Wednesday, March 30, 2011
Gas Prices Or Bust
As gas prices shoot up, our wallets are emptied. Americans are steadily growing more fearful of the looming $5.00 per gallon gas predictions and they are turning to the government for answers. Here’s my answer, stop those rebels in Libya. While the answer is simple enough, the execution is another story. Our government is afraid of over-throwing the rebels because of the repercussions that are sure to come, our third war. While I agree with these hesitations, I still have to ask myself if sky-rocketing oil and gas prices are worth it. This time last year, oil cost on average $72.90 a barrel. Today we are looking at $104 a barrel. Sure if gas prices continued to rise gradually, we could make it work. Life goes on, it always does. But with oil prices skyrocketing, sooner rather than later, other consumer commodities will have noticeable price jumps. For instance, food, clothing, and tire prices are soon to get higher. Farmers are raising crop prices due to gas prices in transporting the good. Clothing and tires are only two more examples of this same domino effect. The American people will have to start cutting spending expenses from here and there. Before we know it, there will be nothing left in the budget for all the fun stuff. There will be less eating out, no more movie nights at the theater or shopping sprees. I don’t know about anyone else, but there goes my livelihood. I know there is no easy solution to this problem, but the government has got to get in there and do something to help its people. We can’t spend as much every day, okay that’s fine. What about those businesses that people stop contributing to because of budget cuts? The café down your street goes out of business due to high food costs and lack of leisurely customers eating out. The alterations shop three miles away shuts down because no one can afford to have alterations done when their cars are costing them double what they did a couple months ago. When we look at it in a bigger scheme of things rather than just gas prices, the price of oil is much more detrimental in the long run. If the government isn’t going to get in there and seize the oil refineries in the west, do something else. Do anything to get the prices down.
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ReplyDeleteLately, our nations dependency on oil seems to be hitting Americans where it hurts most. The wallet. In Emily Nichole Cook's post, "Gas Prices or Bust", she captures how consumerism is effected by our nation's fuel prices and what it really means by supply and demand. To read the full article click here. Cook states that spikes in fuel prices at the pump instead of the gradual increases we are all used to, tend to cause a downhill effect on other products and services. For example, with the sudden spike in fuel prices, farmers costs are higher, therefore, corn goes up. Corn is fed to domesticated food animals, which costs more to feed, and not to mention the transport expenses to get from point A to point B. So this is reflected on the consumer with a substantial increase at the grocery. Just the other day, I couldn't believe that bacon was at $3 bucks for the off-brand and close to $6 bucks for name brand. I feel that Cook's blog post really summarizes how Americans spending is curbed by high prices at the pump and how business' suffer as consequence. I say open our nation's reserves to take some slack out of the sting and continue forward on rebuilding our already teetering economy. I feel that this post was very informative and Cook's thought process that went into it "hit the nail on the head".
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