Gas Prices: Cause and Effect

Is anyone else throughly disturbed by today's news that Exxon Mobil reported the highest profit ever for a US company? Maybe not if you own stock in the company, which most of us with mutual funds probably do.

I paid over $3 a gallon to fill my car with gas yesterday. We constantly hear that it's the price of oil (currently over $90 a barrel) that causes high gas prices and figure we can't do anything about that. So we cut back on other things just so we can afford to drive to and from work. And higher gas prices affect many other things we don't even think about, including groceries, while most of us have probably not seen our wages go up more than the rate of inflation in years.

Exxon made $1,300 a second last year. The median household income in this country is $48,200. So in the time it takes to fill one car with gas - let's estimate five minutes - Exxon made as much money as eight households did in one year.

Something isn't right here - the oil monopoly is restricting supply and making record profits at the expense, literally, of consumers. There's not much we can do, but lets use the tools we do have - drive less often, buy fuel-efficient vehicles, purchase locally-made products and, perhaps most importantly, VOTE for the people and the legislation that care about the needs of average Americans, not stuffing the pockets of corporate titans.