Horse, Ravine, Economy: See the Connection?
Chris Wallace of Fox News Sunday interviewed senators Byron Dorgan (D, ND) and Kay Bailey Hutchison (R, TX) Sunday about high gas prices and domestic oil production–the transcript is available here. Everyone in touch with reality (a handful of people, by last count) knows that the price of any product in an even minimally free market is directly related to the ratio of demand to supply. The higher the demand and lower the supply, the higher the price.
So the two most direct routes to lower gas prices are (a) imposing despotic restrictions on consumption and (b) increasing supply. Since (a) is still a degree or two too admittedly Marxist even for most people in congress, the focus turns instead to (b); that is, the attention turns to increasing the amount of oil available to be refined into gasoline. All of those things are good and fine, and they are the reason both Dorgan and Hutchison express the need for increased production–albeit with possibly different Read the rest of this entry »
