Once again the gas prices are shooting back up. I'm sure we'll be back over $3 by summertime. I remember it wasn't so many years ago that gas fluctuated 1 cent every couple weeks. Now it can go up 20 cents in one day. I think a big part of the problem is the growth of the SUV market. I think the other half of the problem is China. I'll start with the first:
We've all become addicted to the SUV. I have a Nissan Pathfinder myself. When my wife bought the car 4 years ago, she wanted it because of all the obvious reasons: looked cool, enjoyed sitting up higher, more space etc. If I was in the same boat today, I wouldn't buy another SUV, not with gas prices going the way they are. My concern is that people don't really care much for the greater good. Everyone looks to fulfill their own personal greed. Take a coworker of mine. He has a company pickup truck that he can use for personal use. Despite this he went out and bought a bigger pickup truck for himself and a giant Ford Excursion for his wife. Their reasons boiled down to the same reasons above: the vehicles looked cool. Meanwhile they are burning considerably more fuel as a result of this vanity. My solution to the problem is simple: tie your yearly vehicle registration to your vehicle's fuel economy. The government could take the average of your vehicle's city versus highway mileage and that would be your number. Then they would set an ideal number. For every mile per gallon less, your yearly fee would go up a fixed amount. So a Prius might cost you $50/year and an Excursion might cost you $300. Exceptions would be made for business related heavy vehicles. This seems to me to be a natural step in the right direction. If people want a large SUV, they are entitled to buy one but if they are going to affect the price of gas for the rest of us, then they should have to pay up. Of course, a large portion of the population would not want to pay the extra money and as a result they'd switch over to a more fuel effecient vehicle. This would then pressure the auto makers to make more fuel effecient vehicles and hopefully this trend of increasing gas prices would reverse itself.
Part two is China. I've often felt that we have two extremes in America now - things are either too cheap or too expensive. I don't think anyone will argue that $3.25 a gallon is expensive, health care is expensive, heating your home is expensive etc., but what about the flipside?
14 years ago I decided to buy a VCR to use in my college dorm. I researched around and picked out a reliable, middle-range unit that cost $300. At the time I was making $5/hour so it took me quite awhile to save up the money but despite that, I felt the $300 was a fair price.
I currently have a coworker who makes about $50,000/year. His wife does not work. He has three young children and three big dogs. In his house he has 5 TV's and 5 DVD players. Why is this? Because you can get a DVD player for $29. Even a good one costs about $100. If DVD players were $300, he'd have two at best. My point is this, some things have gotten too cheap. As a result we've fattened ourselves with piles of material items we don't really need just because of the price. The only catch is there is a cost to all this. As China gets richer from making all our goods, their 1 billion citizens go from riding bicycles to scooters and from scooters to cars. They're sucking up all the gas that was meant for us and as a result, our gas prices go up and fluctuate incredibly. Instead of celebrating how you bought this new button down shirt for $3, instead think about the hidden cost to our society. America's consumerism has gotten too fat and we will pay from it in the future. My solution to this problem is import taxes. No one wants more taxes but sometimes you have to look at the big picture. Pigs get fed, hogs get slaughtered.
