While the market falls and 401(k) plans start to make baseball cards look like a smart retirement plan, one development that is slightly under the radar is that gas prices, along with oil prices, are dropping.
Conservatives will consider this an inspiration for all sorts of pronouncements.
"See? The market fixes itself!" "I'm gonna get that SUV!" "Things are getting better under Bush!"
Here's some points to throw back:
Prices drop when demand does. And Lord, has demand bottomed out. Transit use is rising, as are bikes and walking. Out-of-town trips are special occasions, and the Sunday Drive is in the museum with Pet Rocks. Oil prices are being slashed the same reason that CD player prices are being slashed...People aren't buying them.
Three bucks a gallon (which is where it is right now in Colo.) is hardly the $1.15-.95 range that we had for most of the 90's. An important commodity has nearly tripled in price under GOP rule. Just because oil companies have stopped kicking me doesn't mean my ribs have stopped hurting.
Advocating for high-mpg is still smart. The Hummer still takes $100 to fill up and gets 15 mpg. That's a trip of about 500 miles on the tank. An American-made Chevy Cobalt takes less than half that to fill and goes further on a tank. Saving as much fuel as you can will only help things along, and keep demand moderate.
We're still broke. You're gonna need those lower gas prices to look for a job or get to your second and third part-time gigs. Sure, a buck off the price will make the pocketbook pinch a little less, but when our long-term private sector investments have lost over a quarter of their value, $3 a gallon barely qualifies as a silver lining.
We have a great opportunity to keep pushing for alt fuels and energy, high-mpg cars, hybrid and electric, and just plain conserving energy. Let's not let a lull in gas prices send us back to where we were.