By Josh Resnek
At nearly all the gas stations in Everett, the price for a gallon of gasoline is at $5.00 or more or only slightly under that.
Talk about sticker shock!
The rising price for gasoline is the most harsh example of the inflation we are dealing with.
The straight up price rise represents the inability of the economy and of the national government to dictate the price for gasoline.
Setting the price for gasoline is the world economic marketplace.
In one way, this is a testament to the power and the purity of capitalism.
In another, it is about capitalism’s sick obsession with speculation and profits that gasoline can be climbing higher and higher in price when there is no shortage of gasoline.
That is what makes the out of control price gouging a national embarrassment.
At the beginning of this week, a barrel of oil selling in the international marketplace at almost $120 a barrel.
This represents a remarkable rise from 2021’s $70 a barrel and 2020’s, $40 a barrel.
Translation – we are going to be paying more and more for gasoline, heating oil and diesel fuel.
How high it will go is a matter of how bad the speculation becomes.
There is also the matter of consumption.
The summer months trend as higher consumption months for gasoline.
The biggest problems associated with the cost for fuel?
Trucking.
America’s economy and the production and distribution of nearly everything we manufacture is trucked around the nation.
Trains carry immense amounts of coal, fuel and industrial goods but trains use far less fuel than trucks per ton delivered.
Truckers are presently in a fix. The situation is worsening by the day.
Truckers have neared the point of being unable to fill up their 18 wheelers – so what do trucking companies do? They raise their rates for the delivery of products.
What then do the producers of products do to the consumer, they raise the price of their products.
In the absence of a national outrage, protests, anger, and fingers pointed at lobbyists and greedy politicians who support the major oil companies, not much is going to change.
Prices are going to rise higher.
How does this effect all of us who drive? Paying for more expensive gasoline cuts down on our disposable income – and dramatically.
I filled my Lexus Monday morning for $90! Six months ago, that price was $50.
Six months before that the price for a fill as $38.
If I fill once a week that becomes $360 a month, like the cost of a small bank loan.
If you fill up heading to the grocery store, first you are robbed of your cash at the pump, then the robbery continues inside the supermarket where prices are averaging about 20% higher than they were last year at this time.
Where does this upward spiral end for working class people? In bankruptcy court.
How high will prices go? We don’t know.
As long as the war in Ukraine upsets the international economic balance and causes the jitters between the biggest oil producing nations, there is no chance presently for a decline in price for a barrel of oil.
Russia is the second largest producer of oil in the world. The war, Russia, inflation, supply line problems throughout the world, are powering the rise in prices.
And as tensions rise, prices rise with them.