Assumptions about Gasoline Prices

I think there is an unspoken assumption among our citizenry that the government runs the oil business. We seem to think that the government controls gas prices (sort of like the Federal Reserve controls interest rates), and we interpret fluctuations in gas prices as a measure of the government's ability to manage world affairs. In truth, gas prices are simply the short-term indicators of a constantly fluctuating free market.

Fluctuations in price are natural. The spike due to the Chavez crisis in Venezuela had nothing to do with the economic health of the country. Yet it probably bummed out millions of people, making them wonder if the world was indeed going to hell.

Thus, the price of gasoline is to "Main Street" what the Dow Jones/Nasdaq indices are to Wall Street: rather meaningless figures by themselves, which are taken as reflective of something much more than they are.

The daily gasoline consumption by the U.S. is around 360 million gallons a day, which (using an estimate of 100 million households) comes out to about 3.6 gallons per day per household. The 360 million gallons is not a direct measured figure, but is an estimate obtained by taking 43 percent of the daily crude oil consumption of 19.5 million barrels, since 43 percent is supposedly the fraction that winds up as gasoline.

What Muslims Think About Gasoline

In an interesting article in the Los Angeles Times, Jeremy Rifkin — who is writing a book about hydrogen power — reported that many Muslims see oil as the Great Equalizer.

"Many younger Muslim fundamentalists view oil as 'a soft loan from Allah.' They see oil as the great equalizer, a spiritual as well as geopolitical weapon that, if Islamized in the service of Allah, could lead to the second coming of Islam."

What Christians Think About Gasoline

"Fossil fuels are one of the Creator's greatest gifts to humankind."
Let's run with that idea. God apparently gave the U.S. enough oil to get us all hooked on the stuff, but he gave the Muslims a lot more so that they'll have plenty of it to sell us when we run out of our stocks. Nice little power play. Whose side is God on?

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