wow. I agree with nearly everything said here.
@AgentSmith:
now what does this mean? well, nothing for certain. raising gas prices may do nothing more than piss a bunch of people off, and raking in more cash at each gas purchase.
Raising gas prices could also lead to inflation and plunge us into a worse recession. Of course the Bushes seem quite adept at getting us into recessions.
disagree.
raising gas prices would cause an increase in prices of raw materials, transportation and overall for products initially. At the same time, i think that it would cause a slow down of the economy as people have less surplus cash to spend - this would lead to a recession, but i do not think that inflation would occur. Hopefully the opposite would happen (currently the Bush administration is pumping out tons more US currency to support the war effort and float the economy, however this is in danger of causing inflation leading to higher interest rates etc. If, on the otherhand, cash reserves are depleted in order to pay for Arabic gas (i.e. sent out of country) then this would slow inflation).
I disagree with the usefullness of these “do not buy gas on this date” idea that circulates every once in a while. You’ve probably read this - the idea is that it will cost the oil companies $X billion dollars. The problem is that they ultimately pass the savings on back to the customer, who would end up just buying the gas the next day anyway. We need to stop buying gas for as long as possible. Myself - i bike as much as possible, using my car only when i’m “going out” and its raining. Otherwise for getting around to places within a 45 minute bike ride - i tend to bike (or walk - as i did to school/work every day for the last 4 years in summer and winter for 30 minutes). Call me cheap but . . . .
In Canada - the idea is that the gov’t actually wants to increase gas prices. We pay $ 0.84/liter in Winnipeg (i think that would be around $3.20/gallon) which is still about a third of what they pay in Portugal. Raising gas prices would:
- increase gov’t revenues,
- decrease wear and tear on our roads
- fulfill our obligations to Kyoto
- push for hydrogen/fuel cell technologies (much of this has been developed in Canada already, so it would just be a matter of better adapting to public transport in this country - not a stretch considering that we’ve been transporting it to other countries already).
Personally - i would prefer that prices dropped a little just until mid-August. That way my travelling would be finished, and i will have moved into my new digs - a 20 minute bike from work :D