OK you guys, before you get all wrapped up in various conspiracies & engage in a bunch of finger pointing, lets look at some facts. People seem to love to blame someone else, so let's make sure the blame goes where it belongs.
First, I poked around the web a little bit & discovered that Exxon's profit is about 9.5% of sales, which is actually not very high. That equates to roughly 28 cents of profit for a $3.00 gallon of gas. Even if Exxon & their shareholders made no profit whatsover, gas would still cost better than 90% of what it does right now.
Taxes take a much bigger bite, roughly 45 cents per gallon total for federal, state & local. Can't complain too much here, because someone has to pay for the roads that we all drive on. Like most taxes, I'm sure there's a lot of inefficiency in how the money is used, but someone has to pay for all the roads and who better than the people who drive on them.
The U.S. is a vast country, and we tend to drive long distances compared to the rest of the world. With all the years of cheap fuel, we were able to spread out & consequently have to drive much further than people in most developed countries. Because of cheap fuel, we also never developed any sort of an efficient mass transportation system. Finally, U.S. drivers refuse to give up their big powerful cars & trucks & drive smaller, fuel efficient vehicles like the rest of the world.
Yes, the tree huggers & other whackos are a contributing factor to our current situation, but they are by no means a major one. I for one am old enough to remember big city smog, and certainly wouldn't want to go back to that situation no matter how cheap gas was.
Same deal with politicians & the various political parties. Politicians will go along with whichever way the wind is blowing, and collectively have never had the foresight nor the will to create policies that wean us from our dependence on oil. This applies equally to all political parties and individuals.
Development of alternative energy sources is primarily driven by economics, and we have yet to reach the point where alternatives to oil are economically feasible on a large scale. It'll eventually happen, but not at today's gas prices.
Yes, gas prices are a problem, and I'm not any happier than anyone else about spending all that money to get back & forth to work, but the current prices are a result of a whole bunch of factors coming together, not just someone's greed. Take the worldwide oil demand that didn't exist 20 years ago, plus a society that refuses to give up its beloved mobile lifestyle, plus short sighted & gutless politicians, plus a county that covers vast distances, plus poor or non-existent public transportation, etc., etc., etc., and you'll end up with our current situation.
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Today's Featured Article - Third Brush Generators - by Chris Pratt. While I love straightening sheet metal, cleaning, and painting old tractors, I use every excuse to avoid working on the on the electrics. I find the whole process sheer mystery. I have picked up and attempted to read every auto and farm electrics book with no improvement in the situation. They all seem to start with a chapter entitled "Theory of Electricity". After a few paragraphs I usually close the book and go back to banging out dents. A good friend and I were recently discussing our tractor electrical systems when he stated "I figure it all comes back to applying Ohms Law". At this point
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