Bent Corner

Gasoline is currently hovering at around $4 a gallon.  I heard a talking-head expert on CNN say that it may climb to $6 a gallon before the end of summer.  Normally I’d say he was just making it up, but he was wearing a tie and a tweed blazer. He obviously looked like he knew what he was talking about.

Why does gas cost so much?  The experts say that it’s because of the price of oil.  The price of a barrel of crude keeps rising to astronomical levels.  Oil futures climbed all they way up to $143 a barrel this past Friday.

One of the things I don’t understand about this whole process is why gasoline fluctuates, but motor oil doesn’t.  Gasoline isn’t the only thing derived from crude oil.  Motor oil comes from crude too.  It costs around $25 bucks to have my car’s oil changed at one of the national chains.  That’s what I was paying ten years ago.  Why has the price of an oil change not risen at the same exponential rate that gasoline has?

With gas at $4 a gallon, why doesn’t it cost $80 for an oil change?  All things being equal, you would think that it would.

Presidential hopefuls John McCain and Hillary Clinton want to suspend the 18 cents a gallon Federal tax on gasoline - only for the Summer.  Barack Obama wants to leave things the way they are.  He thinks lowering the price might actually increase demand which would cause prices to go up.  Something like that.

They should suspend the Federal gas tax.  Not only for the Summer, but forever.

Why are they taxing gasoline?  We buy gasoline not because it is some sort of luxury item that we reward ourselves with, but it is something we need to get us from one place to another.  For better or worse, it is the fuel that we need to be productive citizens.  The government shouldn’t be taxing the gas we buy, they should be taxing the income we earn.  That’s something they already do.

I buy gas to put in my car so I can drive to work each day.  If I didn’t have to buy gas, I would happily spend my money on something else.

Instead of arguing over whether or not the Federal gas tax should be suspended for the Summer, they ought to be discussing why gas was ever taxed in the first place.