Within the past century we have seen our country grow into a more industrialized society; we no longer rely as much on agriculture as our mean for economic growth because we now have industries, businesses, corporations, as well as world-wide trading policies. Within the past few decades or so, we have seen other countries, such as China, modernize at an alarming rate. This proof of a larger-scale picture Social Darwinism has shown us that we are slowly losing our title as world power, or at least having to share it with our competition. As a result, we are beginning to see a world-wide impact on prices of many natural resources that we have used the most, the most obvious one of these being gasoline. Many Americans complain that the price of gas is ridiculous and that our government should step in and set a price on gas; I disagree with this idea.
As briefly mentioned above, the society around the world is changing at an alarming rate, many countries are following our path of becoming modernized and industrialized. Industrialization is a good thing, not just for our country but for others as well, but it also has its downside. With more jobs being introduced in those countries, more people are needing to commute to and from work, meaning more gasoline will begin to be used up world-wide than just the U.S. and many European countries using the majority of it. Gasoline is our main source of fuel for cars, while more efficient and newer means of fuel and power for cars is being introduced the technology isn't fully there to support it yet. There are estimated 6,904,994,001 world-wide at this very moment (and this number continues to increase)and 310,000,000 people in the U.S., and it's said that 388 million gallons of gas is used daily just in the U.S. That's a large amount supply of gas being consumed, it's no wonder the price of gas is increasing because the demand is increasing and the supply decreasing (slowly over time but much faster than before due to an increase of population and modernization). It is this increase in demand that impacts gas prices; as things are demanded more, especially natural resources, the price goes up to ensure there will not be a shortage. Aside from supply and demand, Political issues, war, and natural disasters in countries that oil is obtained from can have even more of an effect on the price.
It should also be reminded that the U.S. is a mixed-economy but our roots derive from a Laissez-Faire policy, the idea that the government shouldn't mess with the economy. Our government's job is to provide us with goods and services, as well as oversee things to ensure no laws are broken, but their job is not, and should not be, to completely control us, otherwise we would be considered a Capitalistic economy. The government should not interfere with gas prices because it's not their job, it is the companies' job to set prices and change them as needed, even if we don't agree with the price. If the government were to start controlling the price, over time it could be a problem if a drastic change needs to be made; the request for the price change would need to be sent to congress and be voted on, etc. It would take too long and is not something that needs to be done. The gas business is like any other business out there, it's effected by supply and demand as well as several other factors that are beyond the government's control.
Sources:
fueleconomy.gov. Accessed March 10, 2011. http://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/gasprices/faq.shtml.
U.S. Energy Information Administration. Accessed March 10, 2011. http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/tools/faqs/faq.cfm?id=23&t=10.
U.S. Census Bureau. Accessed March 10, 2011. http://www.census.gov/main/www/popclock.html.
oilprices.com. Accessed March 10, 2011. http://oilprice.com/Energy/Gas-Prices/What-Affects-Gas-Prices.html.
No comments:
Post a Comment