Blowing off Gas

Today’s front page headline blares "What’s Fueling Gas Prices?" in 3" type. I didn’t read it, as I’m confident I know the answer better than the Detroit News reporter assigned to crank this crap out. But I’m all over the chart. In truth, the charts are my favorite part of any news article. I love ‘em. Including the bad ones.

After careful study of this humongous full-color graph, I have learned that I can, on average, save 1.3c per gallon if I skip buying on Saturday and head for the local Caldeans on Wednesday. My new motto: "hump day is pump day." I can save 13c on a 10 gallon trip.

Americans are dumb – that’s the premise here, you knew that in advance. But the fetish with gas prices provides fresh proof, in case your faith in American dumbassity has weakened.

Dumb? Dear one, this is beyond that, it’s dumbest. Americans love to buy a new car for $20,000, drive it 135,000 miles and sell it for essentially nothing. Do that math, that’s 15c a mile. They buy car insurance, a scam that makes a Nigerian spammer blush, for up to $3000 a year. At 20,000 miles, that’s another 15c a mile. Many people finance those chubbies, to the tune of another 10c a mile.

Hmm. We’re up to 40c a mile to roll their butts down Michigan Avenue. Don’t let me start on the electronic gadgets they pay extra for, which break more often than Bush lies. If you aren’t strong enough to crank open a window, please stay on the porch.

Then they whine that gas went up 50c a gallon. At 20 mpg, which is being generous for a typical chubby, that’s a 2.5c per mile hike. 2.5c? Didn’t you notice you paid that for the fucking cup warmer? Or the refrigerated glove box? Hell, look what you paid for insurance, which has a street value hovering 2 millimeters above zero. Gasoline at least gets you to the mall, where there are more gadgets to get.

In Europe gas costs $6 per gallon. Man, if they were gringos we could hear the whine all the way across the Atlantic. In California, maybe even the long way, over the Pacific.

The difference is all tax. The price of crude oil is global, the price of refining is global, and the corporations and their profits sure as hell are global. The price of crude oil constitutes the bulk of gasoline price in the good ol’ USA. Refining and transport do add in, but are quite efficient. Refineries are down to like four workers, and one of them is gonna take a buy-out.

Gas is taxed 50c in the USA and $4 in Europe. Could this be a clue to why all the attention is focused on gas prices, in the country with the cheapest gas in the whole world? (Ok, there are a couple political oddball lands that subsidize it, but they don’t count, do they?).

In fairness – and we must above all be fair here -- American economists have long noted this nuttiness. That people will waste enormous sums buying new cars laden with gadgets, finance them, insure them from corporate grifters, even own multiples, and then whine about the smallest cost -- the part that actually makes the thing go. But their reasoning is shallow. It often goes like this: the price is advertised on big signs on every block, so people tend to dwell on it way too much.

I warned you that it would be shallow. Here, we go deep.

All that whining serves a purpose. It has a populist gloss "Sunoco’s loco! Hex on Exxon!" but the content is all-corporate. We want gas, lots of it, and we don’t want no stinkin’ taxes. We will conquer any people, bomb any homeland, and rape any wilderness for our joy juice. Tax it? No way.

If big oil isn’t paying off the Detroit News and the rest of the media, it just goes to show that American capitalism is working beautifully, without resorting to blatant corruption. Keep ‘em whining, keep it flowing.

Let’s meet next Wednesday down by the pump, we can whine together.