This new media/political storm over gas prices really bothers me. If there is real gouging going on, great, punish someone. But, I think most people realize this is just a backlash against high prices.

It’s sad how many people that live in The Capitalist US don’t realize how capitalism works. Here’s a quick primer:
1. Demand goes up = prices go up.
2. Supply goes down = prices go up.

Now, taking a look at the realities around us, what’s going on? People are using more energy than ever. Production of oil has not been increasing. Given the above formula, that means prices will and should go up. This is the economic system we’ve built for ourselves, and like it or not that’s how it works.

It’s bad that the average person doesn’t know this. It’s worse that politicians are pretending to not know it. I say pretend because I’m sure they do, but they’re all trying to exploit it for political gain by spinning it as the issue they’ll fix. It’s yet even worse that the politicians are feeding the bad assumptions of the masses by pretending there’s something they should be doing about it.

I think we need Ross Perot to come out and give the country another big lecture on economics. He got the attention of millions of people the last time he tried.