August 06, 2008 10:48 pm
—
... gasoline prices, as have many other writers here and elsewhere, but let’s face it: It’s a big deal, maybe bigger than a lot of folks think.
The leaps and bounds in dollar amounts that have adorned gas station signs for months (years?) now have changed the way we think about driving, that’s for sure. But it has done something else, too.
It has finally caused that great well-oiled machine known as the American shopper, the consumer if you will, to finally go gun shy. That greasy feeling in their guts, an alarm clock for the old fight-or-flight response, has reared its ugly self. Fear is here.
The consumer has carried the mail for this country’s economy for some time, no matter what the wheelers and dealers and backroom speculators have thrown at them.
But when speculators in the market place met a very real increase in demand for gasoline, it jump-started this yo-yo pricing and huge daily leaps in pump prices.
And, finally, we’ve hit the bump in the buyer’s road. The bump: Higher prices in stores and fear of just about everything to do with money.
Hey, let’s give credit where it’s due. The American shopper has always responded with the wallet when asked. Right after the attacks in New York and Washington, our president — for the first but not last time — requested this: Go shopping. Spend money. Or else the terrorists win.
And we did. We shopped. We bought houses we couldn’t afford. We went to plays in New York. We added another car to the driveway. And we had big Christmases and holidays.
We tried to deny this steamroller that we were watching. And we showed those terrorists we couldn’t be pushed around ... not us, boy.
But that was then and this is now. This new “oil” crisis has a different sting to it. Along with higher costs on everything energy-related, Americans have been hit with cost increases on food, drugs, services, travel, and goods of all kinds.
Siphoning of fuel tanks is back in vogue. Driveaways at service stations have led to the pay-before-you-fuel signs on all the pumps, not just those out on the highways.
At the same time, the good old American consumers have watched as their 401(k)s took hit after hit and dropped thousands of dollars. Retirements have been put on hold.
They have watched as friends and families went without increases in paychecks or, worse, lost hours ... or worst, lost jobs.
Gasoline prices have dropped somewhat, but we’ve seen that before. The next gust of wind in the Gulf will drive them up. The next bag of wind in the “oil bidness” boardroom will really drive them up.
It’s a world’s game we play now. It’s a West vs. the Rest reality with the Rest holding all the cards ... or oil wells, if you so please.
All the cries for offshore drilling won’t be the answer, either. That’s a Band-Aid on a bazooka hole. The oil companies will gladly drill away, but I’ll bet you anything they won’t agree to sell that oil only to America. Oil off America’s coasts will be just part of business, heading everywhere to the highest bidder.
There are other forms of energy, energy that doesn’t belong to others, energy that doesn’t make us slaves to the whims of others.
That’s where we should focus our attack. Things that are new, things that will work, and things that will keep us independent from those blessed with the most remnants of dead dinosaurs.
GM supposedly has had in the works (for years) an all-electric car (with an on-board generator) that will go forever without a charge. Maybe now would be the time to move into hurry-up mode and putt-putt that baby out.
New ideas like that are what is needed, not more of the same old stuff that, in the long run, leaves us in a very familiar and quite unpleasant rut.
MIKE RELIFORD can be reached at (606) 326-2647 or mreliford@dailyindependent.com.
Copyright © 1999-2008 cnhi, inc.