In case you haven't been paying attention, the economy is in poor shape. The dow is under 8000, unemployment is up, consumer confidence is down, and believe it or not, we are looking at 3 trillion dollars worth of deficit. If this weren't enough to make you miserable, the one silver lining to this bad economy is tarnishing. Yes, that means gas prices are on their way up, again.
If you drive to school, drive to your internship, or even leave campus, perhaps you have noted that the price of a gallon of gas has continually jumped since the beginning of the semester (I remember it being $1.75 at the Mobil just a couple weeks ago, now it is about $2.05).
Yes, todays prices would have been welcome, and frankly unbelievable, back in July, when gas was surpassing the $4.00 mark- but that was before our economy essentially collapsed back in October, and since then demand for gasoline (and pretty much everything else) has fallen through the floor.
Some will say we should just be thankful we aren't reliving the nightmare that was Gas Prices 2008, others would be so smug as to say we should welcome high prices as an incentive to "go green" (keep in mind, we are spending billions of dollars to bail out an auto industry that has made all its money on big trucks and lack an exclusive hybrid passenger car a la Prius). I say that when demand is down, and oil is under $40 per barrel, we ought to demand that prices reflect these realities; if we are spending our stimulus checks on gas, we won't be spending it stimulating other areas of the economy.
Read more in this article from CNNMoney.com. http://money.cnn.com/2009/02/16/news/economy/gas_prices/index.htm?postversion=2009021612
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