It's Not the Price of Gas That's Going Up

Where I live in rural Washington State, gasoline prices edge toward $4 a gallon–a price that a year from now, I suspect, I will look back to with envy.

Naturally, a howl arises across the land for the government to do something: I.e., cause gas prices to drop.

A lesser growl provides a bass continuo for the government to punish the oil companies, or at least squeeze more taxes from them.

This latter aim remains within the realm of the possible. The first aim, to force down gas prices, our government, alas, cannot do.

Why?

Well, to begin with, it’s not that the price of gasoline is going up so much as it is that the value of the dollar is plummeting.

It takes more bucks to buy the same thing, especially something derived in large part from overseas. Who can blame Saudi princes for nominally demanding more anemic (and bleeding) bucks in order to maintain their standards for living lavishly? And to have enough of our bucks left to give to Arab terrorist organizations to use against us and any Arab regime that refuses to kiss the Saudis’ glutes?

Half of our present national debt–call it the national curse upon future generations–derives from the reigns of Presidents Reagan, Bush the First and Bush the Whacker. Whacker indeed has created almost a quarter of our national debt himself with his family-revenge war in Iraq, and still spending.

Since George McBush, the Republican presidential candidate, will continue the Iraq slaughter and futility and thus continue to open arteries on the dollar by spending money the United States must borrow from the Saudis and Chinese and now the Russians, there’s no chance if he’s elected for the dollar to recover. No, it will continue to expire and the price of everything from abroad, but especially oil and thus such derivatives as gasoline, will continue shooting for the stars.

Republican and Libertarian No-Nothings squawk that opening Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Range to drilling will oil away our problems with new supply and so dampen price.

Pure B.S. Even if it were smart to drill the range and bump off the caribou and bears and other critters there, and it’s not, oil from ANWR would not come into production for eight years. At best, according to estimates even from the oil companies, it might make up a quarter of America’s oil thirst.

But that implies the oil so produced would come to the United States. Why should it? Right now half of the oil now produced in Alaska ends up in Japan and other parts of Asia. Oil goes where people pay the most–or the most convenient--price for it. The Chinese have already started to shoulder us worthy Americans to the side in oil bidding, and the American companies producing the oil overseas have reveled in joy to sell crude to them. I hunch the Chinese would hustle just as hard for new oil from Alaska. Why not?

Since the cost of oil and its products goes through our domestic economy like a gulp of castor oil–the greater the cost, the greater our spasms–I expect to be paying $5 a gallon soon for regular. Government won’t be able to do anything about it except moan and borrow more dough from, well, if not our enemies, our competitors and certainly not our friends. Pray they don’t stop buying U.S. Treasury notes.