million electric cars by 2020
GM bailout so they will have a car maker they can force to make electric cars
THIS AIN’T ROCKET SCIENCE!
Don’t act surprised by any of this folks. HE TOLD YOU HE WAS GOING TO DO ALL OF THIS WHEN HE RAN FOR PRESIDENT! GREEN SOCIAL JUSTICE WAS THEN AND REMAINS THE SOLE PURPOSE BARRACK HUSSEIN OBAMA WAS CHOSEN AS THE FIGUREHEAD. HE WAS YOUNG, ARTICULATE AND BLACK!
If you think any of his actions are radical, wait until 200 million stupid people give him 4 more years. He will not be re-inaugurated, he will be crowned king and at the ceremony, they will BURN YOUR CONSTITUTION…..
At what point, I wonder, will people in general realize that we are dealing with delusional fanatics? The Obama administration is the end product of a generation of Gaia-worshiping mystics who are determined to erase Western civilization from the face of the earth.
Some of them want to replace it with an agrarian “socialist-collectivist” culture, operating at about late Stone Age to early Bronze Age levels. This would actually be a feudal culture, with the “enlightened elite’” as the nobles, and everyone else as the serfs. Others don’t want it replaced by anything at all; they just want to get rid of the rest of humanity so they can have “Holy Mother Gaia” all to themselves.
What they all understand is that the best way to wreck a technological society is to starve it of energy. Their strategy is “Starve The Beast”- the “Beast” being the rest of us. Without sufficient energy, our economy dies, and our society goes with it. They are using legislation, bureaucracy, and raw political force to do to us what we did to Imperial Japan in 1942-45 with fleet-type submarines and B-29s.
But for some, even this isn’t enough. They dream of eradicating 90% of the human race, or more, because they consider us a “cancer” on their “goddess”. Ref. Paul Ehrlich, “The Population Bomb”- in spite of all their predictions about overpopulation going back to Thomas Malthus being wrong, the “progressives” are still obsessed with reducing human population to what they call the “carrying capacity” of the planet; which most of them reckon at around 1 million people, total. What the other 6.79 billion are supposed to do, I leave as an exercise for the reader. You can be sure that none of the “enlightened ones” will volunteer to be part of the “discards”- they are too important.
If Obama and Co. were as serious about “sustainable development” as they claim, they would be in favor of nuclear and hydroelectric power. But they are unalterably opposed to both. Only Holy Wind and Holy Sun can “save our souls”, they claim. I notice they no longer claim that they are the ultimate solution for our energy needs; which tells me that either (1) somebody up there has finally Done The Math, or (2) they never really believed it to begin with, and have just been using it as a club to beat us over the head with from the beginning. (I tend to go with [2], as I have seen no evidence of even elementary-school level math skills with this lot, but a great deal of evidence that they are compulsive liars.)
The word “Neo-Luddites” accurately describe these people. And it should be noted that Ned Ludd, the man for whom the original Luddites were named, was not an “enlightened social reformer” who smashed Jacquard looms as a protest against machinery “robbing people of jobs”.
He did it because he was a mentally-disturbed individual, who was widely known around his home town as the village idiot.
As Holmes would say, the parallel is exact.
clear ether
eon
eon: Nice smack down! You covered about everything.
If I may expand on that point…
It’s much easier to control people when they’re less mobile. As the recent census shows, there’s been a large exodus from states with high taxation to those with lower taxes. Given that most lefty politicians love high taxes–at least on Other People, right, John Forbes Kerry?–and that most conservatives want lower taxes, this can probably be seen as people moving from states where lefties are in control to states where conservatives are in control. This is going to lead to fewer lefty politicians in the federal government, as well.
However, if it’s vastly more expensive to pack up the house and kids and dog(s) and move to a lower-tax state, more people are likely to stay put, thus perpetuating the lefty politician’s career.
Therefore, they want high gas prices as a strong disincentive to move to a more conservative state.
The migration is well under way. But that doesn’t mean things are going to get better anytime soon. The percentage of Gov’t dependent lefty’s in our population is much higher than the 20% FOX News would have us believe. We are very close to that tipping point that destroys democracies (as Thomas Jefferson believed) where a majority of the populace realize they can vote themselves Gov’t largess. When that happens, us worker bees will have to grin and bear it while the drones lounge around enjoying our re-distributed income. Those already rich folks don’t have to worry…. it’s only the worker bees who are going to get tapped…… at first.
“less mobile”
yes. Preferably, everybody should live in cities. MUCH easier to spy on people that way, and to intimidate them with police power. Also much easier to make them totally dependent on government.
Country people are the worst nightmare for the marxists. The can live on their own, some without any money at all. You can’t keep track of them either. The whole south and west are nightmares…must be destroyed.
And they definitely don’t want people to be able to jump in a car and drive a dozen miles to meet with others who might share anti-government views.
The medieval village was ideal. Each was several hours walking distance from the next. Horses were reserved for the aristocracy. The police were easily able to keep track of everybody. There weren’t many serf rebellions at all…it simply wasn’t feasible. Of course, those aristocrats also had their partnership with the Roman Church, which controlled the minds as well as the bodies. So far, the marxists haven’t really replaced that. It was a latent flaw in the USSR, and contributed to the downfall. The biggest flaw in the USSR, of course, was radio and TV, but the marxists have that problem well in hand now. Once the US falls, there won’t be any free communications at all.
This is also why the marxists hate small business so much. Small businesses are hundreds of thousands of small difficult-to-control but loosely connected social networks that have a natural distrust of their overseers.
“The medieval village was ideal. Each was several hours walking distance from the next. Horses were reserved for the aristocracy. The police were easily able to keep track of everybody. There weren’t many serf rebellions at all…it simply wasn’t feasible.”
Yes. And one reason it was so easy was that in most kingdoms, even England, it was illegal to move out of “your” village without the permission of your local baron. Who just didn’t give it. Try it without his OK, and say hello to his dungeon. Unless of course you were just put in the stocks and given ten of the best across your bare back.
There are people in the “progressive” crowd who dream of being that sort of baron. And delivering those whip strokes in person. Believe it.
clear ether
eon
Precisely.
And making travel prohibitively expensive is one of the ways modern lefties try to keep people where the government put them.
Mr. Hawkins,
You missed the entire point of Obama and the liberal Democrats.
As long as the blacks, illegal Hispanics and other minorities get their free handouts from the local, state and federal agencies no one gives a damn what the price of gasoline is or what anyone thinks about it.
Look around you on the first of the month; where food, medicines and social benefits suck everything off of the shelves like a giant super vacuum machine.
These are the same people that elected Obama and; even though they need to be watered every morning when they get up, as long as the government handout systems keep that gorging orgy satisfied the “real workers” in our country will continue to pay higher and higher prices for gasoline along with everything else.
Americans sent a strong message to Washington in the recent elections.
Does any one seriously think that things will change for the better now?
Happy New What..?
I agree. When you get something for nothing…you support what ever is going on.
Although I think we will see Obama taking a different public tact, he will still be appointing behind the scenes, passing what ever he pleases, all behind out back. As said, we are going to see a different public Obama.
He is an elitist. Not to sound too petty…and I’m not a birther..I would like to see his jr high, high school class. Talk to them,all..see pictures. We know nothing of this man yet we allow him to ruin our country. Bush and Clinton, and everyone else were laid out to public scrutiny. Who is this man? what formed his thinking?
Actually, we probably know more about him than any president ever.
He is a hard-care marxist / skilled liar who is the front-man for a murky cabal of ruling class elites. He is an athiest who was given a false front of both Islam and Christianity, which he uses as needed. He was sent to the best schools, with no credentials, where he was a mediocrity. He has worked for only the briefest of times, and then only half-heartedly. Someone has suppled him money his entire life because he has probably earned less than 95% of the country. People wrote books for him. He is a lawyer but never practiced law. The scant evidence of his “teaching skills”, since he lectured about how to scam the system at the University of Chicago, indicate he is barely literate. He was appointe to the do-nothing position of Harvard Law Review editor, where he did nothing. As a Community Organizer, he got people pissed off at the government. He never had a girlfriend or a relationship with a female in his life, yet at the age of 34, he someone managed to get sperm into a woman and fathered two children. The rumors of his homosexuality are rampant. Apparently he prefers to be the recipient of white male attention. He refuses to publish his school transcripts which demonstrate lack of achievement there as well. The evidence of his laziness is manifest. He was far over his head in debt in the 90′s, haveing taken money out of his modest townhome several times. Then he was illegally rescued by a convicted criminal who arranged for him to somehow purchase a million dollare home in Chicago. His path has been intertwined with the noted terrorist Bill Ayers since his day at Columbia 25 years ago. He was an accolate of the virulent racist preacher Reverned Wright. And he has had multi-decade relationships with many jew-hating Pakistani’s.
Oh, we know a LOT about this fellow.
Everyone knew a lot. They simply chose to follow the lead of the marxist press and vote for a guy whose mission in life is to take away their lives.
The message voters sent to Washington was nowhere near strong enough. They will have to send a much stronger one in 2012 for things to begin to change for the better.
There’s no message that voters can send that will reach Obama. He already knows the answer to everything. Has he given the slightest hint that he has listened? Certainly not verbally. Some lip service about working together, but he hasn’t hinted in any way that perhaps his agenda isn’t what the country needs. Which proves that whatever he does is all for show. Meanwhile the exective orders of a marxist tyrant not only continue unabated, but come faster and more furiously.
And no voter message is going to get through to Pelosi, Reid, Franks, Boxer, etc., either, for the exact same reason. These are people on a mission to restore the aristocracy: them.
Unfortunately, the only people that can be influenced are Republicabs, our own allies (sometimes). Some of them who in normal times would be keepers will have to be seriously threatened, because unless they are, the next two years will be the end game.
“It will do exactly what Obama wants it to do: force them to buy a hybrid vehicle or, better yet, an all-electric one.”
This is what drives me insane about Obama. He wants you to get an electric car, yet he also wants to increase costs on fossil fuel energy plants through Cap and Trade. OK, Barry, where do you think this electricity for your crappy little electric car comes from? So if the cost for electricity skyrockets because of Cap and Trade (which Obama is now trying to implement through EPA regulations and Executive Orders), doesn’t that mean the cost of the electricity for the stupid electric car will go up too? And it’s going to go up A LOT. So you will simply be trading higher costs at the pump for higher electricity costs to power your stupid little electric car. And you will get a car that performs worse and doesn’t go as far as your fossil fuel car.
Obama and the environmentalists never think ANYTHING through. This is what happens when stupid ideology trumps common sense.
It’s also called the Rule of Unintended Consequences. I’ve seen the “NRG” commercials which tout electric cars, claiming “you can’t see it” (electricity). All very self-righteous, “saving the planet”, but when the bill comes due, we may see the riots start.
The old saying in political science rings true: “Revolution is only three missed meals away”.
It’s also called the Rule of Unintended Consequences.
But are these consequences really unintended? Or is this exactly what they want to accomplish?
Probably. Keep the people barefoot and pregnant. Or use the Cloward-Piven method to destroy the system so Obama and his socialists can re-create a governmental utopia.
I wrote about this on December 28th.
Why isn’t the MSM asking what Obama is going to do about this?
Or is this part of the plan?
Like bankrupting utilities that use coal?
To save us from Global Warming … uh … Climate Change … err … Global Climate Disruption. It’s nothing that $5 gas and skyrocketing utility bills won’t solve.
At least it’s a plan.
I think it all part of their plan.
You’re right. It’s part of the plan. One day when the Won was off teleprompter he mentioned that if his policies were followed, the price of electricity would ‘necessarily skyrocket’. That’s why his keepers make him use the teleprompter.
Driving gas prices higher is part of what I call the left’s war against the poor. The left often claims that the right is waging a war against the poor because of, for example, corporations that put profits before people, but the greens put the environment before people. And you can’t have as your first priority helping the environment AND helping the poor. It has to be one or the other, and most leftists today have chosen to help the environment rather than the poor.
The poor are best served by the technophiles and not the greens. The greens’ first response to any problem is to start restricting the use of technology, while the technophiles’ solution is to push for a viable technological solution.
I think you’re right. The Greens, NOW, EPA, etc. are all good examples of groups that have been taken over by Socialists. All Socialists care about is power…. in the hands of Socialists.
And when gas goes to $7.00 per gallon the lefties will blame the “evil” oil companies. It’s no win with that group.
“It’s a feature, not a bug.”
It’s deliberate, and Obama isn’t ashamed to admit it. He wants to cripple the coal and oil industries, because he believes it’ll force the renewable sources like wind and solar into competitiveness. As for being a champion of the poor, look to Venezuela. Hugo is raising taxes to cover for an economy with an inflation rate of over 26%. Whom does that impact the most? The poor, who foolishly take the crumbs on the floor provided by the socialists because they’re “sticking it to the rich”, just like the welfare recipients here who are content to live in subsidized apartments in bad neighborhoods because the money is being bled from “the rich”. They’re satisfied with dragging everyone down to their level of subsistence, rather than encouraging a government that will foster the business that creates jobs. They can’t figure out that, once everyone is on the gubment teat, where does the money come from?
Only a fool would think it a feature to destroy the system they are dependent on. When the checks start bouncing or the money is no good, people start grabbing torches and pitchforks and shouting, “Kill the politicians.” The violence may be indiscriminate, but it surely will not be directed only at their enemies, and they don’t have enough firepower to exploit that crisis.
$4.00 per gallon gas. Will kill this economy completely. It’s not just the driving/auto industry but farming. The cost of food will skyrocket because fertilizer and seed will put a lot of farmers out of business.
Hybrids or electric cars/trucks cannot haul produce to market. Between the Democraits wanting all this EPA junk and the greed of the Republicans, America is TOAST!!!! if there is not changes very soon. Drilling for more oil and building more refineries can’t happen soon enough to off set the cost of gas. Commodity trades should be stopped immediately! If the Govt. wants this economy to pop, get gas/diesel to $2.00 per gallon and stand back.
What good will stopping commodity trades do?
Why is it necessary to go with hybrids? Why is that always the nightmare scenario posed by people worried about fuel prices?
Here’s an idea – how about just considering fuel efficiency for your next vehicle purchase? If you really want to buy a modified truck with 17 mpg, then don’t complain about fuel prices.
Hybrids aren’t going to solve the immediate problem anyway. Manufacturers can currently get the same sort of mileage cheaper using turbo-diesels. At least, at present. Hybrids seem to pay off more on heavier vehicles, and make a lot more sense (to me) for boosting performance – see the audi A1 hybrid and the lexuses for examples.
There are sometimes other considerations. Like mine.
I have two family members who are incapable of driving… one because of a brain tumor that impairs her faculties, one because he’s legally blind. I am responsible for the transportation of both these people. Therefore, I don’t drive a little 2-door fuel-efficient coupe.
I also have two very good friends who are disabled. Therefore I wanted–because I am a nice guy–to be able to handle their transportation when they visit (both live out of state… the wonders of the ‘net). Therefore, I drive an SUV, so that we have room for the hardware that they require.
After those considerations comes fuel efficiency. So forgive me if I choose not to drive some little-bitty Mini Cooper that has no room for the kinds of things that I deal with in my life.
But, of course, the gubment thinks it knows better than I do what kind of vehicle I should drive. I guess I should leave my family and friends at the whim of public transit–which doesn’t even exist in any meaningful form in the small town I live in, according to the petty paper-shuffling bureaucrats in DC.
Therefore, they’re gonna make it as expensive as possible for me to drive my family to doctor’s appointments. That’s your compassionate lefty government for ya.
Ok, fair enough. So tell me – what mileage do you get, and how much did that thing cost you?
I don’t see where that’s any of your business, sir.
Perhaps if you hadn’t come off as a know-it-all who wants to dictate what I can drive and what gas mileage it must get, I’d be more inclined to share.
Uh,huh. I was just going to try to find you a vehicle that would do the job for less money and use less fuel.
See, you think you know what’s best for me, even though you had, until yesterday, no idea of what my life is like, and even after reading what I wrote, you have very little idea. You don’t know if I live in an area with snow or not, so you don’t know whether I need 4WD or not, just for one example.
That’s the difference between you and me. You think you can dictate what everyone else should drive even with minimal understanding of their situation. Me, I am perfectly comfortable letting others make their own decisions about what to drive… even Prius owners with Obama stickers on the bumper… if they wanna drive it, why should I be bothered?
Now take your nosiness elsewhere. I’ve made my point–at your expense–and now I am tired of you.
All I said was – if you choose to use a lot of fuel, don’t complain about the price. You seem to be gradually ramping up the case that you have no choice but to drive a unimog. Ok, fair enough. But you won’t give any details, so I have to return to my original point: If you choose to drive a vehicle that chugs through the gas, then it’s your problem if the fuel costs money.
I have a small car with four doors, a hatch, and an surprising amount of luggage space (I’ve stuffed as much hardware in my car as a friend once got into his volvo XC90 – we were side by side hauling equipment on a picking day). I’ve driven it over some astonishingly rough, rocky, slippery roads and had it sideways on dirt and mud more than a few times. It cost me 6000$ about 10 years ago, second-hand. I can drive anything up to 400km per week, and I spent naff-all on fuel. For me, fuel is just not a significant expense, even at our crazy modern-world prices. I just can’t feel sympathetic about people who get grouchy about petrol prices.
I’m not dictating anything. I’m just saying that choices have consequences. I thought that was something that conservatives liked to bang on about … but apparently not when it comes to fuel consumption. Nobody’s forcing you to drive a large vehicle – for all I know you could get by with a medium-sized 4-door wagon. You refuse to explain why you can’t, so I’m not convinced you think your position is convincing.
You seem to think I was attempting to convince you.
You seem to think that your opinion of me matters to me.
You are wrong. On both counts.
Matthew, you keep stepping in it. I am a bricklayer by trade and have driven a pickup truck since 1974, do not get good mileage but made a lot of money with my pickups!
Thank you, Skip.
Mr. Matthew does seem to believe that anyone that doesn’t drive a vehicle he considers “fuel efficient” is too stupid to make a logical choice for themselves based on their own priorities, doesn’t he? That’s what really pushed the hot button for me, his condescension that I wanted/needed his “advice” on what vehicle I should buy.
As for his oft-stated assertion that because I don’t drive a Matthew-approved “fuel-efficient” vehicle I have no right to complain, I’d point Matthew to the First Amendment, which was enacted largely to protect the rights of citizens (like myself) to complain about the government’s actions. Perhaps Matthew, being an Australian, isn’t aware that our American Founding Fathers wanted to avoid the government cracking down on criticism of it.
Now, if the higher prices were purely the result of market forces, without the government putting a big heavy thumb on one side of the scale, that would be one thing. But when the government artificially restricts supply–which anyone with a basic knowledge of economics will understand will drive prices up–then, yes, I am going to complain about the government’s actions. And by chasing the oil rigs out of the Gulf of Mexico, and not approving new drilling permits, artificially restricting supply is precisely what the government is doing.
But don’t expect Matthew to comprehend any of the above, Skip.
400 km? how many miles is that ffs?
americans dont use the metric system in casual dialogue
skip:
“Matthew, you keep stepping in it. I am a bricklayer by trade and have driven a pickup truck since 1974, do not get good mileage but made a lot of money with my pickups!”
And that’s GREAT. That’s a perfect example of choosing the right vehicle and being happy with it. I had to haul a couple of tons of dirt, garden waste and sleepers once (helping a friend move house). I sure as heck didn’t use my hatchback for that, I dropped 100$ on the hire of a tray pickup for a couple of days and it was brilliant for the job. It made things very easy. But I wouldn’t want to use it for commuting
ConservativeWanderer
“Mr. Matthew does seem to believe that anyone that doesn’t drive a vehicle he considers “fuel efficient” is too stupid to make a logical choice for themselves based on their own priorities, doesn’t he?”
Quite the opposite. I’m assuming that you ARE smart enough to make a logical choice.
“As for his oft-stated assertion that because I don’t drive a Matthew-approved “fuel-efficient” vehicle I have no right to complain”
I don’t think I mentioned the word “right” anywhere.
“Perhaps Matthew, being an Australian, isn’t aware that our American Founding Fathers wanted to avoid the government cracking down on criticism of it.”
And Matthew, being an Australian, isn’t a part of your government. And I’m hardly cracking down on anything
“Now, if the higher prices were purely the result of market forces …
It just isn’t that simple. OPEC also artificially regulates supply. And the real bottlenecks aren’t all in the pumping, or drillers could just sink more bores in existing fields. Refining is also a big problem – refineries are big, expensive things with vast quantities of capital tied up in them. Down our way, the pump price of diesel has been affected much more by refinery capacity in asia than the supply of crude oil. I imagine it’s much the same where you are.
From a pump price point of view, it just doesn’t matter if the gulf is being drilled by an american company (hint: there’s no such thing anyway) or a mexican company (hint: it’s probably the same company). Just because a company drills in US waters, don’t expect that prices will be skewed in the US’ favor. It’s (basically) a global market. The only way the US is going to get a better deal is trade distortion … and I think that would be a bad idea.
daxypoo
“400 km? how many miles is that ffs?”
About 250.
americans dont use the metric system in casual dialogue
See, you really don’t comprehend supply and demand.
It doesn’t matter what company produces a product or where they’re based out of, more product lowers the price. Simple as that.
If we had more wells, the price would go down. That’s economics 101.
You are right on one thing… we can’t depend on OPEC to increase supply, so we need to increase the non-OPEC supply… and that means wells in the Gulf of Mexico, and ANWR, and anywhere else in the US that has oil.
“See, you really don’t comprehend supply and demand.”
Oh, I do. You just don’t comprehend the size of the global oil market.
“It doesn’t matter what company produces a product or where they’re based out of, more product lowers the price. Simple as that.”
Sure. But I think you need to have a look at the figures on reserves and capacity to get an idea of how much difference drilling in the US could make, and you need to consider the fact that other (much more massive) producers can afford to reduce their output to keep prices up. The US could double its production and opec would barely notice. Here’s a list of opec countries and their output in bbl/day (as of 2008)
2,180,000 Algeria1,835,000 Angola
505,100 Ecuador
4,172,000 Iran
2,420,000 Iraq (and obviously this one is growing fast)
2,271,000 Kuwait
1,550,000 Libya
1,825,000 Nigeria
1,208,000 Qatar
8,146,000 Saudi Arabia
2,271,000 United Arab Emirates
2,175,000 Venezuela
Total: 30,558,100 billion bbl/dayAnd that’s not even counting:
9,920,000 Russia2,602,000 Mexico
3,220,000 Canada
3,991,000 China
2,531,000 EU
Total: 22,264,000
What was the US production? 4,950,000. You can double that, and OPEC would need to reduce its production (which it WILL do) by 16% to keep supply stable. They can do that overnight – doubling your production will take years. Even if they ignore you, the total impact on supply would be about 8%.
“You are right on one thing… we can’t depend on OPEC to increase supply,”
But you can rely on them to reduce it. And you just aren’t big enough to offset that. By all means, drill to make money, but don’t expect it to reduce crude prices.
“so we need to increase the non-OPEC supply… and that means wells in the Gulf of Mexico, and ANWR, and anywhere else in the US that has oil.”
That’s also a fairly short-term fix. You’ve only got about 15% of the world’s reserves. OPEC has most of the rest.
Meanwhile, china is growing fast, and refinery constraints are probably more important in the short term anyway.
I will bring up a point I see no mention of: what is going to happen to the thousands of construction workers( and contractors) like myself who need those “large gas -guzzling” pickups to do our jobs? To pull/haul the loads we need to, we need the large powerful vehicles we drive. We will have no choice but to raise our prices, passing the cost on to the consumer. This will further prevent those on a limited income from hiring us to do home improvements , additions, etc. Those folks in the grading/excavating business will really be hit hard, because fuel is a BIG expenditure. Before the resident trolls point out that most heavy equipment uses diesel fuel (if they are even smart enough to know that),if the price of gasoline goes up, do you think the price of diesel won’t?
Thank you Rick for sticking up for construction workers. I don’t know what it is like back in your part of the country, but out here in the West, diesel fuel costs MORE than gas!
Hybrids, global climate change, any way you look at the problems its about controlling the little man’s life.
I hope the little man realizes his plight and votes in 2012!
By the way methane is the answer and no one ever talks about our vast quantities.
We’re talking about it here in Ohio. Governor-Elect Kasich (Rep.) wants to open several areas in northeast Ohio for natural gas exploration, because the fields there extend under Pennsylvania and are already being exploited across the state line. Simply put, we could use the energy, not to mention the money.
As you might expect, our local “environmental groups” (all of whom backed Strickland, the losing incumbent Democrat governor) are already gearing up to stop it before it starts, with endless court cases, protests, threats- all their usual tactics, in other words. I wouldn’t be a it surprised to learn that most of it is being run out of OSU, aka Berkeley East. With a lot of help from the state Democratic Party committee, of course, who are determined to put Strickland (aka Lee Fisher’s Sock Puppet) back in the State House in 2014.
You’d think people would be on to their game by now.
clear ether
eon
Don’t forget about slapping the evil oil companies with windfall profit taxes as was liberal mantra when prices rose under evildoer Bush. And the EVIL Bush/Cheney team profiting from the high prices!! So now is it the EVIL Obama/Biden/oil company axis of evil profiting from high prices?? Liberals, where is your protest of this axis of evil?
Haven’t you figured out yet, that it’s Obama’s plan to show he can control whatever he wants to control?
Greywolf
Methane . . . oh wow we burn it and it produces gold, right. WE BURN IT . . . get it . . . BURN IT!!! The only gold produced by methane is the gold that is taken from your pocket by cap & trade (or anything that does essentially the same thing). Butane is not Methane is not natural gass LNG is altoghether different product and the storage facilities and infrastructure of massive distribution of LNG dosn’t exist.
Is LNG a fuel that is readily available no, period. I think sometimes people who expound on METHANE must be ether addicts or are just spouting off because they have heard the word.
Wake up get off the ether.
I think the war on energy production in the USA is even more ominous than obvious. I think the Chinese have laid down the law on the USA, telling us if we want future loans we need to stop using our own resources. General Chi Haotian said it all in a speech not too long ago. The Chinese need elbow room, just like the Germans did in the 1930′s, and plan to colonize North America. They will need those energy resources when the colonization begins in earnest. What they won’t need is us. Just like their colonization of Africa, they intend to de-populate our land without destroying the resources and infrastructure they will need in the future.
You might consider some linkage for your assertions.
That, or a check-up on your medications and their efficacy.
Perhaps, but the Chinese have another thing coming. We need to remind them that we can still wipe out 90% of their population in half an hour and colonize what’s left of them ourselves.
The Chinese aren’t up to projecting force at that level. Period.
The People’s Liberation Army is the single largest armed force on Earth- for about the next twenty years. After that, the Chinese government’s “one child” policy of the last twenty years will catch up with them.
For reasons of tradition and economics, most Chinese fathers “chose” to have boys, not girls, especially in the provinces. (The methods weren’t always nice, or even legal.) The result is that in this generation, China just doesn’t have enough young, fertile women to avoid a major population crash in the next generation. What they have is a large number of young men who haven’t got a hope in H**l of ever having a wife, and family. Large numbers of young, frustrated men, in a society that is heavily extended-family oriented, make great raw material for a large-economy-sized army with an equally big chip on its shoulder. You just have to figure out how to use it before they get past their “best before” date for heavy combat, which is about age 40.
As to how they could use it, forget attacking us. They Can’t Get Here. They probably can’t even get to Taiwan, or Japan. The vaunted People’s Liberation Army Navy, or PLAN, is spending billions to build a few boomers (SSBNs) and an aircraft carrier, plus escorts. These are great for prestige, and even good for sea control and limited force projection, as a “fleet in being”- but they are notably lacking in serious amphibious warfare assets. They have nothing like our modern LSDs (Land Ship, Dock), or even WW II era LSTs (Landing Ship, Tank). Their amphib capability is about at the river crossing level- which was where the Germans were when they were planning Operation Seelowe (Sea Lion), the projected invasion of England, in 1940. The Wehrmacht gave up when they realized that the English Channel was wider than the Maas River (which they crossed to invade Belgium on the morning of 10 May 1940). The Taiwan Strait is wider than the Channel; ditto the Sea of Japan. In amphibious warfare terms, the PLA is like the old joke about an atheist in a grave; all dressed up and no place to go.
As to where they can go, read “The Bear and the Dragon” by Tom Clancy. The only feasible target for the PLA, with a reward commensurate with the risk of going to war, is Siberia. Lots of natural resources as yet unexploited, and very difficult for the present owners to defend, both due to some of the most god-awful terrain on Earth. Crossing the Amur River and seizing it won’t be any walk in the park, either, but if they can move north in force, and cut the major transport artery from the western half of Russia (the Trans-Siberian Railway), the Russians will have a b***h of a time evicting them.
(The only other viable target, India, is out of the question for several reasons. Mainly the fact that the Himalayas are in the way, plus the fact that India has a large army and air force and has in the past had no compunction about using both on anybody fool enough to try to bulldog them.)
Their main interest in us, in this context, would be ensuring that we didn’t interfere with their “Northern Resource Area” version of the “Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere”. With a President like John Patrick Ryan, in Clancy’s novel, they could count on us “interfering” in every way we could think of.
With a President like The Self-Exalted One, it’s a whole different ball game. Which I suspect they think they can win by default- because they’d be counting on us not to show up at the field on game day.
And they’d probably be right.
clear ether
eon
Good post.
China has more economic problems than we think as well. Sure their GDP growth has been high, but when 80% of the population still live as primatives it takes more than a decade of 5-10% growth to reach western standards. They have dozens of empty ghost cities, which probably means that “central planning” fails a lot (surprise), or even worse, rural chinese resist moving to cities. You mentioned the overabundance of males which could turn into a huge problem for them. Men without access to women have a tendancy to become angry and that anger could explode in unexpected directions. If I’m not mistaken, they also don’t have sufficient internal fuel supplies. They are creating a two-class society that is so stratified that problems are bound to occur. I also believe their language and writing sytem is a detriment, although they seem to have done a good job overcoming it to this point. If you believe like I do that rigid oppressive government control is a recipe for failure, then you have to say that the recent advances are not all that they are cracked up to be.
Despite Friedman’s love affair (he just loves tyrannies, doesn’t he), the prospects for China becoming the dominant world power in the very near future are low. Two or three decades isn’t nearly enough to go from nothing to something while managing the expectations of a billion and a half people.
Thanks.
Putting all those unattached young men in the Army is one way to defuse the potential problem you correctly pointed out. The fact that China, the original “hydraulic state”, has a cultural tradition of nearly-blind obedience to authority figures also works in the government’s favor in this context.
On the other hand, historically, revolts against the government in China have always been called “peasant revolts” because they began in the provinces. But with few exceptions (notably the Taiping Rebellion) those revolts only became a problem when army units joined them- because they had the guns.
The problem in the past was local governors who were in essence feudal warlords; the army units tended to be more loyal to their local “boss” than to Peking. China may have changed the name of the capital to Beijing, and changed from Imperial rule to Communist rule, but in the ways that count nothing important has changed.
The Communists may have worse fashion sense than the Imperials, and a justification for tyranny more to the liking of Paul Krugman, but out in the countryside, where it counts, nothing important has changed. China is a huge and disparate land held together by a vast bureaucracy, backed up by naked force- the army.
It will only last as long as the men with guns don’t decide that they can get a better deal under a different sort of rule.
cheers
eon
Oh, but don’t you see? Obama is the smartest person in the room, or even the nation. He knows what is best for you. His judgment easily surpasses the collective judgment of hundreds of millions of individual consumers who make small economic decisions each day.
Soon His administration will re-instate school prayers across the nation so that, at least, our children will see the Light. “Our Father, Obama, who art in Washington. Hallowed be thy name. Thy utopian kingdom is come. Thy legislative and regulatory will be done……”
God save our Republic from this man.
mmmm…mmmm…mmmm
Look people, the “Anointed One” makes his chess move’s and us babbling humans need to realize that the unbelieving conspiracy “heathen” understate the issues when they say that Obama is a radical. Alas, they know not the secrets we are all going to witness. The “Anointed One” is amazing (and according to Biden: he’s so brillant), and takes the people at the highly efficient Post Office and sends them right over to the Student Loan Program. The “Anointed One” knows all. Twitter messages were machine-gunned to cell phones at mach speed. Facebook and MySpace groups spread across the Internet like digital fire. YouTube videos featuring celebrities ricocheted across the globe and into college students’ in-boxes with devastating regularity. All the while, the Obama mega-money-raising engine whirred on at high speed, until the result became inevitable: an unthinking mass of young voters marched forward to elect the “Anointed One.”
I am not surprised to hear these stinking lies about our “Anointed One,” it should be apparent to anyone that this was coming down the pike. I do have a couple questions about future process steps concerning these developments? When the “Annointed One” decides to start bar-coding everyone, will we get to decide if the mark is on our hand or forehead? Allot of people will prefer the hand, (especially women of course), unless your a porn actress or something along those lines. Also, my girlfriend was wondering if the Administration will be getting fashion advice from Hollyweird or the New York City crowd? We are both agree that the Administration “Maoies” as the “Anointed One ” so lovingly calls them,will be getting uniforms similar to the SS uniforms in Germany in WW2. With big letters abreviating “Barack’s Socialists.” So shall we start calling them the BS?
It’s really ‘checkers’, and everybody makes moves that won’t hurt our Emperors feelings.
Playah8ta – yes, takes two, BUT how about LIMITING THE # OF illegitimate children we PAY FOR in welfare pmts??? HUH? How about you get ONE on us, the rest are on you! This government giveaway has fostered a very large class of ‘bread-winners’ who pump out baby after baby – because, after all, they are bringing home the bacon for the whole family. This has to be the solution, as forced sterilization after one welfare baby would never fly in America…so we will sterilize their monthly payments!!
It’s just part of Obama’s (political) jihad against the U.S. The muslim brotherhood has always said “They will bring down our miserable house from within”. I ask you, “How better a way can there be to accomplish this than to put a card-carrying moslem in the oval office”?
After forty years engineering energy technologies, 24 nukes and 48 fossil power plants, and a decade assessing advanced energy technologies, I have come to some hard conclusions:
America probably will fail, due to our energy hiatus. The only technologies that can sustain our economy, nuclear power plants, and fossil (hydrocarbon fueled )power plants, comprising over 2/3 of our electric generation, are de facto illegal. We may not use our centuries of coal supply, and we are choking on spent fuel. This is purposeful. Dominant politicians, ignorant of technology and commerce, are driving us to cost levels which will make their favorite green technologies competitive. However, our economy will bankrupt before we get there.
There will be no break throughs in green energy technologies which will sustain a vibrant future economy. Experts have searched, there is none. Example: Battery technology will never be competitive as a main propulsion technology for vehicles. Engineers have looked for almost two centuries. Example: There are technical reasons why sailing ships lost out to coal fired propeller driven warships. Example: Our entire computerized society relies on an electric grid powered by facilities which were built by your grandfathers.
We are losing, or have lost our technical expertise. Bright young people do not enter engineering schools for one simple reason. Their fathers, nuclear power plant engineers, or nuclear qualified welders, were laid off a generation ago. If one surveys the collapse of the smoke stack industries, tours the deserted, decaying cities in Ohio, Indianan, or Pennsylvania, they can see the result.
As fuel cost rise, there will be more lay-offs and bankruptcies. No business, working on razor thin profit margins can withstand higher operating costs.
The above is purposeful. It is the stated policy of our government. It does not matter whether they know, or care. This is our future.
At some point, even if we turned 180 degrees on energy policy and adopted an industrial policy similar to the World War II armament policy within our nation, we could lose to competitive foreign nations. We are at, or have past, this point. I do not know when. But I am certain the generations of talking politicians is over. Based on present policy, build nothing that is cost effective, anywhere, the USA will go out of existence.
Totally correct Mr. Hails . . . I am both a nuclear engineer and a nuclear qualified welder . .. have not had a job around the nuclear plants for right at 20 years now. I have zero hope of ever working in the nuclear field again. I do have friends that work in the nuclear field and they all consider that they are “riding the wave of rebirth”. There is a little glow of hope in the industry . . . funny though . . . the Areva’s, Mitsubishi’s and Hatachi’s seem to be the only models avaiable. Opps . . . oh we sold the technology to them didn’t we?
In order to understand why Barry does what he does,you need to understand that he is an ANTI-COLONIALIST. He is living the dreams that his Kenyan father had…. and just as his dad saw Britain as a invader,an oppressor,a murderer…. Barry sees America as the same. He feels that we need to be punished,we need to give up our label as Global Protector and become like everyone else. When you hear him talk about letting gas prices go to 7$…. he is only doing this because he needs the “evil”oil companies on his side in order to continue his punishment of America.
Why should Obama or any of the politicians care about the price of gas or food or utilities? They are being well taken care of, by stealing and lying to the American people. The poor are going to be hit the hardest just like always! Further more they do not care what color you are, we are all f–king peasants to the elite class. Like I wrote before I feel really sorry for my black brothers and sisters. They have been free for 146 tears, now slaves again to Obama care. It is ironic that a black man was the first person to own a black slave here. Now we have Obama half black and half white and he is making all of us slaves to Obama care. Just ask Obama , how many black babies have you killed [abortions] since becoming president? Planned Parent Hood was created to control the birth`s of the black population. It was started by a white women, Margret Sanger. So please do not tell me that Obama or the black caucus care a dam about poor blacks!
HEY MODERATOR…WHAT’S YOUR PROBLEM?
YOU’LL POST GARBAGE LIKE THIS ““f their penises just randomly shot sperm into random vaginas everywhere they walked). Cry me a GD river and get a vasectomy or stop cumming in every random cum-dumpster, guys. It’s disgusting and it takes two to make a welfare baby mama.”
But I can’t get a rant / comment up on the topic warning that we’re being scammed? And calling the states out for a revolution? Like the one where a half dozen states want a law like Arizona’s? Or independence from the bankruptcy of our government or our corrupt politicians?
Where am I…in Venezuela?
Abdul Kareema Wheat, you think it is hard now for you to put up a rant comment now. Just wait till the FCC gets rolling!
What should happen? Several things IMHO.
One…we know that these increases are bogus and artificial. Once more the speculators and commodity traders are out from under their rocks after the fiasco they foisted on us back in 07 / 08. With their pushing oil prices up to $150 per barrel.
Their reward? A “crackdown” on speculators for a few months? Now we’re back at the mercy of these same greedy bastards with Government handouts / welfare / bailouts.
Are we all so stupid that we don’t see this same scam all over again? Worse yet these corrupt pols who are tied at the hips with their big oil umbilical cord for cash, bribes and their campaign financing. Anyone ever wonder how a pol gets elected his net worth is a few grand….then one term later he / she is worth millions?
That’s not what happens to us folks. Not by a long shot. Year after year we see our net worth and opportunities plummet…our 401k’s, CD’s and retirement funds erased or depleted. Now again…they want to suck us dry with tax increases, obama care, welfare frauds, illegals, the bankruptcy of states by the vampire unions and enough money to afford a tank of gas…all of which YOU are responsible for! Not the pols who we elected who have failed us for the last 30 years.
Wouldn’t you think that a real revolution is in order? We started with this last election, yet it appears that it’s still going to be business as usual. ( BTW…how was your Holiday? Your Christmas? Did you splurge this year or give out BP gift certificates? )
Not to worry…the pols have it made.
I digress….now we’re all yapping about “we’ll get them in 2012″…bovine excrement folks. Too late. This government is so entrenched, so corrupt so overwhelming…there’s not enough Rand’s or Palins to make one damn bit of difference.
I’d like to see the revolt start with the states. It was the states that got us where we are now…a so called “United States”. Now I see a time where the states refuse the dictates of the feds….refuse to have their rights superseded by the rats in DC. Refuse to turn over their mineral rights and assets to the Feds….who make them off limits to their citizens by creating national parks or refuges….or sanctuaries.
States like Colorado, Utah, ND, SD, Montana, Texas, Ohio, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Oklahoma….states that produce our energy…states that would join together to create an “Organization of Petroleum Exporting Independent States”.
States that shouldn’t wait for some bureaucrat to issue a permit to drill on their own lands…states that would demand their sovereignty back. Imagine how much energy would be unleashed on the open market then? Remember when the crap hit the fan from outraged citizens…gas dropped like a stone…from over $4 per gallon to $1.60 by December of 2008. Hell I was paying 1.97 by May of 2009 in North Carolina!
It wasn’t but a few weeks ago that I read( right here at PJM ) that our total oil / gas consumption in the US…is DOWN 8 to 10%! and it’s not likely to go back up.
That we have a glut of oil and gas available! That we have a surplus and that DEMAND is NOT outstripping SUPPLY!
Draw your own conclusions. Market’s should reflect less demand =’s lower prices.
By having the states take over their own resources ( the Bakken oil deposits ) we should be independent.
Who are the real terrorists today? Greens, Dems, EPA and the government is the biggest threat to energy independence that we have today. Long ago we should have told Mexico, Venezuela, Canada and the Arabs to piss off.
Who will you be cursing when you’re forking over another $20 per tank just to get to work…or a few hundred a month.
Another solution is to deny the pols in DC to have their vehicles fueled by US…the taxpayer. These turds get almost $200K per year and we give them credit cards to pump gas?
They need to know just what it it their doing to us. THEY NEED to pay, in more ways than one.
Then I suggest you prepare for the revolution. We’ll try nonviolent methods as long as there is still some hope of them working. We will not start this war. However, we will be prepared to fight should our own government make war on us.
News FlasH….!
In other national news, Congress passes and President Obama signs into law a financial-reform act designed to curb Wall Street excesses by mandating the death penalty for anybody caught wearing a watch costing more than a house. Having guaranteed that the financial community will behave in a responsible manner, Washington returns to the important work of running up the deficit.
And there you have it.
The state of DC today?
“Getting back to reality: The 2010 election season enters its final days with polls showing that Congress enjoys the same overall level of voter popularity as hemorrhoids. Incumbents swarm out of Washington and head for their home districts to campaign on the theme of how much they hate Washington, in the desperate hope that the voters will return them to Washington.”
“Arkansas game officials hope testing scheduled to begin Monday will solve the mystery of why up to 5,000 blackbirds fell from the sky just before midnight New Year’s Eve.”
They refused to buy into Obama Care or they couldn’t afford the gas to migrate?
Black Bird…bye bye.
The points at the original post are all good, but they don’t go far enough. Many, many Americans work at jobs that require individual transportation, whether they are plumbers, contractors, pet groomers, caterers, lawncare workers, or real estate agents. $7 gas won’t just force some people to ride the bus. It will eliminate viable economic and vocational options for a lot of people.
It will also make it cost-prohibitive for many industries to deliver goods to distant markets. Consumers will be willing to pay only so much for most items. There will be industries that simply vanish, farms and manufacturing plants that go under, retailers that have to close their doors. The trucking industry will be hard hit.
Fewer people will travel. Of even greater importance, hospitals and schools will, on the margins, have trouble keeping their utilities operating. Police and fire departments will have to curtail activities. Ambulance service will be compromised.
Don’t bother to denigrate these predictions as alarmist. The tipping point may not be at $7 gas; it may be at $8 gas or $10 gas. But there is a tipping point at which those who operate services and businesses and homes can no longer reorder their priorities. The profile of operations itself — the purpose of the enterprise — will have to be fundamentally altered.
Life as we known it cannot survive unaffordable gas. For Obama’s advisors, that is actually the point. Remember, the increase we are witnessing in gas prices right now is artificially induced. The phenomenon is created by government policy. It is not the fault of your neighbor, the Saudis, or an indifferent fate. It is happening because the US government wants it to. The Obama administration wants to make it impossible for us to live the lives we are accustomed to.
Do the math, then kiss all flickering signs of recovery good bye.
As gas, oil, natural gas and coal prices rise, so will the cost of every conceivable item, from food to cotton, wool and wingnuts. We will pay more at the gas pump, grocery store, restaurant, coffee house, office supply store, gardening store, etc. etc. etc. The cost of all raw materials will rise. (It takes energy to mine, transport and process metals and raw materials.) Every business throughout the country will face rising supply costs that will more than offset any feeble boost from the temporary extension of the Bush tax rates.
Obama giveth with one hand, and with the other, he taketh away.
Higher fossil fuel costs will be devasting. It will cost farmers more to grow all food sources, from beans to beef. It will cost them more to ship goods to market. It will cost more for food processors to process and transport prepared foods. It will cost more to raise sheep and shear wool, plant and process cotton, or extract viscose and rayon, so clothing costs will rise too.
It will cost us more at the pump AND the turnstile AND the car-battery recharging station AND the airport AND the commuter rail station. Whatever the mode and destination, it will cost materials, goods and people more to get there.
Every basic comfort – heat, air conditioning, hot water, electricity, potable water, etc. – requires energy. Live in a cold climate? Welcome to Obama’s USA, where homes and offices are 58 degrees in winter and 90 degrees in summer. Live in the south? Ditto. (Our government, will of course pass legislation exempting all government facilities from the need to reduce basic energy costs during this period.)
Love that technology (energy “tricklers” like TV, phone, computer, etc. etc.)? Soon, all the modern conveniences will be things you love to hate, because they suck energy dollars 24/7/365. However, if you run a business, you may not have the option of cutting back without hampering operations. Who needs the 4th of July, when you can watch your costs rocket thru the roof?! O-BOOMa! Splatosi!
In Obama World, electricity magically appears in an outlet. How keen! Plug your car or device into an outlet. Bippity-boppity-boop, you have energy! In the real world (aka: the dimension the rest of us occupy), rising energy prices reduce buying power as we shift money to an ever-shorter list of essentials. (Food or energy? Fuel for the truck or the combine?) Meanwhile, more businesses close, more jobs disappear, more production shifts to China et al, unemployment remains painfully high or grows worse, and the economy stalls or goes into a tailspin.
As long as this man and his minions remain in power, we’re in very deep yogurt, and it appears to be rising. I grew up on tales of the hardships of the Depression. Who knew these weren’t stories, they were how-to manuals for survival in 2011. I should’ve paid more attention …
At 4$ a liter, your fuel would still be considerably cheaper than fuel here in ausralia, or in most other developed countries. That’s about $1.05 a liter. I filled up at $1.25 a liter last week.
Don’t expect a lot of sympathy
Matthew, I am not looking for sympathy over our gas prices. What I am pi-sed about is the American taxpayer sent 2 billion dollars to Mexico so they can drill in the Gulf. Obama will not allow American companies to drill in the Gulf. America also sent 2 billion dollars, taxpayer money, to Brazil so they can they can drill for oil off their coast in deeper water than in the Gulf. While Obama had the moratorium on stopping American companies from drilling for oil. I will bet you can not guess where two of the non working oil platforms went. Brazil!!!
The cost of gas in Oz just indicates that in the gasoline tax arena the Oz gov-mint is even more out of control than the US gov-mint. You don’t get my sympathy, but you do get my empathy and you should work on getting your gov-mint back under control.
Where does Barry think the power to recharge electric vehicle comes from? The electric car battery fairy that swoops down every evening and somehow magically recharges all those very expensive batteries. Nooooo, sorry Barry, and Debbie Wassermann Schultz (why do we always have to use all three of her names anyway?) and all the rest. I for one don’t believe U.S. citizens are going to settle for simply switching to electric vehicles or mass transit. We’re going to fight back like we did in November with the Tea Party. We have plenty of oil and coal and natural gas. Let’s develop and use our natural resources and allow the ingenuity and inventiveness of Americans find a solution to the energy problem. Besides, I like 4 wheeling with my Jeep Wrangler and somehow don’t see myself doing any hill climbing in a stupid little “smart car”.
Don’t forget that these little batteries that are in the cars and used for solar don’t last forever…I have always wondered if the “green” whackos give a thought to where these batteries will end up…battery heaven perhaps? Or maybe the same place that all those mercury laden CFLs go….
This is fun.
“And it will cause many working parents to travel to the office or the shop on mass transit for the first time…”
Oh, Jebus say it isn’t so!!!!
Those poor, poor people having to rough-it on public transportation. Maybe even (hush) a bus. SAY IT ISN’T SO!!!!! LOL!!!
And walking to Wal-Mart? LOL!!!! Who lives close enough to a Wal-Mart to walk? That statement is just dumb!
A high gas price now (with most of it being tax) is the best way to help the economy adjust to the upcoming fuel shortage. High prices will drive the market toward developing alternative ways (nuclear) of providing electricity. Electric cars are the future.
Without a high gas tax – the fantasies many on this board have about the “every man (and his guns) for himself” may well come true.
For a little while.
Then the cops will come out and round up every last one of you conspiracy-theory believing, militia want to-be, dorks and put you in jail.
That will be a good day.
“Then the cops will come out and round up every last one of you conspiracy-theory believing, militia want to-be, dorks and put you in jail.”
Might be time for you to check out Oath Keepers…where law enforcement officers, soldiers promise to never take up arms against honest citizens over their oppressive government….twerp. BTW: The “militia” of which you so mockingly speak of ( moron ) is and are citizens and citizen soldiers. Like the National Guard.
Nate you show yourself as a man of very little knowledge of what an American is. You all so do not understand freedom or what our forefathers gave us. It is not the price of gas but what the price of fuel will do to everything you need to live, the cost will be unaffordable. Do not joke about guns, I am buying up ammunition now not to harm someone. If I see a hungry person and I have food I will share the food as well as any other necessities I poses. I am buying ammunition to protect me and my family. be Sir you have no idea of how bad a human can treat another human being. Who is going to run your mass transit or who will be able to afford to ride on your mass transit?
Two points. First, the price of a gallon of gas is going up (now) predominantly because the dollar is being deliberately depreciated. For evidence, compare the value of a dollar against gold, silver, copper, wheat, rice, cotton, and coffee. They are ALL going up significantly against the dollar. So remember when seeing the change in any commodity price in dollars, check the price of other commodities as well. This is a deliberate plan caused by QE1 and QE2. Expect to see it continue in 2011.
Second point: Keep the meme alive: All Your Base Are Belong To Us! See: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5fV_KxVwZjU&NR=1&feature=fvwp
Obama stopped all offshore drilling and exploration so Al Gore will come back.
Let’s see. As the price of gas skyrockets so will the cost of living. As the cost of living skyrockets the progressives will necessarily have to accelerate the transfer of wealth to the poor in order for them to keep up with the cost of living, which will cause the national debt to further climb into the stratosphere.
Americans destroying America. Cloward-Piven were deluded geniuses.
So what will….do?
Revolt, riot, rebel….
when you got nothin’ you got nothin’ to lose. And incentive to take from those who have.
you are all losers lmfao
start walking yeast people of america
hahahahahahahaha
cant wait to see you all paying 10 bucks per gallon
lolololololol
Don’t forget the ‘men’ who contribute more welfare queens to the ‘welfare state’ by playing ‘alpha stud’ and not paying for the children they willingly create with their harems of women. These are the same idiot men who cry ‘victimhood’ when they have to pay child-support (as if their penises just randomly shot sperm into random vaginas everywhere they walked). Cry me a GD river and get a vasectomy or stop cumming in every random cum-dumpster, guys. It’s disgusting and it takes two to make a welfare baby mama.
The funny thing about gasoline going up is that everything is going to get more expensive (including groceries) and that is going to hurt everyone (including the pot-bellied pigs who suck off the government [i.e. taxpayer] teat).
You know how Shakespeare said, “First, we kill all the lawyers,” well, “Second, we kill all the philanderers.”