The price of gas
My older sister Addie lives in Miami. Once in a while she sends me some email about boycotting gas companies because of outrageously high gas prices, and I usually ignore them. But today I decided to respond not just to her, but to her friends on the email’s cc list….because I felt there were some things they needed to learn.
Here’s what the original email said (edited formatting for sanity’s sake, but I left other errors as-is):
4.19 per gal
The price of Gas
Hello everyone,
We hear that the price of gas will climb to approximately $4.19 per gal By this summer.
Do you want the price of gas to go down?
IT IS POSSIBLE! We must act NOW and wisely !
Last year, a few suggestions were made, for instance: « Do not buy gas on certain days»! Gas companies had a good laugh, as they knew that the gas that was not purchased on Monday would be purchased on Tuesday. At best, it was an inconvenience for them, but not a problem.
Someone thought of a plan that can work.IF WE REALLY WANT IT Read the following and join us to implement it!
Gas now sells for 3.09¢ per gal For regular unleaded As an average for USA. In some areas, the price is even higher.
We all know that we are “being taken for a ride” by the gas companies.
Remember that when gas companies raised the price of gas over $2.00 per gal. They argued that gas would be in short supply. There is more gas now than 35 years ago when the price was 29¢ per gal.
Gas companies want us to believe that gas is cheap at 1.99¢ per gal.
We must act agressively and Show them that the consumers Can have some control over prices and not only gas companies.
The best way to be successful is to hit where it hurts: their bank accounts!
WE CAN DO IT !
HOW?
As we all need our vehicles, we cannot simply stop buying gas.
However, we can have a significant impact on the price of gas IF WE ACT TOGETHER to initiate a PRICE WAR!!!This idea is suggested: For the remainder of the year,WE DO NOT BUY ANY GAS FROM The two largest companies (who are now only ONE) Exxon and SHELL
Think about it!
If the major gas companies do not sell gas, they will unavoidably lower their prices and this will immediately result in a PRICE WAR.
In order to generate the desired impact, we must reach millions of Exxon and SHELL consumers.
This is how we must proceed!
I am sending this e-mail to approximately 30 people.
If everyone sends this e-mail to 10 others, we already have reached 300 people. If 300 send this message to 3 000 more people, and so on…
We will reach 3 MILLIONS people in no time…You see what I mean…If each and everyone of you forward this message to 10 people within a day or so, we will be 300 MILLIONS of people To go to war against these gas companies in approximately 8 days!
Do you really believe that they will have other options?
YES, WE CAN WIN BUT…It is absolutely NECESSARY To continue purchasing our gas ELSEWHERE Than at Exxon and SHELL and this, until we reach our objective.
And, MOST OF ALL, LET US FORWARD THIS MESSAGE!
CAN WE COUNT ON YOU…?
Here was my rather tart response:
Sister, you already know how silly these things are, and that I think you’re being foolish by forwarding them.
The attachment claims the price of gas was 29 cents 35 years ago. Well…a cup of coffee was 5 cents too! A house in New York City could be bought for $20,000. It’s called INFLATION. It happens to the cost of everything and the incomes of everyone over time.
And even at $5 dollars a gallon, gas is STILL cheap. Why? There are 16 cups in a gallon. $5 divided by 16 is 31 cents a cup of gas. What else in this world is that cheap compared to how important it is? A cup of starbucks coffee is many times that at over $2 a cup!
Once again the paper points the finger at the oil companies to try to blame them. Why doesn’t anyone point the finger at ourselves? Do you think we are ENTITLED to live an hour away from work, having to commute two hours in crushing rush hour traffic each day? Do you think we are ENTITLED to pollute the environment every time we get in our cars to go one block to the grocery store to buy that extra pint of ice cream contributing to our obesity? Do you think we are ENTITLED to spend 25% of the oil pumped in the world every day and produce a third of the world’s pollution when we are only 5% of the world’s population? Do you think we are ENTITLED to pay 29 cents a gallon when Europe has routinely been paying $5 a gallon or more for many years now? How arrogant and selfish we are as Americans!
It gets even better! The oil companies ultimately have to pay money to the countries with oil in the ground, right? That oil is not here in America anymore, it is in unstable places like Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Nigeria. Those countries set the price of oil, not the oil companies. They’re called OPEC. Why can OPEC demand $60 a barrel minimum and get away with it? Because they know that we Americans are addicted to oil like a drug addict is addicted to heroin, and will pay ANY price to get it to maintain our foolish ways of wasteful energy spending. It’s simple supply and demand economics.
Worse, these OPEC countries like Saudi Arabia then take our own addict money to fund terrorists to come ram our buildings with airplanes. We are funding terrorism against ourselves through our own addiction to foreign oil.
If you stop buying from these two companies, they would likely simply resell their gasoline to other companies who suddenly have all this new demand they are unable to meet. Why? Because you are not reducing DEMAND. The demand has to be fed from somewhere, and there is VERY little excess oil out there because of how much the world consumes. As long as there is demand, there will be a market for Shell and Exxon, whether it be to you or to another supplier.
The price of gas is going to keep going up until we stop the nonsense of trying to blame someone else and start pointing at ourselves for living so wastefully. It’s not just the gasoline we use, but the petroleum to go into all the wasteful plastic packaging that goes to our landfills every day. That gobbles up huge amounts of petroleum too.
You want to do something about gas prices? Then STOP THE ADDICTION. Walk, don’t drive. Live closer to work. Get politically active and demand that your congress pass incentives for developing non-petroleum or hybrid cars. Lowering demand is the ONLY thing that will lower the price of gas. Stop paying attention to charlatans.
Your brother,
Joe
Yea the email pissed me off—and I hadn’t had my morning coffee. But please, let’s show some accountability for once.
Sphere: Related ContentTags: gas-prices, petroleum
I responded with more or less the same rant to a Facebook group advocating protesting “Exon mobile” and received a message from some high school student asking why I was so negative. Some people just don’t have the smarts to think things through.
I suspect that you will either get no response or something that sounds like “trouble me not with your pesky facts”. The oil situation is bad and is only going to get worse over time, but people are loathe to change, since change is hard and bitching about the problem is easy. We have gotten used to our lifestyle and its going to take a pretty big blow before we even contemplate changing….
Thanks for having the wisdom not to join these retarded internet campaigns. Like I always say…gasoline is a fossil fuel. A non-renewable resource. I have no problem paying a bit more for it.
Well said. I wrote about this, including the connection between our food gluttony and our gas gluttony, in my “Eat Here and Get Gas” post in November 2005. It’s very telling that none of these “Shell game” boycott schemes ever suggests that Americans reduce their demand for gasoline (drive less, buy more fuel-efficient cars, etc.) and invest in renewable energy (wind, solar, etc.) instead of oil. Instead, they keep putting forth the typical “free lunch” no sacrifice approach that we know never works.
Very well said. I am also quite annoyed with these emails I receive from friends and family members. The greed and entitlement that plagues our country and our people is our self-fulfilling prophecy. Until we face facts and change our ways, we will remain addicted to oil, plundering and populating our planet until we pump it dry.
funny, i got that email as well a few weeks ago! it got me worked up as well, and here was my reply:
I’m sorry, there are some issues I have with that email.
First, I actually want higher gas prices! Higher gas prices means more technology innovation and encourages cities to improve their public transportation infrastructures (here in Seattle they’re finally seriously building a rail system and bus riding has gone up lots since the higher gas prices, Los Angeles has statistics showing 15% jumps in riders quarter over quarter- the buses their are packed regularly now so they are now adding more). And higher prices forces companies to innovate, streamline their distribution networks, and adopt newer technologies (which in turn spurs more technical innovation). The political/environmental bonus side to all these positive impacts is that dependence on foreign oil drops, our cities get cleaner, human induced global warming (CO2 emmissions caused) drops, and our cities become more comfortable since they have less congestion and smog!
I don’t drive much, only about a tank a month and I’m trying to cut down from that (and will be buying a higher MPG car next), but when I do fill up the tank and it’s expensive, I say with pleasure, “ahh the glories of economic incentives! wow that cost me a lot!”
Second, this suggestion is massively flawed - it holds no economic weight. Let us assume people did exactly as this email suggests and Exxon was forced to lower it’s price until all it’s profits were gone completely - all 9.2 billion dollars in the most recent quartet! In the best case (i.e., all this lost revenue corresponds to lower prices for us), that would mean Exxon’s gross revenue for the quartet would drop from 87 billion to 78 billion, correlating with a 10% drop in prices. Wow, gas would drop from $3 to $2.70, definitely not $1.50! And are we expected oil companies to make no money selling us gas/oil? If so, investors would bail, the companies would flounder, and other oil giants such as China’s CNOOC (which would have liked to take over Unocal recently) would rise in their place. And instead of oil corporation profits going to filthy rich mostly corrupt American’s, they’d go to filthy rich mostly corrupt Chinese.
If we really want to make a difference, we should have a national “transfer” levy on gas - called a transfer levy because all the tax revenue on they gas would go directly back to the people in the form of lower income taxes and higher social security payments (since elders would need a break as well since with a fixed income they are largely affected by such a gas levy but would not benefit from lower income taxes). Now this would really start to make a different - gas prices would more accurately reflect the damage done from the billions of dollars we give to middle eastern terrorists responsible for 9/11 (yes, we fund them!) and the war we’re fighting right now (please don’t try to tell me this war didn’t have to do with oil!). And now I’ll quote the previous email, “Acting together we can make a difference. If this makes sense to you, please pass this message on.” Vocalize your support of a transfer levy on gasoline!
Oil will never go below $85 again. In 2010 oil will be over $250 a barrel and gas will be $10 a gallon. Even though reserves are rising which should make oil prices drop the fact they don’t drop in price is because the political tensions are rising. With that you will either buy a hybrid which will still be expensive to operate or ride your bike or take the public transit. There are ways to reduce your fuel cost.