🚀 go-pugleaf

Gas Prices

The smallish graying trucker wore a detached look as he topped off the tank
of the blue and chrome 18 wheeler.  The meter on the pump clicked $235.00,
at just under $1.76 per gallon.  "That's a lot of money for fuel," I commented, "How
 do you independent guys make it?"  He focused on me for a moment, then answered,
"I'm going to put this one on my Visa, if it isn't already full."

That same week, in the country of Iraq, a bus load of Americans were
stretching their legs during a fuel stop.  A. O Blumhorst, calculating the
conversion of gallons to liters and native currency to US dollars in his
notebook.  He watched the dark faced attendant pumping diesel fuel into
the European made bus.  "Do I have this figured right?" he asked the English
speaking bus driver, "Is it possible you are buying fuel for four cents a
gallon U.S.?   Are you really going to fill this bus for a $10.00
bill...?  Maybe I should take a gallon home to Missouri or they will never
believe me!"

One week later the American evening news featured a parade of 
independent truckers driving their tractors through the streets of 
Washington D.C.  protesting  run away fuel prices.  Truckers will tell 
anyone in Washington who will listen that at $2.00 per gallon for diesel 
many independent  trucker can
not afford to fill their tanks.  The per mile cost of  running the rig
consumes his operating margin, leaving not enough to send home to the
wife and kids.  No matter how many miles he drives or how much load he
pulls, he just can not cover his payments on the rig plus his family's
expenses back home.  Like other small businessmen with an investment, the
trucker is caught in a price squeeze.

He can only do what he knows how to do, drive and run up the credit card
bills while he watches his equity in his rig disappear and prays for a
break.  Soon, he will tell you, he will be three payments behind on the rig
and there will be a bank collection agent looking for him at the house.
Not a pleasant thought for the family to face while the trucker is on the
road.  The payments and interest on his investment continues whether the
truck runs or sets idly in a truck stop, as some have done.

The truckers do not agree on what they think the President should do to
 lower fuel prices.  As a stopgap measure they hope Clinton
will, like a merciful king, take off the 24 cent per gallon federal tax
on fuel.  They reason that with a 24 cent drop in diesel prices they might
again eke out a few cents a mile and eventually paying off the rig,
hopefully before it needs new tires or a major overhaul.

Indeed, the trucker's action is really one of desperation.  The effect of
the vaulting oil price has only begun to hit most American consumers the
way it has impacted the trucker.  We notice higher gas prices but most of
us do not measure our lives from pump to pump.   We consumers are
downstream from the price increase.   Sure, it hurts to fill the car, but
we have a tendency to forget that the cost doesn't stop there.  Soon we
too, will feel its effect in every product we consume or use, from lettuce
to airline tickets--- even insurance, utility costs and the cost of
government itself will all be escalated by the oil price rise.  For
America still runs on energy, and energy is still oil.

The trucker will soon be joined in his plight by millions of independent
farmers caught in exactly the same mousetrap of leapfrog cost for everything
they must purchase. They too face competitive revenues and grinding
interest payments on their capital.  And as the independent farmers
continue to be driven to sell out to the multinationals, the fuse begins to
burn on a food price explosion unprecedented in our history.

The economic sophist deny the truckers solution will solve the problem
Those bright young men work for the Corporate high rise world and the
cloisters of the multinationals who can afford the gas.  They will scoff at
the trucker's "simplistic"economic theory.  They will speak of fuel
economy, marginal efficiency of the trucking industry,  and the need for
international control of "OPEC " and other greedy producers.  Their answer
will be more international controls over prices an productions quotas.
They will say the trucker is the victim of "fragmentation" in an industry
that needs consolidation.  In other words, their solution is that the
independent trucker (like with the independent farmer) must go out of
business.   What they do not say is if that happens every consumer will
share the cost in drastically higher prices for basic goods and services.

The trucker is correct in blaming Washington.  Many know or suspect what
Mr. Blumhorst learned on his trip to the Middle East, that there is enough
oil in the world to keep energy prices low if they were only allowed to buy
it.  It sell for pennies a gallon in those producing countries that are not
in the good graces of our self serving Government leaders and their
Warmaker bosses.

The trucker feels the source of the problem in his gut.  It is too bad we
do not all feel it.  Beware those who try to complicate the answer of high      
fuel prices are hiding the real answer.  We should follow the trucker's
problem and blame Washington.  But until the trucker and millions of
consumers who share his problem come  to an understanding of why the oil
price is escalating, it will not be solved.

In fact, there is plenty of oil, refining capacity and transportation to
get it to us, but inexplicably, we are not allowed to have it.  Factually
the problem is very simple indeed and the solution could begin before the
trucker's next payment on the rig is due and is within the reach of the
elected congressman.   That solution is to allow us, the American consumer,
to PURCHASE OIL FROM WHOMEVER WANTS TO PRODUCE AND SELL IT.

In this series of " Heads Up!" we will examine the common sense of oil, and
with it the future of food, transportation, housing and almost everything
else you consume or use.  The questions to be answered are, "Who is really to
blame for high prices? Why? What is the impact on the rest of the
world?"

Reproduced with permission of the author. 
(http://publisherspreview.v12.net)
Publisher's Preview
P.O. Box 14491
Scottsdale, AZ 85267

Related article: One Nation Under Israel  





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