Tuesday, May 02, 2006

Gas Prices

When it comes to high gas prices, Gov Corzine is mad. And I'm not saying mad like as in angry but mad as in crazy. About as crazy as everyone else who wants 'relief' from these high prices. New Jersey is one of the only states (Oregon is the other) that mandates full service gas stations. Compared to gas in PA, their gas is actually cheaper. Corzine wants to try a few stations at self-serve to see if prices will go down further. My guess is that the big oil companies would love this. Overall, they would be able to hire less labor and eventually their prices will float up and they will make more money than they are now. Corzine says that we can try it out and see how it works. I'll tell you right now how it will work. The prices will be held artificially lower for a while by the companies.. just long enough to convince the state to repeal the law and then in a matter of weeks we'll have self-serve across NJ and then the prices will slowly float up again. So we'll have the same gas prices and less service. (apparently I'm not the only one against this idea)

In PA they are talking about a temporary repeal of the state gas tax. Another brilliantly stupid idea. That tax is there to provide funds that are already spent or budgeted. We remove that tax and the state will have to cut services in some other place to make up for it.

Want to know how to deal with high gas prices? Stop driving your cars so much. Car pool more, take public transportation. Stop driving inefficient vehicles.

I look at high gas prices as a very good thing. I think over time it will force us to conserve more. It will force us to think about fuel efficiency. It may force us to invest more money in trains and other forms of mass transit. We may in fact, shudder, walk more and bike more and become more healthy. Wow.. imagine that!

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