Do you remember the long gas lines? I think it started in the 70s when everybody began running out of gas. You had to gas up your car on odd or even days depending on your license plate.
The Doomsday-sayers were out in force declaring the end of the world as we know it. We were running out of oil. Our government began buying up oil and storing it in empty salt mines. We were trying to prepare for a future without oil. Little mini cars got popular. Electric cars made their debut. The green movement was born. People who drove “gas guzzlers” were criticized. SUVs lost their glamour. Bicycle riders in hideous spandex leotards and Flash Gordon helmets showed up on public streets. This was to be a new beginning of a world without oil.
Oil companies started raising the price of oil to the stratosphere. Gasoline prices followed and soon $3- and $4 gasoline was common. Oil-producing countries built their entire budgets on very expensive oil. The money flowed in and governments were happy. The spigot, they thought, would never run dry. All they had to do was to continue convincing the world there was a shortage of oil.
Well guess what? Yesterday’s oil shortage has become today’s oil glut. A glut of such proportions the oil companies cannot sell it. Oil tankers sit moored offshore with no place to unload their cargo. Gasoline-storage facilities are filled to the overflow. Prices have certainly come down: $120-a-barrel oil is now $30 oil; $4 gasoline is now $2 gasoline and promises to go even lower. Countries like Russia and Saudi Arabia are in trouble financially because of the price of oil.
For us, it’s good news. We can now better afford gasoline. Airline ticket prices should come down soon. This is the boon our economy needs. Happy days are here again. But wait. Wait, you say? Yes wait. The Obama Administration wants to add a $10-per-barrel tax on oil. They believe the price of oil and gasoline is too cheap. Some say the proposed tax increase on oil would translate to a 25-cent-per-gallon increase in the cost of gasoline. Others say it would be much higher.
The Obama Administration cannot stand to see the opportunity for a tax increase go by and not take advantage of it. They believe they are much better spenders of money than the citizens. They have said this would go a long way toward financing the green movement. Cleaner air. Cleaner environment. Cleaner everything ad nauseam. What it really is is an opportunity for the government to steal money from the citizens to pay for more government.
Fortunately, so far, the Republican Congress has said clearly the Obama proposal is dead on arrival in the Congress. Let’s hope they stand their ground.
This is the basic difference between conservatives and liberals. The liberals want to tax everything and then control the spending of that money whereas the conservatives believe the people are much better suited to spend or save the money made available by the cheaper oil. For a certainty the economy is much better off when the people have money to spend. To take that money away for political purposes should be a criminal act.
I don’t know about you, but I would much rather pay $1.50 for a gallon of gas than to sit by while our government sends billions to foreign countries for who knows what. Here’s a novel idea: Let’s let the market decide what the price of oil should be and governments and oil companies stay out of it. Both they, as well as we the people, would be much better off with a strengthened economy.
