"Cub Driver" wrote in message
news
On Fri, 21 May 2004 03:08:58 GMT, "G.R. Patterson III"
wrote:

It's going up.

Yes. The yellow light came on in my Accord (I didn't even know it had
a yellow light!) so I filled up downtown at $2.039 because I reckoned
I didn't have fuel enough to carry me to BJ's Wholesale Club, where
it's still $1.969. BJ's is usually a nickel cheaper than the rest of
the world. Most of the brand-name stations in Portsmouth on the strip
sell it for $2.019.

And I see that my scenario of the White House liberating the Strategic
Oil Supply has been shot down by the prezdint.

That was the first time I ever put $25 into the tank. (Come to think
of it, I haven't seen that Hummer on Route 108 lately, heh heh.)

Well, you probably did, but it was in different dollars than now.

Excerpt from
http://www.poorandstupid.com/2004_05...14537144124262

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One of the first ways people adjust to high gasoline prices -- if they are
gasoline buyers, that is -- is they use less gas. That means they may shift
some of their economic activity from things that involve driving long
distances in an SUV to other things that involve driving shorter distances
in a normal car. Now why should that hurt the economy?

Another way people adjust to high prices -- if they are gasoline sellers,
that is -- is they find ways to produce more gas. They drill more oil wells.
They open new refineries. Now why should that hurt the economy?

Are you seeing a pattern here? When prices rise, buyers try to buy less.
Sellers try to sell more. And what do you know -- as a result of both those
things, pretty soon the price starts to fall. No, it's not magic. It's basic
economics. It works every time.

This isn't the 1970s or the 1980s. Today we're not seeing radical price
increases as the result of the sudden cut-off of supply. There's still
plenty of oil to go around -- and it's just getting a little more expensive
at the moment.

How much more expensive? That's a matter of perspective. Sure, it grabs your
attention when regular gasoline tops $2 a gallon for the first time. "Record
gas prices!" the headlines scream. But the reality is that when you adjust
for inflation, a gallon of gas cost almost 50% more in 1981 than it does
today.

And here's an even more amazing statistic. Over time, thanks to technology,
we've gotten much more efficient in the way we use gasoline, oil, and energy
of all kinds. In 1974 when the first "oil crisis" hit, it took over 17
quadrillion BTUs of energy to produce $1 million of gross domestic product
(measured in constant year-2000 dollars). Today it takes less then 10
quadrillion BTUs.

One more statistic: in 1978 the US consumed over 18 million barrels of oil
every day, when annual GDP was $5 trillion. Today we use only 10% more oil
every day than we did then, but GDP has more than doubled to almost $11
trillion.

The bottom line: oil is important, but it just doesn't matter quite the same
way that it used to
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/end quote