I find it odd when Americans complain about gas prices rising to $3 per gallon. Is it really that much pain at the pump? Starbucks sells coffee worth billions of dollars and I see people gladly paying $3 or more for a cup of coffee.
One could fix coffee at home and it would cost only few cents! I see people paying $3 for a beer or $7 for a drink and bars and restaurants are packed with no one complaining. They are rather tipping more money on top of it.
If you buy a SUV costing over $40,000, it depreciates more in value on a monthly basis than the amount spent on gas (atleast the initial few years). So why put all emphasis on gas ?!
?! Would people stop complaining if Starbucks were to start selling gas in fancy gas stations with fancy branding !
If they can go from coffee to music, why not sell gas as well...
What I see as real cost increases in US are housing (east coast, west coast), college education, health care, day care for kids, credit card interest, even movie tickets and clothing to some extent but expenditure on gas as a percentage of your monthly income is really not that big of a deal. Expensive gas does lead to higher cost of everything else but I bet most of Americans are not thinking that far. They just worry about $80 for a gas tank now which used to be $45 for the same not long ago.
Average American household savings are at all time low in decades because people seem to lack common financial sense. Americans won't get any poorer if gas were $7 a gallon because they are losing a lot more in credit card interest, car loan interest, car value depreciation, apartment rent, starbucks coffee, eating out, school loans, etc.
Let’s consider a different scenario - a dream come true for Americans - FREE GAS!
Fill up as much as you want and pay nothing! Every house will of course have Hummers and Ford Expeditions. Average family will save let's say $400 a month which they currently spend on gas.
Now that $400 a month is not going to a Savings account or Savings bonds. It will go into more toys, food, alcohol…in fact people will spend atleast $500 a month just because they saved $400 a month ! Credit card debt and bankruptcies will rise even more just as the percentage of obese people in this country.
Exxon and other oil companies will go out of business but Retail chains, Restaurants, Auto manufacturers will start booming and later Pharmaceutical and Health care companies will boom with more fat people! If not any economist or professor, I bet this idea could be sold to George Bush because it's simple :)
How do people survive in European countries where gas costs anywhere between $6-$7 a gallon? They don't make any more money than Americans do.
And what about people in India paying $5 per gallon. $500 per month would be a decent salary for a professional in a big Indian city. How would they survive?
I bet that professional doesn't complain as much about gas being $5 per gallon as a American professional earning $5000 per month on gas being $3 per gallon.
As the world gets smaller due to globalization, Americans will have to align their thinking with rest of the world and start to appreciate the rewards they receive for the amount of effort they put in.
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