I am not into television. One of the few times I TV is in the mornings, when it happens to be on when I am getting ready to start the day. Usually, the “Today Show” is on. I realize this is not a legitimate news program. On the contrary, it basically one step up from a supermarket tabloid that features a three headed baby on the front cover. Today, er, this morning, Today featured a mindless report about gasoline which I paid little attention to. However, the closing remark perked me right up like a cold shower. The remark was something along the lines of “Everyone agrees, however, that gas prices are way too high.”
Uh, what? Could you be more subjective? Isn’t that like having a weather report that says “It’s too hot” or “It’s too cold?” I don’t think gas prices are too high. In fact, I think gas prices are a couple of bucks too low. There are quite a few costs of gas that are not captured in the “per gallon” price. For one thing, a tremendous amount of American blood and dollars are being sacrificed in
Give Steven Levitt a hammer, because he nailed this topic.
2 comments:
So very true.
What irks me most is that the oil companies have kept us on the edge of affordable petrol, and so we don't fully develop alternatives.
Regarding vulnerable populuations, since the oil companies' profits are huge, they should (and some do) provide for those people.
Yesterday, after reading your item about Milton Friedman, I spent hours thinking around and through some on the major problems in the world, and in the smallness of my mine I solved them all.
Then I met a young man who was convinved that war was a good thing. His brother has a job paying $80,000 dollars a year because of the war, and if not for the war, the brother would be unemployed. Then this same young man went on to talk about the need to save the enviroment.
We are such complex life forms, finding solutions even if there are no solutions, creating problems even if there are no problems, always wanting to control as though it is our purpose.
The dichotomy, the didactic, the dictum, of it all.
I think, as Tom Jefferson said, "It is time to lay my head on that soft pillow of ignorance".
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