I surprised myself

I have been saying this for a while, but it caught me again. Can it be anything but a conspiracy to keep us stupid?
Ask everyone you know. "Why is gas so expensive?" I have heard the usual litany - "Speculators". "Big oil". "The Arabs".
The answer is , of course, gasoline is cheaper than it was in 1964. Huh?

In nineteen-sixty-four, the Dollar was an instrument called a silver certificate. It equaled and was exchangeable for one silver dollar at any bank. It was also in nineteen-sixty-four that either dollar equaled and was also exchangeable for four gallons of gasoline.

A mere 100 days after the death of President John F. Kennedy President Lyndon Johnson accomplished a goal he had since he was an assistant to Senator Sam Rayburn in the early days of FDR. He demonitized silver and removed the requirement that there be an actual "dollar" for each certificate in circulation. In essence he made the bill the dollar.

Little-by-little, the currency inflated. Now, in 2008, we take those two dollars and see what they buy. The paper one now buys one quart of gasoline - one sixteenth the amount of gas that it bought in 1964. But what of the silver dollar? At today's spot fix for silver and the price I paid for gasoline this very afternoon, one silver dollar would have bought not four gallons of gas as in 1964, but five full gallons of gasoline.

So as you listen to people blame everyone in sight for the so-called high price of gasoline, remember, they are not blaming the groups really responsible for the slipping of our savings and decline of our real salaries, the bureaucracy of the Federal Government and our own Representatives. They are misdirecting us to see the dollar as a constant and gasoline as a variable. But seal up a jar with one gallon of gasoline, and one with a one dollar bill. Come back in ten years and see which one has lost its value.

The Gasish Inquisition

Our beloved Congress-Critters are at it again. They are at Stage 4 - Search for the Guilty - in the search for the reason for the rise in the price of gasoline. The have demanded the heads of the various oil companies come and stand before the Congressional Kangaroo court. There is a justice Department if there is a real crime committed. Oh, no, this is Congressional theatrics at its best or worst.
There is no chance that they can find the most of the real reasons. They have already determined their idea of the cause and are trying to find information to justify their conclusion that Capitalism is the cause. They will not acknowledge that the dollar has tanked in the international currency market (many reasons -- many of which track back directly to themselves). They will not recognize that the percentage of gross that is profit to the oil companies has remained constant -- it is merely that same percentage of a larger pie.
They will not acknowledge that they have made three times the profit that the oil companies do from each gallon of gas. They will not acknowledge that their environmental regulations (as much at the state level as the Federal) have contributed greatly to artificial scarcity.
But for all this, somehow I suspect I can live a lot longer without the phlegmatic Chuck Schumer and his show trials than I can without R. W. Tillerson and his management of Exxon-Mobil.

Oh the Price of Gas!

Where is honesty in reporting these days? Gasoline is not getting more expensive. Oh, it looks like it costs you more, but in relation to tangible things going up too, gold, silver, milk, bread, and Coca-cola, gasoline is at the same relative position it has been. * Then what gives? Your dollar is in free fall.
But what about the "obscene " profits the oil companies make? Same percent of gross it has always been. Do you think that after they make what you think is enough that they ought to give gasoline away? And where does that profit go? To the evil stockholders. And who are they? The biggest holders of most stocks are pension plans. The biggest of those are the teacher's retirement plans - people of the same political persuasion as many of the loudest complainers. Windfall profits tax would take it from your own retirement. Poetic Justice.
And since the tax load on gasoline is about three times the profit, where is the outrage over the increase in revenue to the Government?

*The story on this at a future date.