Here's a small window into a journalist's mindset.
In a report on how lower gas prices are affecting the companies operating retail gas stations, Associated Press reporter John Fahey revealed his apparent believes that there are millions of us walking around, perhaps including him, obsessed with getting back at gas station owners for charging us so much at fill-up time for years:
So you think you are finally getting one over on the gas stations as you pay well under $3 a gallon for the first time in four years? Guess again.
So many points could be made here. I'll limit them to three.
First, who besides Jonathan Fahey goes around thinking like that for even a moment? To have such a vengeful mindset, one has to believe that the gas station owners were rubbing their hands together in glee when prices hit $4 a gallon. Of course, they weren't, because the high price reduced demand at the pump and made consumers less likely to come into their stores and buy snacks and other convenenience items, which Fahey acknowledged later in his writeup are "what's really profitable for station owners."
Second, gas prices are still nowhere near as low as they were in January 2009 when President Barack Obama took office. Average gas prices on January 19, 2009 ranged from $1.61 per gallon in the Rockies to $2.05 in California.
Finally, if anyone is "getting over," it's what's left of the free market for the moment defeating the frequently stated desires of environmentalists for sky-high prices to force us to sharply curtail our use of the fossil fuels which have made current living standards possible.
Those environmentalists include President Obama and officials in his administration like Steven Chu, who served as Obama's energy secretary during its first 51 months. In 2008, Chu infamously said that "somehow we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe," which at the time were about $8 a gallon.
Obama himself, as gas prices shot up to $4 a gallon in 2008, said that he was basically okay with that, but that he "would have preferred a gradual adjustment."
So yes, Jonathan Fahey, we're quite pleased to be paying about 40 percent less for gas then we were at times during 2011 and 2012. But that pleasure, largely offset by price increases for other goods and services in the meantime, has nothing to do with "getting over" on gas stations — the vast majority of which are, as you noted later, "owned by small independent operators."
Fahey plugged his writeup by tweeting that "Gas station profits go up when gas prices go down. Really." As if we're supposed to be surprised.
Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com.
