How Much Is Gasoline Costing You?
February 10, 2009 · carl · Print This Article
People that know me can sometimes become annoyed due to the fact that I have a habit of berating people for failing to look at the big picture.
Take gasoline prices for instance.
I felt the pain at the pump when gasoline was four dollars a gallon because at the time I had a 54 mile commute back and forth to my job. And although my car wouldn’t be considered a “gas guzller”, it doesn’t get 35 MPG either.
Then fuel prices started to drop, everyone breathed a sigh of relief, and the calls for more domestic oil drilling pretty much faded away.
At this point, the rallying cry of “Drill Here, Drill Now” is just a memory for most folks.
Right about now you are asking yourself “What’s your point?” “ What does this have to do with failing to see the big picture?”
Just this:
According to the U.S. Department of Energy, we imported 408.7 million barrels of oil in January at a cost of almost 17 billion dollars.
And that is about a 7% increase over December’s imports.
So here is the “big picture” part:
In one month alone, 17 billion dollars was taken out of the U.S. economy and transfered to foreign countries.
Most of whom hate America, but we’ll come back to that in a minute.
With 3.6 million people having lost their jobs in recent months, wouldn’t it make sense to begin to do domestic oil exploration/drilling and put some of those people back to work?
Not only would the jobs that would be created ease their own financial burdens, such jobs would generate much-needed tax revenues.
Not to mention that we could stop shipping such a percentage of our GDP to other countries, never to be seen again.
And as far as the fact that most of the nations receiving the lion’s share of this windfall, has anyone ever considered the implications not only to our economy, but to our domestic security, if they suddenly, for whatever asinine reason, decide to shut off the supply?
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