Recently Obama got a question from an audience about the high price of gasoline. Obama, half-jokingly, suggested that if the questioner was driving a vehicle that got 8 miles per gallon, he should trade it in for something better.
This outraged the blogosphere, since it was interpreted as a "let them eat cake" wise-crack. But I thought his response was sensible and candid.
At this point the reader's eyes are starting to narrow because he suspects that a foot-and-pedal partisan such as me is rolling in schadenfreude over gasoline approaching $4 per gallon. Very well then, I admit that it is 70% of the reason why I agree with Obama's statement, above.
But let's discuss the remaining 30%. I'm old enough to remember when the average American drove an automobile, rather than a monster pickup truck or truck-based SUV. Is the nostalgia of old age playing tricks with my mind? I remember passenger cars doing pretty well; many drivers loved their cars. Only farmers drove pickup trucks, which were inexpensive and utilitarian. What happened?
Naturally I run after the Environmentalists and Big Government first. When the government imposed Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) requirements on car-makers, cars became neutered and uninteresting to many consumers. The unintended consequence was to chase these people into SUVs and pickup trucks.
Detroit was delighted. With its huge pension and health care overhead, Detroit can't make money on a $15,000, 4 cylinder, econobox. The break-even point is towards the higher end, which is the role filled by SUVs and monster pickup trucks, especially after they are adorned with every bell and whistle.
What really made this into a perfect storm of gasoline waste was that gasoline became quite cheap in the 1980s and 1990s. After all, the "energy crisis" of the 1970s was less about a physical shortage of oil than it was about American inflation and the decline of the dollar. When Volcker slew inflation in the early 1980s with high interest rates and a brutal recession, we embarked on a golden quarter-century of cheap gasoline. I was a newbie RVer in 1998, and once paid less than a dollar per gallon for gasoline. Yeee-hah! Furthermore, countries such as China, Brazil, and India were not yet consuming large quantities of petroleum. Throw in easy finance and you complete the transition from passenger cars to monster pickup trucks as the average family motor vehicle.
Unlike bicyclists and environmentalists, I don't think Americans should feel guilty about the Cheap Gasoline era, nor do I think that the litmus test of a progressive thinker is to "be more like Europe." I do think we should realize that the Cheap Oil Era is mostly in the past. But walk into your grocery store or dollar store parking lot and see if there are any fewer monster pickups than before, despite the customers having trouble making ends meet in several ways.
This outraged the blogosphere, since it was interpreted as a "let them eat cake" wise-crack. But I thought his response was sensible and candid.
At this point the reader's eyes are starting to narrow because he suspects that a foot-and-pedal partisan such as me is rolling in schadenfreude over gasoline approaching $4 per gallon. Very well then, I admit that it is 70% of the reason why I agree with Obama's statement, above.
But let's discuss the remaining 30%. I'm old enough to remember when the average American drove an automobile, rather than a monster pickup truck or truck-based SUV. Is the nostalgia of old age playing tricks with my mind? I remember passenger cars doing pretty well; many drivers loved their cars. Only farmers drove pickup trucks, which were inexpensive and utilitarian. What happened?
Naturally I run after the Environmentalists and Big Government first. When the government imposed Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) requirements on car-makers, cars became neutered and uninteresting to many consumers. The unintended consequence was to chase these people into SUVs and pickup trucks.
Detroit was delighted. With its huge pension and health care overhead, Detroit can't make money on a $15,000, 4 cylinder, econobox. The break-even point is towards the higher end, which is the role filled by SUVs and monster pickup trucks, especially after they are adorned with every bell and whistle.
What really made this into a perfect storm of gasoline waste was that gasoline became quite cheap in the 1980s and 1990s. After all, the "energy crisis" of the 1970s was less about a physical shortage of oil than it was about American inflation and the decline of the dollar. When Volcker slew inflation in the early 1980s with high interest rates and a brutal recession, we embarked on a golden quarter-century of cheap gasoline. I was a newbie RVer in 1998, and once paid less than a dollar per gallon for gasoline. Yeee-hah! Furthermore, countries such as China, Brazil, and India were not yet consuming large quantities of petroleum. Throw in easy finance and you complete the transition from passenger cars to monster pickup trucks as the average family motor vehicle.
Unlike bicyclists and environmentalists, I don't think Americans should feel guilty about the Cheap Gasoline era, nor do I think that the litmus test of a progressive thinker is to "be more like Europe." I do think we should realize that the Cheap Oil Era is mostly in the past. But walk into your grocery store or dollar store parking lot and see if there are any fewer monster pickups than before, despite the customers having trouble making ends meet in several ways.
Comments
Tom in Orlando
As an aside, I was told that there is a special crew in Amsterdam that goes around fishing old bikes out of the canals. It's supposedly necessary, otherwise the canals would become so clogged as to be unnvavigable.
Tom in Orlando
Why not spend that toy train money on a direct subsidy to people who don't drive or own cars?
Perhaps we could devise a GPS tracking system that could be installed on a bike and then we could get a Government check for every mile we ride, there could be different mileage rates subsidized by the stores we shop at...
Tom in Orlando