Taking the Economy "Off Road"

“…This Free World’s got you gassed up/ Now who’s afraid of the big bad wolf…?”*

GAAAAAAASSSSSSSSSS PRIIIIICCCESSSSSSSSSSS!

DAMNIT! What the hell is up with gas prices? What the hell is up with our government? What the hell is up with our own stupidity?

I remember my freshman year of college, less than seven years ago, I filled up in rural Georgia for 78 cents a gallon. The world made sense then….the highway abounded with cars, our strategic petroleum reserves were relatively low, and traveling made me smile. Now, at $2.53 a gallon, everything has gone to shit, and I’m mad as hell.

First of all, everyone knows that the USA’s major oil companies are greedy bastards. But they’re supposed to be greedy bastards. Their stockholders expect them to be greedy bastards, and so does the American way of life. So, when people like Florida’s Attorney General Charlie Crist blame the oil companies for today’s gas prices, I kind of do a double-take. Of course it’s the oil companies’ fault, but at least they are doing what they’re paid to do – import oil and try to maximize profit. It’s everyone else who isn’t doing what they are supposed to do.

This is not going to be a politically sensitive blog. Because I blame you, first and foremost, for my high gas prices. I blame you, your family, your friends, and your fellow citizens. I blame you for buying that SUV, truck, or van. I blame you for going to the store for a pack of cigarettes or a bottle of water and then driving home. I blame your mate for convincing your mate that a 40 mile commute to work was acceptable. I blame your nice old five-foot-three Mom for buying a vehicle with a blind spot the size of Rhode Island. The fact is, the American people are stupid, stupid, stupid.

Screw you and your stupid SUVs and Trucks, America. My family has two cars. One is a Sentra. It gets 30+ miles to the gallon on the highway and 11 gallons usually fills it up. The car I primarily use is another Japanese 4 door sedan. Sure it has a V6 engine, but mea culpa on that one, because it still gets 26 miles per gallon on the highway, and 13 gallons usually fills it up. I don’t own a pussy minivan, an I’m-trying-to-make-my-cock-seem-bigger-than-it-really-is pickup truck, or an I’ll-never-go-off-roading-but-I-desperately-need-to-conform SUV. The reason why is because I refuse to drive up the demand for gas and refuse to go down in fuel efficiency. Also, because I have two brain cells. Trucks, SUVs, and Minivans depreciate much faster than any type of car except the very high-end luxury cars. They easily cost twice as much to operate due to their minimal fuel-efficiency, heavy weight, and higher-priced accessories (from tires to windshield wipers). Anyone not on a respirator can figure out that what you save in one-year of non-SUV driving will cover five year’s worth of truck rentals for if you’d ever actually need to haul something.

And yet, people are still buying trucks and SUVs at a breathtaking (and gas-taking) pace. Pretty soon, non-cars will outnumber cars on today’s highways. What’s worse, people are using these beasts on their daily commutes, due to an irrational fear of being harmed more in a collision if they had a car. Trucks and SUVs are many times more likely to roll over than cars, and roll-over collisions are among the most deadly collisions on the road (the other kind, head-on collisions, can be mitigated by wearing your seatbelt and driving a car with 2 front airbags, both conditions which are now mandated by law, no matter what you drive). Thus, you idiots are NOT safer, you are more at risk.

There are two things which nobody should ever say to me ever again. If you say “I feel safer in an SUV,” then please feel free to “feel safer” by taking your toaster oven into the shower with you. And, if you prefer the similarly asinine “I like being up high in an SUV,” then you must also like being high….on crack. IF YOU WANT TO BE HIGHER-UP, THEN JUST BUY A DAMN CUSHION FOR YOUR CAR SEAT! IT COSTS 5 BUCKS, AND WON’T KILL THE ENTIRE ECONOMY YOU ASSHOLE!

But, as dumb as we are, we are only partly to blame. Our government is failing us. First of all this is the year before an election year, the year when the government thinks it can ignore people so they can “come to our rescue” a few months before the election. Of course, they “rescue” us by making things go from impossibly bad to still slightly worse than they would have been if they had acted in the first place, but that’s another story. What’s even more appalling is the fact that our government is actually trying to make us believe that they can’t do ANYTHING about the current gas crisis. President Bush says he can’t do anything, but that’s a lie. He can at least release some of the Strategic Petroleum Oil Reserves, which would temporarily bring gas prices down. Congress says they can’t do anything, but that’s an even bigger lie. They could encourage states to lower state taxes on gas. They could lower importation taxes on gas. They could hold Congressional hearings and subpoena all of the leaders of the American Petroleum Institute to testify as to why they are cutting production of gasoline when demand is increasing, and engaging in other non-competitive activities. Finally, the states say they can do nothing, but this is also a lie – you don’t see your state cutting state taxes and sales taxes on gas to help John Q. Citizen, do you? Of course not.

I want everyone to do a little mental exercise with me right now. Pretend that instead of us going bankrupt due to the gas crisis, that it was a major oil company going bankrupt. If Texaco was in the red right now, do you think the Senior Senator from Texas would be on C-Span right now saying there was nothing he could do? Shit no! There would be 40 different bills in Congress right now, advocating no-interest loans, tax breaks, subsidized lending, payouts, bailouts, price supports, and a million other things that I am not smart enough to think of right now. I mean, if income tax cuts spur increased spending, greater risk-taking in investments, and have helped get us out of the 2001 recession, then why wouldn’t sales tax cuts for gas do the same thing? Then the Dow Jones wouldn’t go down faster than Paris Hilton every time gas prices rise $2 a barrel. If you’re going to be a Republican, then you need to be a Republican for everyone. I think the strategy would work, too.

However, if we’re not willing to do that, then maybe we should do something Democratic – tax people. I find myself at a cross-roads here because my political philosophy is somewhat federalistic and small-government-minded, but with gas prices so high, I’m also willing to be pragmatic. While I generally think our tax system is extremely regressive and often describe new taxes as “un-American,” I think maybe it’s time to tax both the manufacturers and the buyers of non-commercial trucks and SUVs. We already have a tax credit for people who buy hybrids, and this system has worked somewhat well – hybrid car sales are way up, some hybrid models are actually appreciating in value, which is unheard of for a new car, and they are generally a big hit with the public. The problem is the idiot car manufacturers are not making enough of them, and there is a months-long wait for many popular models. So, if the assholes at Ford and GM are making SUVs instead of hybrids, let’s tax them. And, if a stupid, spurious “employee discount” is convincing dumb people to go buy those SUVs, maybe we should tax those people, too, and use the revenue to lower the taxes on fuel or provide credits to people with vehicles that get over 20 miles to the gallon. I don’t like that strategy, but I can’t afford to pay $2.50+ a gallon, either.

P.S. – Are they doing one of those gas-outs this year? In the past, they had a day where no one who participated was allowed to buy gas, in a move of protest. I think we should do one of those again.

* = This quote is by Eminem, not B.I.G.