Bad Gas

Oil prices!

They are through the roof right now. Trading at 126.98 at the close of the day. Everyone has an opinion on it, and it's mostly that pumping gas has become a wallet-raping menace and must be stopped. Everyone's got ideas. Like

The Gas Tax Holiday: This is a horrible idea. It's a good immediate solution, i guess, but over all very bad. The gas tax isn't that high and the government needs that $30/month revenue. It won't help the average person in the United States who has a car at all. Some taxes are necessary, not income. The whole tax system needs to be changed. A consumption based tax would be a great thing, such as the Fair Tax,, but that's another post. This tax elimination is just stupid pandering to demographics.

Windfall Profits tax: This is essentially taxing the prophets over what the oil company made about 4 years ago before the huge oil spikes. Horrible idea. This tax will just get passed down to the consumer. Every time there is a tax on goods that a company sells, they tack it onto the price of gas and force the consumer to take it in the wallet. This would be no difference

The high price of oil is caused by the oil exporting countries that withhold supply to A) get more money and B) Preserve a finite resource. This works as oil prices have shown. As long these countries can get away with it, they will take every advantage they can of oil-gorging nations to get more money because a decent amount of these countries' economies are based largely or only on oil exports.

So how do we get gas prices lower? Remove dependence. If we don't need gas, then we won't have to pay for it. The problem is that too many rich people make too much money off of oil for it ever to be eliminate in America. In the end, it will be up to the consumers. Eventually, gas will be at such high prices that people are going to use alternative forms of energy. More hybrid cars, for example. I've talked to two people at the pump who said they recently bought cars instead of trucks due to high gas prices. More car pooling could be a result. either way, the market as it is, will move us off of dependence on oil.

This will also take us out of our many foreign entanglements. Dictators like Hugo Chavez, the Iran Shiite leadership, Russia, quickly turning that way, and the harsh Saudi government, will have no power over the United States by being able to hold oil over out heads.

It'll get worse before it gets better, but if there's one thing I know: it's that the American people will eventually decide for themselves to eliminate dependency on oil.