Since I don’t particularly feel like leaving a multiple paragraph reply to the post over on Shaun’s blog that sparked this topic, I’ll put my rebuttal here.
Shaun was talking about complaints about gas prices, and how they’re effectively futile in terms of creating change. I agree with that part. What I don’t agree with is what he believes is the underlying reason for those complaints :
They are frustrated and I believe for most (not all) people they are frustrated because they are busted financially and have debts that need repaying causing them to have no room in their budget to take into account the additional hike in price.
Might this be the case for some people? Sure. However, to say that everyone complains/ worries about gas prices simply because they haven’t budgeted for the extra costs now required of a fill-up is simplistic, to say the least, and completely and utterly ignores how much rising fuel costs affect everything else. For example :
-We live in a globalized economy. Manufacturing bases/growing centers and stores/markets for those products are not in any way close to each other anymore. Therefore, vast tracts of our economy depend largely on transport. As the cost of fuel rises, so does the cost of that transport. As that rises, so do the costs of making products available…and therefore, the costs of everything. And this can’t simply be blown off as “Pffft, so luxury goods are more expensive…” unless one believes something like food is a luxury item.
TANGENT WARNING! I also feel the need to respond to this :
Lastly there are those who have no debt and have low income and yes for those people it will be tough and frustration is truly understandable, however there are many opportunities out there to better your situation, that’s my opinion.
Really? So someone who received a lesser education and therefore fewer opportunities than others simply because they had the unfortunate luck to be born in to a poor family in a poor segment of society has the same chance for opportunities for betterment? Really? And don’t give me that “Well, there was that one guy! They wrote a book/made a movie about him!” Yeah…they did that because he/she WAS AN ANOMALY. Seriously, the whole idea that ‘everyone has the same chance’ is nothing more than a nonsense fairy tale.
TANGENT OVER!
-The actual production/harvesting of goods burns fuel. If the costs of fuel rise, so do the costs of manufacturing/harvesting. Yet again, that causes a resulting price escalation to the products being manufactured/harvested.
Yes, both of these can also be chalked up to the worries of those carrying too much debt, but that would again be simplistic and foolish. Even people who are living within their means and budgeting smartly are negatively affected when the cost of literally every single product they buy goes up. Besides, complaining about gas prices does not in any way equal complaining that you can’t afford gas.
Incidentally Shaun, this will directly affect you. Your business depends entirely on shipped goods. Guess what happens when those shipping costs go up? So do the costs of those goods. So either you’re eating that added cost and your net profit per sale just dropped, or you’re charging your potential customers more money and quite likely making fewer sales as a result.
-Fuel isn’t just gasoline for your car. Last I checked, it also affects such things as heating your home in the winter. Shocking that that would be something people might worry about. Again, not because they can’t afford it, but because it does directly affect them. People tend to have a weird habit of complaining about things that affect them.
-Gas prices come from oil prices, just as gas comes from oil. Plastic and rubber are produced from oil. So if the cost of oil rises, so does the cost of producing plastic and rubber. You might want to take note of the fact that virtually everything you buy these days contains/is packaged in at least one of those. Perhaps doing some research in to just how many other products out there are partially produced from petroleum (everything from paint to Antihistamines) might offer some more insight in to why increasing petroleum costs are not a great thing.
-Every single time you increase the cost of oil, you tend to increase the militancy of the Middle East. This doesn’t usually end up being a good thing. Do you think that Western nations are more or less likely to stay politically and militarily involved long beyond when and how they should as the sole commodity that region produces keeps skyrocketing in value? Do you think that giving more and more global power to such ‘friendly’ nations as Saudi Arabia as oil prices rise might perhaps not have spectacular results for humanity as a whole?Those sorts of things tend to involve a lot of typically nasty repercussions.
-On a local level, remember the last time oil boomed? Remember how the cost of living shot up in Alberta as a result of that boom? Remember how you couldn’t get decent service ANYWHERE because nobody wanted to work a service job? And the cost of everything in Fort Mac shot to such ridiculous levels that EVERYONE was affected, regardless of debt load. Meanwhile, that region also served as such a massive employment vacuum that nobody anywhere else in the province could staff up. It wasn’t a good situation. A lot of important work, such as repairs to provincial infrastructure, had to be postponed because there simply weren’t enough workers available to cover all the projects. And we’re still playing catch up in trying to get that work done.
That’s just a beginning to showing how dismissing concern/complaint about gas prices as simply being an issue of broke people complaining about not being able to afford gas is simplistic nonsense. Every segment of the global economy is affected, and it has major geo-political impact. I could go on, but this is long enough as is and my point is made.
