Many of you may have seen this bumper sticker floating around your city:
So this leads me to the question, how low will gas go once Bush leaves the White House on January 20th? The national average right now is around $1.72 and dropping fast, at the current rate of reduction at $1.44 less per six weeks, gas will be 28 cents by Inauguration Day!
But the long and short of this post is not to praise the dramatic drop in oil that has, thankfully, taken some of the edge off of this recession…no it is quite the opposite. Gas prices are a symptom of the failed policies of the Bush Administration, and, ironically, so are the record highs we saw just five short months ago.
The volatility we are seeing in today’s world is due to the fact that our economy has run rampant over the past eight years, fueled by the idea that the free market can do no wrong and that the governments role is to play no role at all. Why is this ideology fundamentally flawed? Well let me tell you.
Our economy has people in it.
That’s right, a pure free market system will fail every time because people exist within the free market. The idea of free and open markets is pure – and in fact quite good – but people tend to pick and choose which parts of the free market ideology to peruse when attempting to create a system where a product gets to a consumer in the most efficient manor possible.
Greed, manipulation, fraud, theft; these are all creations of human nature. Likewise government is a necessary counterbalance and an amalgamation of all human nature. Governments are created by people to protect people from people because, when left to our own accord, we have yet to prove that we won’t all devolve into a more basic condition. We create laws on things, like an unabashed free market, to ensure that certain individuals will not harm other individuals and impart a sense of justice as well, all in an attempt to make people be good.
In short government regulation is a good thing…to a point.
Now we can all sit back and nit-pick about how much is too much, however I am not interested in discussing any of that at this point; all I will say is that the Bush Administration has clearly chosen a level that is far to low for the global economic situation we currently live in. Many conservatives may not like what I say, but do you also like $700 billion (and rising) of or tax dollars going to fix the situation we are currently in?
Deregulation of everything from banks to oil derricks has created an atmosphere rife with potential corruption, collusion, and profiteering. This atmosphere creates a booming economy that hums great until the slightest wind blows it off course. Sure enough that wind started to blow this time last year, and we now see ourselves in the trouble we are in today.
The greed and arrogance of those who took the money and ran thanks to Bush Administration policies has caused a global crisis not seen in many years – even the low cost of gas is a symptom. No one can afford to fill up so demand goes down. Because demand goes down price goes down (simple free market concept there).
We will get out of this hopefully sooner rather than later, but I can’t help but point the finger towards Bush. After all he has presided over two recessions in his eight years, a feat not seen for over fifty years. In short, we need protections and enforcement that, though it may inhibit growth in the short term, provides long term security for all members of the economy.
Just be happy that you are not 65 and seeing that your Bush supported, GOP approved, privatized social security check started coming in this month.
I remember as a kid–it would have been about 1970, before the energy crisis in 1973–when gas was actually 27 cents per gallon. I also remember in the mid-70′s when it jumped to something like $1.47 and Paul Harvey predicted 4 dollars. It’s down now because the ability to speculate one’s self a corner on the market is now legally a thing of the past.
The things you said about the free market and government sound an awful lot like John Adams, who said that the Constitution is for a moral and religious people, and won’t work very well if we’re not. If we’re immoral, we’ll breed immoral capitalists and bureaucrats.