Some report I was listening to on NPR this morning reported that "paying for gas" was the prime economic concern for Americans... other concerns such as paying for food, paying the rent/mortgage, and finding a well-paying job fell behind "paying for gas" on the worry scale. Interesting.Conveniently enough, I also fell upon an interesting article on MSN Money Central today addressing the oft-asked question, "Is there something that consumers can do now to immediately drive prices down?"
I am sorry to report that the answer to that question is "no". Apparently, "as with weight loss, there is no quick fix, and the only answer is predictably not sexy: Consume less. Choose fuel efficiency, car pools, public transportation, your legs. With time, an across-the-board, consistent drop in demand should equilibrate prices." Steven D. Levitt, author of Freakonomics (which tops my list of book favorites, by the way), called the recurrent one-day boycott idea a "new low in economic thinking." So a recession AND a new low in intellectual thought? Awesome.
In other words, to decrease gas prices, we should all promise to stop joining those popular Facebook groups that call for boycotts of gas on specific days, sell our Hummers or gas-guzzling SUV (if we can), and take a walk to Walmart to do some grocery shopping. I'm in.
1 comment:
those mass emails and facebook groups designed to take down the oil companies by not buying gas for a day just wonderful, aren't they? I usually un-friend people that join those groups. How come those people that are going to refuse to buy gas from certain companies or not buy gas on May 15 don't realize that it isn't the postponement of buying that will save us. Rather, it is the postponement of driving that will force prices back down, along with the destruction of India's and China's economies.
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