Running on Empty

Thought I would take a break from the war tonight and throw out some pain and suffering of another kind. We were never asked to make any sacrifices to go to war (i.e. increased taxes to pay for it), but sooner or later you have to pay the piper. From the chart above (courtesy of the Energy Information Administration) you can see that shortly after "Mission Accomplished" in July 2003, gasoline was about $1.66 per gallon and that in August 2005, that same gallon is about $2.62. In the neighborhood of 58% more.

Now, we all know that it costs more to fill up our tanks and therefore eats up more of our discretionary income, assuming we have any. We still have to buy groceries, (a lot of groceries in Mississippi, apparently) and that sooner or later the cost of growing, processing, and transporting those groceries to the stores will go up, sucking up more of our disposable income and eating away at any discretionary income. The cost of cooling and heating your house is also impacted by the cost of gasoline, that too will rise, eating more of your disposable income and reducing discretionary income. Just about everything we purchase has a link to the cost of oil. The cost of government goes up putting pressure on governments to raise taxes to support law enforcement, trash removal, etc.

Now, remember that Congress just passed an energy bill that gave the oil companies another whopping $12 Billion in welfare and they ducked the issue of fuel economy mandates on vehicles, again. Don't forget that a new refinery has not been built in this country in over 25 years and that at my last count 8 refineries were down or partially down for maintenance and conversion. When the wind blows in the Atlantic or Gulf the oil companies automatically shut down the rigs and the price goes up. The salt caverns holding the U.S. oil reserves are full. It's supply and demand working right? Wrong! The supply and demand are being manipulated by the Oil Producing countries, the oil companies, and the government to the extent that the market cannot level itself.

Throw in the rise in the cost of medical care, the rise in the cost of education, and the rise in insurance rates and ask yourself, are you better off than you were five years ago?