The high price of gas is alluded to from time to time in the threads here, so I decided to start my own topic here rather than muck up technical threads.

I often think of the Presidential campaign of John Anderson, who ran as an independent in 1980, though he had been a Republican. Wikipedia article. I supported him for a time, the closest I've ever come to voting for a gasp, Republican. But his campaign lost impetus when he dared to suggest a 50 cent gas tax.

The gas tax in 1980 would have not only encouraged conservation, it would have helped reduce the national debt, which seemed large to me then, but which we can only envy now and wish we could get back to that low level of debt.

It is funny that the American people would not support someone who advocated such a tax, but willingly pay a much higher fee imposed by events. I think that if we had taken steps in the 1980s to reduce our dependence on oil, we would be much better off today, and the 50 cents a gallon tax advocated by John Anderson would be considered to have been well-spent.

heres my contribution ...and im getting a moped
gas prices suck..and .i dont see it changing any time soon
http://www.gasbuddy.com/gb_gastemperaturemap.aspx

Great map!

By the way, I was just remembering the runup to the war in Iraq (I supported the invasion, to my regret) and the fact that many pro-invasion posters taunted the others by specifically predicting that gas prices would drop after the invasion. I think they were just slightly wrong...

On the other hand, many anti-invasion people painted it as a "war for oil"; I can't help but think if it was, it'd have gone a lot better with respect to oil prices. (I'm not saying it should or shouldn't have been for oil, but I think it's plain that in fact it wasn't; no-one could botch that up this bad.)

Oh, and I did support the invasion, and never thought or claimed it would make gas cheaper; still glad I did, but don't agree with a lot of how things have gone since... In case y'all care.

BTW, my take on taxes to discourage consumption: Why bother? If gas is cheap, consumption doesn't need discouraged, and later when it does get expensive, it'll discourage consumption on it's own. It's a known fact that (assuming smoothness of supply & demand curves, of course) taxation of transactions actually removes some value, as well as handing some to the government. And of course, I have a hard time with the notion that the national debt would get paid down; maybe short-term, but in a few years, an increase in government revenue will result in a matched increase in government spending; but there's a total loss, even without discounting the government's share...

I was always against the Iraq invasion. And I did then and still do think it is about oil. Yes, some say that we could just buy Middle East oil on the open market, so what's the need to own it via invasion.

That's fine, I agree. But apparently the Bush administration was so threatened by Saddam's growing power in the region that they felt the need to get rid of him. If they were right about Saddam's ambitions to control the oil flow and indirectly the supply, then we would have had a problem.

I just think the Bush administration was naive about the consequences of destabilizing the region through the actions they took. I do think this destabilizing has had a significant effect on the price of oil since it has helped fuel the greed of speculators in oil futures.

Another point I would make is that I recently heard that simply slowing down can significantly raise your fuel mileage. I heard it's as much as a 5 mile per gallon difference when slowing from 75 to 65 and then a similar change when slowing from 65 to 55.

I decided to slow way down. And this has had other benefits as well. I'm not so stressed out when I get to my destination for one thing.

Neil

Over in the UK it's about £1.18/litre which works out at about $8.71/US gallon

Painful hey?!

i think were all hurting....course if your not employed or own a gas guzzler.(f150 w/bad tranny)..then your really hurting...didnt now it was so expensive over there...im sure you have some sort of public transpo...here in town (plymouth) theres a rash of bike and scooter thefts no public transpo to speak of

Strongly disagree.

Of course it was for oil, but not in the simplistic sense most paint it.

The US greedily and disproportionately consumes 24% of the world's petroleum resources. That was not so much an issue when there were a handful of highly-developed nations sucking it up-- but with global growth fueled by massive outsourcing, other nations now want their share. And rightfully so.

Problem is we have crossed the peak production threshold. It is downhill from here, and costs will only logarithmically (or even exponentially) increase in all aspects. Our utter dependence on oil (which is completely embedded in our withering economy) forces our leaders (since they have refused for years to be proactive on the subject) to get more aggressive.

Invading Iraq was meant as leverage. We first secured Kuwait in the first Gulf war to serve as a beachhead for further operations. And then Bush 2 hauled in many of the same people involved in a) supporting bin Ladin against the Soviets; b) supporting Saddam against Iran; and c) orchestrating the first Gulf war.

None of that was coincidence. None of it is sheer speculation, either.

Now that we are in Iraq, building the largest embassy the world has ever seen (not a trivial factor), we start making a louder noise against Iran. This is all part of a grand and ugly scheme to secure oil for US in the short term. Right now we are on the edge of a petroleum-driven cold war-- soon it will be anything but cold.

Many will cavalierly dismiss what I'm saying as "tin foil hat conspiracy nonsense". That's fine-- so did I several years ago... before I woke up.

Everything I've said can be easily supported by facts, quotes and logic. To prime yourself on what's really going on in Iraq, and has for years, read Iraq's Unruly Century (from the Smithsonian Magazine, not exactly a lunatic fringe publication). Read and ponder. Then brace yourselves.

Oh, and the public premise for invading Iraq was built on nothing but lies, so I'm amazed that anyone could, at this point, still support such a miserable fiasco. Especially given that our continued presence there only serves to foster more hatred and increase our likelihood of being a target of terrorism.

There is no such thing as trading freedom for security, as we are told we must. Just ask Ben Franklin.

/soapbox

A friend and I were talking and they pointed out that we sell food to the oil producing nations. If that is so everyone who does so should charge them $300 a bushel....

Texrat: Thanks for your post. I agree 100%.