About a week ago in one of my classes at Mendocino College, I heard a fellow student discussing the recent surge in gas prices. He mentioned a rumor that gas prices might jump to $8 a gallon in the span of a few days.
Listening to this made me chuckle to myself a little bit. Obviously, this rumor, if it was a real rumor, was a ploy by the gas companies to increase sales by convincing the American public that if gas is going to jump to $8 a gallon, $4.30 a gallon is a great deal.
The attempt is borderline pathetic, but I”m sure it”s not the first time such a strategy has been implemented. It did get me thinking though, if gas prices were to jump that high, would the American public pay the price? At the turn of the millennium, experts believed that if gas prices rose above $4 a gallon that Americans would stop buying. That”s certainly not the case.
In fact, as gas prices rise, I seem to have to wait longer to pull my car up to the pump. Why is this? It”s very reminiscent of the 1973 oil crisis when gas stations had to ration gas and lines at the pump were ridiculously long. This in itself is reminiscent of the so-called “bank runs” that took place during the Great Depression, nervous bank users tried to pull their money out of banks as the economy collapsed, which capsized many banks.
Of course, there are no extremely long lines as of yet, and laws have been passed to save banks from these bank runs, but this does shed light on an interesting trend in society. It”s this kind of “get what you can while you still have the chance” mentality. But what people forget to think about is that doing this leads to an increased demand, which raises gas prices even higher. But can we really just stop buying gas? No, of course not. But hey, look on the bright side: Europe has to pay upward of $9 per gallon, so $4.30 a gallon sounds pretty good to me.
Timothy Marquis
Lake County
