The slow learners running our petroleum puzzle game are at it again.
What they fail to realize is that Americans are on a zero-tolerance fuse these days.
In the old days, there was give-and-take with the price. It was a well-known secret: Gas went up when the summer holidays started, came back down when the summer ended.
But now there’s a psychological tipping point associated with the price of gas. It started out at about four dollars a gallon, but now I think it’s closer to two– between recession woes, sky-high unemployment, and the addtional debt loaded onto the back of the taxpayers, people aren’t putting up with any BS.
Every time the slow learners raise the gas price too far, too fast, or with too flimsy an excuse, a whole new clot of people decides to bite the bullet and trade in their SUVs and their pickups and their sedans, and instead buy gas-sipping motorcycles or scooters– or learn that renting an economical car for long trips isn’t all that bad– or just learn to do without.
In other words, once that chunk of demand is gone, it’s gone for good. It won’t be back in the fall just because the price of gas returned to normal.
That’s not a happy business model in anyone’s book.