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If you think gas (and food) are expensive now, give it a week.
That’s all it may take for the thing styled the “media” to whip up enough hysteria about the Danger of Putin to cause something far worse and even more idiotic than the pouring out of Russian Vodka into the sink.
That thing being the turning off of the Russian spigot.
America currently imports something on the order of 600,000 barrels of Russian oil every day – an amount about 200,000 barrels shy of the number of barrels America would not have to import from Russia, had the Biden Thing not cancelled the Keystone Pipeline, among other things.
The deficit of those 200,000-something barrels per day – along with the other things of-a-piece done by the Biden Thing to reduce the supply of oil available to Americans – has helped to almost double the price of a gallon of gas over the course of a little more than one year since Orange Man Bad. And while he may, indeed, have been very bad – as by declaring (and continuing) an “emergency” when there wasn’t one and by turgidly Warp Speeding dangerous drugs not merely into existence but facilitated the forcing of them into the bodies of tens of millions of Americans – he was very good on the energy front.
It was only about a year ago that America didn’t need oil from Russia. It was only about a year ago that America was on the verge of being a net exporter of oil – perhaps to places like Russia.
In that case, America could have turned off the spigot – without Americans having to pay three times as much for a gallon of gas as they just may, soon, than they were paying when Orange Man Bad.
Americans ought to consider what that will mean – and whether it’s a cost they’re wanting (are able) to bear.
At $6 per gallon, it will cost the average American just shy of $100 to fill up the 15 gallon tank of the average compact-sized economy car; something in the Toyota Corolla class of car.
Assuming a once-a-week fill-up, the average American will be paying about $400 per month to get to work, in order to pay for that. Assuming it stays at just $6 per gallon – an unsafe assumption, if the Biden Thing stops importing Russian oil to punish the Russians by punishing Americans – the average American will be spending close to $5,000 annually on gas. For the same gas that he spent $30 to buy a tankful of when Orange Man Bad – or $120 per month ($1,440 per year).
His work is not likely going to give him a raise to compensate him for the difference.
Nor for the difference in what it costs him to eat.
Americans may not understand where their food comes from – nor how it is produced – much as they do not understand why the Russians are unsettled about this business of having a Western military alliance ensconced right up against the border of their country. But here’s the spoiler.
It requires oil.
A great deal of it, to create the fertilizer upon which crops depend. Upon which livestock depends, to grow into hamburger and pork chops. Without oil – or rather, without affordable oil – it not only gets more expensive to grow the crops, it gets harder to grow them. Modern industrial agriculture “guzzles” a great deal more gas – in the form of oil – than any V8-powered SUV.
Than all of them, combined.
Without the oil, you get the double whammy. Less food that costs more. And more to get that food to you. Trucks using oil, you see.
As well as for you to get to it.
Think about that a little bit.
How about $10 for a pound of ground round? How about no ground round, at all? It is a delicious irony – for those who appreciate it – that as the American regime fulminates against the Russian regime, America looks more and more like the Soviet regime.
Well, American supermarkets begin to look more and more like Soviet-era supermarkets, full of empty shelves and high prices. A kopek for your thoughts, comrade? American roads, too.
Or rather, soon will.
Lots of open roads – for the Party nomenklatura, people like the Biden Thing. They don’t have to worry about the cost of filling up, because they don’t have to pay it. The nomenklatura – whether then or there or here and now – never has to worry about such things. What they do worry about is a comfortable, well-fed population of citizens who don’t need them and for that reason can ignore them.
This is harder to do when your stomach – and your tank – are empty.
Or when you can’t afford to fill either.
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Featured image is from Libertarian Car Talk
