Who Am I?

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A nobody; a nitwit; a pilot; a motorcyclist; a raconteur; a lover...of life - who loves to laugh, who tries to not take myself (or anything) too seriously...just a normal guy who knows his place in the universe by being in touch with my spiritual side. What more is there?

15 November 2008

$1.90 Per Gallon??

Are you kidding me: $1.90 per gallon? But yeah, that's what I saw it for today. And it'll probably go lower than that.

Back when gasoline went to nearly $4.00/gallon, we didn't think it would ever come back down. "Peak oil!" they screeched. "We're using it up faster than we can produce it! We're gonna run out!" All sorts of dire warnings were issued. India was going to take all of the oil...China too! Oh dear, what were we going to do?! Sales of big trucks went in the tank. People started riding motorcycles. Suddenly, my 20-mpg (highway) Jeep Grand Cherokee didn't seem like it got such great mileage after all. If I didn't have to fly, I didn't even think about going to the airport. Hell, the 120-mile round-trip burned six gallons, or put another way, cost me nearly twenty-five bucks!

But now gas is down to $1.90 and it's only costing me $38.00 to fill it up, not $77.00. That's money in my pocket, baby!

Hey Dubya and Obama, you guys wanna jump-start the economy? While you're throwing around those billions in of dollars in bailout money, how's about giving some to gasoline distributors and gas stations (not the big oil companies). Keep gas down around $2.00/gallon. I'll be going out to eat more often, buying more crap...hell, I might even take a trip or two in the car! How 'bout dem apples?

Subsidies for gas station owners! Now there's an idea we can all live and prosper with.

4 comments:

Bob said...

A great idea that makes perfect sense.

Last summer when gas started going up so steadily I said to anyone who would listen that it would only go down when we stopped using so much.

Go figure.

Anonymous said...

Yikes, Bob. I really hope you were being sarcastic in this post.

For one thing, even when it was $4/gallon, gas is already cheap. Go to Europe, where gas costs much, much more. They seem to be doing just fine.

For another, striving for cheap gas prices is horribly short-sighted -- ignoring issues and challenges like environmental damage, community health, urban planning, technological innovation and alternative energy, and the long-term prospects of our reliance on what really is a horrible source of energy.

I never thought this past spike was the beginning of the end, but oil will run out someday, and spikes like that are just a glimpse of what we might expect. And now that the price of gas has fallen again, what have we learned?

Bob Koford said...

Hi Bob B., and friends.

When it happened in the seventies, it started coming down again when they thought we'd had enough. Then it came down again and everyone said, "pshew! ok, lets just go back to what we were doing".

Then they did it again, and now that the rumblings are genuine, they are saying, "no, no...relax! See? Gas is coming down again. Lets not do anything rash."

Its time for a more final solution, not just the same way again.

And yes, $4.00 pg IS expensive for any giant business infrustructure
-such as, say, the Post Office. When vehicle transportation is your gig, every penny you spend on it counts!

Bob said...

Couldn't agree more, Bob K. A more permanent solution is definitely what is needed. We treat the symptoms.