Wednesday, October 19, 2005

Monotonous Misinformation

It's getting pretty difficult to turn on the radio here in central North Carolina without hearing someone railing against those eeeeeevvvvviiiilllll BIG OIL companies. Just this morning Kevin Miller, morning host at Raleigh's WPTF, said -- for about the eight zillionth time -- the high gas prices in North Carolina can't be due to anything other than the "obscene profits" being made by BIG OIL, while allowing that maybe they're also due in part to the rediculous sliding scale state gas tax (referenced before in this blog).

As part of this morning's segment on high gas prices, Miller continued to extoll on the virtues of his "solution" to part of the problem -- the gas tax one: eliminate it one day a week or a month. Oh yeah, that would really work now, wouldn't it? Tell me you don't think if folks knew the gas prices were going to drop 27 cents on Monday (and then go back up Tuesday) there wouldn't be gas lines all over the place on Monday, maybe even people out late Sunday night or early Monday to beat the crowds. There would likely be some demand- caused shortages on Monday, too, which would lead to even higher prices on Tuesday than there otherwise would have been. In fact, you could expect gas prices to go up during the day Monday, since the artificially caused increases in demand would create upward pressure on the price at the pump. Don't believe me? Check out this earlier post here. If you'd rather seek assurances from an outside source, check here and here (the last one's just for fun).

[Thanks to George Leef for the link to the Lehman essay.]

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