Tuesday, November 18, 2008

Exciting!! . . . sad isn't it?

Today was another driving day for me . . . I made my circle all over the Chicago Suburbs and into the city and on my way back south and I passed a gas station and saw something that excited me. I was on the phone with my mom at the time so I shared my excitement with her.

I officially saw gas for $1.99.


It is below $2.00 a gallon. Honestly I never thought that I would see that again with how the prices sky rocketed, but was excited to see it. Then I thought, "why am I excited? It is finally getting closer to reasonable!"

This is a wonderful example of how capitalism actually works!! The prices rose until they reached a point where the market was no longer willing to buy as much of the product as they were before. It finally hit that threshold where people finally started to cut back their fuel consumption. . . not just you typical driver, but everyone one was cutting back including businesses. So then the market did what a free market does and it corrected itself. Oil stopped selling for $160 a barrel . . . it dropped to $54 a barrel. Finally!! And this without the government having to step in and freeze fuel taxes, or force the big oil companies to do anything.

I am grateful to live in a capitalistic society where a free market exists and the consumers actually control the market, not the government. Let capitalism work . . . it's a beautiful thing!

4 comments:

Andrea said...

Not to brag but I've seen as low as $1.82 here.

Burtonfamily said...

Very exciting, Jon paid $1.79 last night!

Christa Jeanne said...

Great point, Liz! I've loooooved seeing the gas prices fall - it's still above $2 out here, but considering that I was paying upwards of $4.25 this summer, it's pretty miraculous to be able to fill my Altima for $30. Capitalism is DEFINITELY a beautiful thing!

Billy Jackson said...

The government still controls the market way too much. Most likely, soon even that will be an understatement.