Ricky Blue

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RICKY BLUE

Time for the gas bubble to burst

MONTREAL | The Leno joke goes like this. Scientists have discovered the largest number in the Universe. And they did it without using a computer. They did it by using a gas pump and a Cadillac Escalade.

With prices rising so quickly I predict there will soon be a new betting opportunity: the office gas-price pool. What will the price be tomorrow in the gas station across the street? Everybody will pick a number and put in a twenty. The closest guess wins the pool.

One wag suggested that they should show pornography at the pumps. That way we can watch somebody doing to someone else what the oil companies are doing to us.

How high will it go? That is the question. Perhaps gas will become so expensive that it will eventually drive down the price of automobiles.

This could be the beginning of a new marketing strategy in the transportation industry. We already know that high-tech companies sell printers at a very low price in order to sell us their high-priced ink cartridges. And we know cell phone companies will actually give us cell phones if we commit for years to their expensive pricing plans. How long will it be before we will be given automobiles so we have to continue to buy the outrageously overpriced gasoline?

"With Esso's three-year plan this Yaris will cost you a thousand dollars. Or we will give you this Chevy Suburban for free."

Recently, I had been looking for a smaller car myself. I have been driving a minivan for too long and now the kids are growing up. But in the current used car market it seems that I would actually pay much more for a smaller car. So I ended up with another minivan. It was just too good a deal. No one else wanted it.

But I can't go through the rest of my life in a minivan. So now I pray that this is just another "bubble." It could happen. It seems in the last ten years or so there have been an awful lot of bubbles. And the one thing they have in common is that they all eventually burst.

George Bush has already served notice that he is planning to drill for oil in previously protected areas. Whether the US or indeed Canadian governments go down this road is probably a question of when, not if. To paraphrase an old philosopher: First we eat; then we talk about saving the planet.

High oil prices are raising the cost of everything. If nothing is done we will all be paying more for the basics of life -- when prices go up, everyone's revenue decreases. And the first and hardest to be hit will be people on fixed incomes and the poor.

So this would seem to be the worst time ever to talk about a carbon tax. It would be a case of a government "piling on" an already dire situation. And if you believe in their claim that the tax won't be passed on to the consumer, all I can say is: as if!

But could this all be part of the fiendishly clever plan by the oil companies? They raise their prices to the point at which we all give up our trendy environmental beliefs?

Our governments already take half of what we make each year and now the oil companies take the other half. All I know is that I have a wife, two children, and three cars to support. So thank God the price of alcohol hasn't gone up Ð yet.