Howdy!

Today I’m not going to talk about the election.  I think we’re all about to shed hairballs about all that.  We’ll all know soon enough how it will all come out and on Wednesday we can each take our celebratory valium and pull down the signs.  Today I’m going to talk about greed.

Have you noticed how the price of gas has suddenly fallen off to levels as low as the same time LAST year?  Aren’t ya glad?  The recent high prices, up to nearly $5.00 a gallon in some places, have caused the basic principles of economics to kick in – the ones that all those golden-parachuted, Italian-heeled executives learned as a freshman in college:  supply and demand. 

Supply and demand is a pretty simple concept – heck, even Dubya understands it.  What it means is that the supply will go up to meet the demand and at that point the equilibrium price will be set.  The corollary to this is that as demand rises and supply falls, prices will go up. 

This is what the Pig Oil companies have used to try and wring every last cent out of us.  Their reasoning seems to have been, “Hey, they have to have gas, so we’ll just charge them right up the butt.  They have to pay or they don’t drive!”  And that’s pretty much what happened.  However these heady brain-trusts forgot another rule of economics:  You can’t squeeze blood out of a stone.

There comes a point where the price is so high customers need to prioritize their spending.  When there are only so many dollars in your budget (a thought which is totally foreign to oil execs), some expenses get cut.  A huge reduction in the use of gasoline is one of the first changes made in most families.  They try to travel only to work and school and back.  People started using more public transportation and alternative methods such as biking, walking and hitchhiking (well, ok, not so much hitchhiking).  They traded in their gasburners for smaller, lighter cars.  When you reach the top of that bell curve, the only way to go is down.

The decision to raise gas prices to celestial levels also affected prices of public transportation: busses, trains and aircraft.  Airlines, already going broke because they and their entire system are outmoded, had to charge more per passenger to cover the cost of jet fuel.  Americans decided flying was once again becoming a luxury and planned their vacations closer to home, sharply limited visiting distant relatives and friends.  When it comes to a choice between paying the mortgage and bills or flying to Disney World, so sorry Mickey, maybe next year.

Pig Oil companies pretty much priced themselves right out of the market.  You can charge $100 per gallon for gas but you won’t find people lining up to buy it.  Instead, we will use our ingenuity to work out other answers.  In the last year many alternatives to gasoline powered transportation have been offered, many of them quite workable.  And once we have the infrastructure for renewable electricity, we can tell the oil companies to go to hell.  Americans won’t be held hostage by foreign terrorist or disgustingly greedy corporate power mongers. 

So, get busy there, you oil magnates.  Either pitch in or get out.  Oh, and a little time begging forgiveness wouldn’t hurt either.

Perry