What a despicable display of ignorant bloviating. This is how best to describe the US House of Representatives hearings over gas prices. Rather than deal with real and meaningful actions that the government can take to actually increase supply of both crude oil and gasoline and reduce our dependence on foreign sources, our elected leaders chose to trash the oil executives summarily subpoenaed to a public lashing.
What a joke. The government - in its federal, state and local varieties - has blocked the development of domestic sources offshore, in the Gulf of Mexico and in Alaska and discouraged the building and expansion of new refineries to convert the crude oil into gasoline. As a result supplies are tight and as we all learned in economics 101 when demand outstrips supply prices increase to a point where either demand drops or supplies increase or both.
In an earlier blog I noted that in fact the demand side of this equation is working in the US with the sharply reduced demand for trucks and SUV's vs. the increase in demand for more fuel efficient vehicles. In addition more people are taking public transportation, curtailing vacation plans that require long drives and even looking for jobs closer to home or work-at-home opportunities to save on commuting costs. These are all good things and a natural consequence of market forces.
Rather than beat up the oil execs, our elected officials would better serve the people by developing a comprehensive energy policy that recognizes and encourages the development of all sources of energy (not just wind and solar which will help with home and business electricity supply but will do nothing to move your vehicle) including nuclear power as well as conservation.
We the people deserve better from our elected officials.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
The members of Congress have obviously never taken an econ class. Even the Presidential candidates say some of the economically stupid things and the voters eat it up.
Embarrassing.
Post a Comment