Since my previous post has everyone so divided why dont I share my newspaper column on fuel prices. Surely we can all agree we are getting hosed. *************************************************************************** I got an email the other day from an airline telling me it was time I take a vacation and they’d be happy to fly me for just $73. Like a fish chasing a worm I stopped what I was doing and clicked the link only to find out the dates and places that the great deal applied to were to nowhere I’d want to go. Since I was already on the website I decided to search out a flight to a place I would love to go and my jaw dropped at the ridiculously high price. So much for lower fuel prices; I guess someone forgot to tell the airlines. Listen, I’m not a child and I know how the world works. I expect the car dealer to get the best of me in a sale, I know the claw in the vending machine isn’t strong enough to hold the stuffed animal and will drop it before I can get my paws on it and I know oil prices are more rigged than a WWE wrestling match. That said, I expect businesses to at least pretend they aren’t ripping me off. I mean put some garnish on the plate and dress it up a little, would you please? Oil prices are about half what they were a year ago, yet airline fares appear to be the same. Why? My home heating oil is significantly cheaper and we’ve all watched with glee as gas prices fell like a stone (although not as quickly as they go up when prices rise). So what gives with the airlines? The short answer is this; they haven’t dropped prices because they don’t have to. When the airlines were going bankrupt a few years back the courts and government bent over backward to help them out. The results? Fees for just about everything, fewer perks and lots of mergers. Smart people who got an “A” in economics warned us about reduced competition and now the chickens have indeed come back to roost. There’s no legal requirement that the airlines pass on the savings and by cutting back on flights they have insured the seats available are filled at whatever they feel like charging. You can write your congressman to complain, but they’ll just form a committee, study the issue and publish a report in about two years. I’m still waiting for the explanation and any whiff of accountability for your electric bill doubling last winter. Remember that wonderful surprise last February when you opened the bill, fainted and then ate Cup-a-Soup until Memorial Day to pay down the bill? Have you noticed, by the way, that the minute Americans stopped traveling as much and started trading in their gas-guzzling SUVs that crude oil prices started to plummet for no clear reason? The same billionaires who reduced flow to shorten supply have inexplicably been pumping and dumping crude on the market sending prices to their lowest price in years. Groceries went up in price last winter because, we were told, it cost more to ship them from place to place. Made sense. So since gas is forty percent less in price, shouldn’t that box of Stove Top Stuffing be significantly cheaper? Is it? I rest my case. I’d love to quote you P.T. Barnum and tell you a sucker is born every minute, but even that statement would be counterfeit. Did you know Barnum never even said it? Nope. It was a banker named David Hannum who was talking about people paying good money to see a phony artifact known as the Cardiff Giant that Barnum had carved out of stone. It was a fake, an illusion, much like the email I received touting a great deal on airfares. Oh, and one last thing before I let you go. As excited as you are and should be about sinking gasoline prices, I hope you realize we still pay the third highest prices in the country because of taxes. According to AAA we pay almost 64 cents per gallon in New York in taxes alone. That includes seven, count them, seven different state taxes. Well, hey, at least the billions we bring in each year in fuel taxes goes to fix our roads, bridges and that pothole you hit on the way home from work every night, right? I mean that was the justification for these ungodly high taxes in the first place. Yeah, not so much. A recent audit from the State Comptroller found only a fraction of the taxes goes for what was intended. The rest is lost in the sinkhole of a state budget. In fact, if P.T. Barnum could see the shell game that goes on with your hard-earned tax dollars he’d be in awe. I’d fly him in for comment but he’s not only not available but I can’t afford the airfare. (courtesy Troy Record/Saratogian)
Posted on: Thu, 22 Jan 2015 02:49:56 +0000
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