Gas Prices: 10 Best and Worst States

Drea at Business Pundit lists the 10 worst and 10 best states for buying gasoline, i.e., those in which gas is most and least expensive. King Banian finds, not surprisingly, a rather strong correlation between these lists and the rate of taxation imposed by states and localities. I was rather surprised that Georgia didn't make the least expensive lists and ...

James Hamilton on the 2008 Oil Shock

Prof. Hamilton has an interesting post that argues that we are now seeing another oil shock like we say in 1973-74 (oil embargo), 1978 (Iranian Revolution), 1980 (Iran-Iraq war), and 1990 (first Persian Gulf war). Prof. Hamilton notes that in all cases the run up in oil prices was followed by a recession. Now, using recent data we ...

High Gas Prices Our Own Fault

George Will joins the Blame America crowd on the issue of high oil prices. Responding to Chuck Schumer's suggestion that we block arms sales to Saudi Arabia until it "increases its oil production by one million barrels per day," which would cause the price of gasoline to fall "50 cents a gallon almost immediately," Will notes that notes that, "One ...

Forced Public Transit

Robert Reich, who admits that he used to commute by car rather than public transit because "I've never been able to organize myself around their schedules," is delighted that people are now being forced to do what he wouldn't by high gas prices. For years, policymakers have wondered just how high gas prices would have to go before drivers switch ...

Hummer Terminated by High Gas Prices?

General Motors CEO Rick Wagoner has announced the closure of four truck and SUV plants in North America and says the Hummer brand may be discontinued altogether. The civilian version of the Hummer came out as I was getting out of the Army and, frankly, I never much understood the appeal. I had spent enough time riding and even ...

Public Transit Up, Driving Down as Gas Prices Increase

Proving that basic economic concepts like elasticity of demand and substitution of goods are not outmoded, the American public is responding to increases in gas prices by driving less and taking public transit more. Soaring gas prices are pushing more Americans to take public transit, with streetcars, trolleys and other light rail experiencing a 10.3 percent increase in ridership for the ...

Oil Company Profits

With the run up in oil prices, oil companies have seen their profits also run up. For many this is just wrong. That consumers have to pay more at the pump and oil companies see huge profits…why that is positively un-American! Never mind that there is an obvious and logical connection between profits for a firm and ...

A Battle of Wits with an Unarmed Man

Driving in to work this morning, I caught part of a discussion on The Diane Rehm Show between David Kreutzer, Senior Policy Analyst in Energy Economics and Climate Change at The Heritage Foundation and Peter Gosselin, national economics reporter for the Los Angeles Times about the recent spike in oil prices. Kreutzer asserted that drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife refuge ...

Biofuels Are a Disaster, Stop It Already

I think it is safe to say that the use of things like corn and other crops to produce biofuels simply a stupid and wrongheaded philosophy. We were told that biofuels were supposed to help break our dependence on foreign oil. Yet here I sit having to pay, if I'm lucky, $4/gallon to fill up my gas tank. ...

Biodiesel Pirates Stealing Grease to Make Fuel

MSNBC reports on a growing number of thefts of used cooking oil from restaurant by "biodiesel pirates", who convert the cooking oil into fuel.Now, restaurants from Berkeley, Calif., to Sedgwick, Kan., are reporting thefts of old cooking oil worth thousands of dollars by rustlers who are refining it into barrels of biofuel in backyard stills. "It's like a war zone going ...