It's more like...what content was right?
The trouble is, you've had it so good, for so long, you've forgotten what the real cost of energy is.
Who's forgotten?
You're lucky there are still gas stations around - the operators have been losing money on gas for the last decade. Still are probably - they live off profit from soda pop and twinkies in the shop!
Maybe the station operators aren't making money but the oil companies are raking it in! Oh, yeah...BIGTIME. Just take a look at how the oil companies have moved up in the Fortune 500 over the past ten years. They're rolling in dough. They refuse denominations smaller than $100 to use as toilet paper to wipe their asses.
You live in the largest, most wasteful, most egotistical, capitalistaic, and insular society since the Roman Empire and you dare to complain about market forces!
Corporate windfall profiteering is not a market force. Pump prices don't reflect the cost per barrel at all. Every excuse in the book has been used to justify the gouging.
"Custom blended gasoline"
"Pipeline disruption"
"Storm delay"
"Terrorist attack fears"
"Plant renovation"
"Refinery fire"
"Compensating for new state regulations"
"Costs more to deliver to some (rich) cities"
"Lag time between price fluctuations"
"Speculation"
"Because oil company accountants can't get any so they screw the public instead"
Sound familiar? Any used in your state/region?
The US isn't any more egotistical than France, Germany or many other nations that feel they are the pinnacle of cultural enlightenment.
The US is not an insular society. We are the hub of the wheel of the world.
Well, I hope you freeze in the dark next winter.
Why? Because he's tired of gouging oil companies who are raping the public? In just a few years the oil companies will all be at the top of the fortune 500, even edging out the firm with nothing resembling ethics, Walmart.
Sell your big fat car, sell your big fat house.
So drive more unsafely & live more uncomfortably because of a unjustifiable spike in heating costs? That doesn't sound like a real good solution to me.
Get a small place near work, or near a transit system that works.
Yes...Carl should rent out a broom closet with space for him and his bicycle, throw his elderly relatives in another broom closet and join the ranks of millions of Chinese men and women (or you ;-)
Do it quick before everyone else gets the same idea and you can't even GIVE your SUV away and the price for little apartments in town reaches European norms.
Sure...rush to be first in line to sacrifice the American way for the European way. I think you'll find few folks in that line--ever.
Welcome to the real world, America. The Frontier is now officially closed and you have to live in the same small box as the rest of us.
Whose idea of the real world? What frontier is closed? What small box?
I've flown all over America and most of it is empty space. Even California. It's amazing just how much space is left to grow. The only small box lifestyle is in Japan or Europe. Australians aren't living in small boxes either and haven't come close to utilizing the land available to them.
The real world has still got plenty of space, plenty of resources and plenty of ingenuity to support big living for all Americans and any other nations peoples that embrace capitalism and entrepreneurial enterprises.
If you want to live in the sky-is-falling mode, that's fine. It's a costume sold and paraded by all by those who seek to take something from you, or get you to give something away.