Looks like I am going to have to find my old bike and dust it off!

I blame the high oil prices on the REED of the suppliers…...the rich oil sheikhs…..AND the weak dollar!  Especially the Saudi royal family!

At $200.00 a barrel, most Americans will experience a marked decline in their standard of living.

“At $200.00 a barrel, most Americans will experience a marked decline in their standard of living”

Sounds probable. We will also, over time, see marked advances in conservation and lots of new oil exploration.

Please-oh-please continue to raise prices!  The higher the price of oil, the more attractive alternative sources of energy become.  If the world thinks they have seen high prices for food now…just wait!  No one is yelling at Brazil for their ethanol production.  I wonder why?  Why is the US being singled out for global condemnation? [I personally think that bio-diesel is a better alternative fuel than ethanol, but what is, is.]  They want their food cheap, but they want to punish us at the gas pump at the same time.  Not gonna happen.

Meanwhile, we are also coming closer and closer to changing attitudes about using our coal reserves, using our own vast oil reserves in Alaska and the American Northwest, and re-thinking our ban on nuclear power plants.  We may even start building refineries in the US again!  [Think of all the high paying jobs that would create-and they can’t be “out sourced”.]  We might actually start using the vast and abundant geo-thermal potential for our heating and cooling needs.  We might begin to see economical electric commuter cars for our ~50 mile commutes to work.  I would go for one, if it were economically reasonable.

Here is a thought…how much energy could we save as a nation if we didn’t have about 20 Million ILLEGAL immigrants squatting in our country…using our infrastructure…not paying taxes…getting tax payer supported school for free…getting tax payer supported medical care for free…depressing American wages…stealing from all of us?

The weak dollar that so many are blaming the fuel “crisis” on is likely to turn off the drain of manufacturing jobs from the US…despite the best efforts of the NAFTA and GATT globalists that have been destroying our manufacturing base for over a decade.  With a cheap dollar, American based manufacturing [with American productivity and quality] look more attractive. 

Don’t get me wrong.  This is painful economically for me, too.  My round trip commute to work is about 36 miles per day.  Even with my little Hyundai getting about 32MPG [it used to be about 35MPG before ethanol], gas prices are starting to take a bite out of our family budget.

But, I believe in America.  I think we are capable of remarkable things.  I think this economic pressure is leading Americans out of debt slavery to credit cards.  I think it is making us look at the usury we have all accepted as normal when we buy a house.  I think it makes us look at how most of us, even the “upper middle class” are actually wage slaves because of mortgages and property tax.  I hope we can avoid the siren song of socialized medicine [think FEMA and Katrina] and the taxes it would cause.  Like I have said on other threads…when I see bottled water companies going out of business, cable and satellite TV companies going out of business, and Café Latte hoity-toity coffee specialty shops going out of business…then I will believe that we are beginning to be in trouble financially.  Until then, it’s all moonshine.

Plant your gardens!

“When I see bottled water companies going out of business” [#5]

Amen!  How utterly preposterous to haul water thousands of miles to a country where most people can obtain perfectly good water by turning a spigot.

BTW, until recently, at least, Americans were paying more per gallon for bottled water than they were for gasoline. And which of the two did the bottled-water drinkers complain about?

I seem to remember Milton Friedman making an argument about what is the “standard” monetary medium of exchange—in the past it was gold; after Bretton Woods, it was the gold tied to the dollar; after Nixon it became the barrel of oil. 

As I understand it then, it’s not so much a matter of the rising cost of oil, but the falling value of the dollar, vis-a-vis the new monetary standard.

According to President Bush…...if you believe everything He says, and I don’t…...he’s putting pressure on Congress to free up our oil exploration efforts, suspend temporarily the Federal Gasoline Tax, and open up the ANWR for oil production.  I’d like to see it succeed, but there’s a lot more that needs to be done in the development of alternative fuels and electrical energy production.  He made no mention of solar power farms in the deserts, for example, nor desalination plants along the coastline.

And I think the growing of corn for fuel is wrong…...there are millions of hungry people in this world, and their needs come first with me!

“As I understand it then, it’s not so much a matter of the rising cost of oil, but the falling value of the dollar, vis-a-vis the new monetary standard”—-William Sulik [#8]

Yes, indeed: Since President Bush took office in 2001, the value of the dollar has fallen:

—- 73% against the value of oil (oil price is 3.7 times what it was)

—- 69% against the value of gold (gold costs 3.3 times what it did)

See a pattern?

This isn’t just a matter of higher commodity prices: the dollar has fallen 41% against the euro.

Let us drill. The closer to home, the better.

Natural gas is looking better and better.

Our city-run power plant here uses natural gas.  The NYT says Tallahassee has one of the highest power costs to the consumer per kilowatt hour in the United States.

#14
Our electrical power here in KY comes from our abundant coal and is among the least expensive in the country.

#5: Apparently, the caffe-latte sippin hoity-toities are feeling the economic pinch.  In this mornings NY Times, Starbuck’s has reported a 21% decline in revenue for the second quarter.  The result of a “sharp drop off in customers.”

Well, when you can get an iced carmel or hazelnut coffee from McDonalds for less than $2.00, twice the size of a Starbucks large, and just as good if not better, they SHOULD be showing a decline.