It’s depressing when you’re trying to run to the pump the second the news hits to fill up your tank before the gas stations catch wind of the price rising. It seems that for every dollar a barrel of oil shoots up, a gallon of gas goes up 10 cents. Right now in AZ, we’re paying around $3.20 a gallon (which is about 1/4 of 1 Euro right now. ) … and I hear California is up around $4.

It’s affecting everything too. Because of the mass increase of price, food has shot up a ridiculous amount as well. Moving it from one place to another is only half the reason. A lot of the corn and wheat supply is now going to ethanol production. Which in turn raises the cost of Feed for livestock, which makes the price of meat go way up IN ADDITION to the price of transportation. What an assbackwards idea and poor timing. There has to be ways to make fuel other than using food when the world most needs it.

The fact that the USA’s oil refineries are more than 50 years old doesn’t help either. I’m not a fan of drilling for oil in Alaska at all. Even less so in Ocean water, but god dammit, we need to find a way to get off of our Foreign Oil dependency as of YESTERDAY. Otherwise, yes, it’s going to destroy what’s left of our Economy.

Between being taxed 30% of our income right off the top of our take home pay (what the living FUCK?), extremely high priced gas (I know that in relation gas is more expensive in Europe, but the fact is the USA is far more wide open. My commute to work is 50 miles a day.), and higher cost of food, people here are going out way less, buying far fewer items of leisure, taking fewer trips, and general the market is in for one hell of a downhill roller coaster when you add in the over-inflated housing markets collapsing around people’s ears.

I would - in a HEARTBEAT - Buy a bike and ride to work every morning regardless of the temperature in the summer here if it were not a distance issue. I would LOVE to buy a hybrid vehicle and take my SUV (which I bought for the sole purpose of moving cross country) off the road except for hauling things. I would be willing to dry my clothes outside in lieu of using my electric dryer if I owned property with a yard. I’d open my windows instead of keeping the air on if I felt safe in the place I DO live.

All of these things would help, but I can’t do any of them, and won’t be able to in the near future due in part to the terrible terrible cost of oil. I can’t even fill my gas tank for less than $70 right now. I’m going to get rid of the truck as soon as I can, but due to costs involved with buying and registering a new car, it’ll be a long while before I can save up.

And somehow, the oil companies are still making record breaking profits and continue to get government tax breaks to operate. People argue that they only make 10% profit, but 10% of 50 Billion dollars is still 1000% more profit than Microsoft makes, so the percentage thing doesn’t really work when you look at it from that angle, does it?

And it’s not even like we can do anything about the cost of the barrel. If we all cut back on driving (lol right), cut back on heating (lol how), or anything that uses oil, or even build new rigs in the US, that Oil is going to continue to go to the high bidder unless those rigs are built, funded, controlled, and distributed by the US government (lol big government strikes again!) to the US people. Free market works people, just not how you want it to sometimes.