Tuesday's Economics

My bike didn't come factory equipped with a gas gauge, so every so often you have to tap the tank and listen for how much of an empty sound echos back.  And even though it normally amounts to little over a gallon of gasoline, I make it a point to top off my gas tank nearly every day just to play it safe.  Reset the tripometer, then a see you tomorrow Mr. gas pump.  For sure.  I'm fully aware that filling up a bike is not anywhere as expensive as filling up a car, still I was appalled today to discover that the 87% octane gasoline that I buy had risen to $4.00/gal.  That is, today's 1.07 gallons rung up as $4.00.

It's amusing that some people still blame OPEC for high gasoline prices when a hefty 40% of the oil that the US consumes is from domestic production.  Of the remaining 60%, some oil does actually get imported from non-OPEC oil producing countries such as Canada.  So, OPEC oil amounts to less than 60% of the total oil that the US guzzles.  Even with a 40-60 percent ratio though, OPEC would not exert an overwhelming effect on oil prices if not aided and abetted by US oil companies who feign that they are bound and gagged to sell their oil to their own country at the same high prices that OPEC sets as dictated under the rules of some kind of mystical World Oil Consortium which the US oil companies along with OPEC are signatories of, and, and, if the people of our great nation was not the dummies that by all indications they lead the oil companies to think they are then the stupid suckus would get on the program and invest every last copper penny of their life savings into oil stocks and the profits from the oil stocks would subsidize their gasoline tanks.  Of course, if you can't afford to buy but a few shares of big oil stocks than it don't apply.  Inversely, if you were well enough off to afford to buy many shares, high gasoline prices wouldn't be a problem.