Y’know, I think I’m about tired of folks complaining about gas prices. Increased prices are simply an aftereffect of increased wages. We all like increased wages, but few of us like increased prices [unless we’re selling something].
Do I like paying more for gas? No, not really. I’d like to spend my money on other things. But my demand for gasoline is pretty inelastic—I drive to get to work, and I drive to stay sane. It’s pretty inelastic for other folks, too, I’m sure. But, at the end of the day, the market generally finds a solution.
Now, do really poor folks have a beef here? Sure. Folks trying to hack it on minimum wage—don’t derail into a discussion of whether a minimum wage is a good idea; it’s the law of the land, so for now, let’s limit the scope of this discussion to the magnitude and not the existence—do get screwed out of this, because the artificial floor of the market hasn’t been indexed to inflation. [Mind you, there aren’t a plethora of jobs around here right at that minimum wage, but they exist.] But Jesus was right … you’ll always have the poor with you.
But the next SUV driver I see in Madison complaining about gas prices on the local news … well, pardon me if I feel like punching ’em in the face.
It might be time for a re-thinking of this opinion about gas prices. The local station near my home increased FOURTEEN CENTS in 24 hours! $2.75 – $2.89 for the cheap stuff! And this at a time when it’s reported that our oil reserves are at an 8 year high! Hello?
I wish Gas were $20.00 a Gal. then they would make cars that ran on somthing else, like hydrogen or electricity. The answer isn’t lower gas prices, the answer is, screw OPEC. Americans just need to make cars that run something else other than oil.
So encourage your Congresscritters to increase the Federal gasoline taxes. The state and local guys are way too wimpy to do it in most places.
Dont worry poor people cant afford to keep up cars anymore, gas prices dont effect them. If you open your eyes you’ll see the people working minimum wage traversing on foot through the sprawl.
You sir, are an idiot.
Good Day
You, sir, have paid zero attention to the logical argument made, nor the fact that this post is almost two years old. So, how about you take the advice of the spoof email address you used. 🙂
Lets see we can go to mars. We can build a space station. You kind of get the idea. MB comes out with a car that is the size of my shoe and it only gets 35miles per gal. So why can’t we make a car that get 60 to 70 miles per gallon??? I have a 2 seater sports car that has a supper charger on it and I get 29MPG on the highway.
You can kind of fill in the blanks. I have this feeling the good old American public is getting the screw job. I don’t hear anyone talking about this on the campaign trail. But we know big oil is a big backer of our dear legislators.
In Texas, and don’t make fun of Texas, minimum wage is $6.50 gas prices are 3.87. If They are rising gas prices why don’t raise minimum wage higher?
If we pegged wages to the increase of energy prices, it’d be an economic disaster. Please note that, in the original post—written nearly three years ago—I did argue that folks at the economic margins do have a beef. My rage was mainly aimed at SUV-driving yuppies here in my white-bread Huntsville suburb.
And with that, I’ll just close comments here. There’s nothing that seems to be added to the discussion at this point, as the people who’re commenting here clearly are missing my original point and venting—which, well, I understand. It sucks to pay $60 to fill my little WRX, but I made a choice and have to live with the consequences.