Stickybuffalo.com

Let’s say, just hypothetically speaking, that rising oil prices cross the arbitrary discomfort threshold for Americans, again, in 2011 and return to the forefront of what passes for our national conversation.

Which of the following responses seem likely?

1. “Let’s spend even more money on various boondoggles like ethanol, shale oil or converting coal into liquid fuel.”
2. “Drill, baby, drill!”
3. “How did all our oil end up underneath those damn Arabs’ desert Latin Americans’ dirt?”
4. “It’s China’s fault! We need to get tough with those Chinese, already!”
5. “WAAAAAAAHHHHH!!! Someone fix this!! Why isn’t the government fixing this??!!?” etc., and other expressions of a generalized infantile tantrum.
6. “Wow, apparently oil really is a finite resource which doesn’t just go on gushing out of the ground forever, after all, and we should have ignored the reassurances of Republicans, car companies and oil executives and instead actually listened to all those liberals, progressives, environmentalists, sandalistas, greens, treehuggers, peakers and smelly old granola-eating hippies instead of dismissing their warnings and suggestions as ‘Chicken Little’ whining.”

I wonder whether PolitiFact and other such sanctimonious “fact check” features will ever get around to addressing this matter, eh? I’ll not hold my breath.

So I’ve been reviewing my budgetary prospects for 2011 the last few days. Perhaps a few notes and observations will offer interest to students of contemporary American socioeconomics? (Or at least offer me more interest than anything else I might be doing right now.)

Admittedly, the whole thing is a considerable exercise in guesswork. If I can feel sorta-kinda confident in predicting what I will buy and how much it will cost, how much money I’ll earn isn’t even that certain. As a freelancer, I really don’t know what to expect. I’m being pretty conservative in my expectations, hoping for a smidge of growth in directly-billed work, though one so small it won’t really make an enormous difference if it doesn’t materialize. Indeed, the overall numbers involved are of such modest scale that even one large-ish project gained, or lost, could have a significant impact.

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“Current crisis not related to fuel prices: Current problem is not that consumers are demanding different, more fuel-efficient vehicles; the problem is that consumers are not buying vehicles at all.” – UAW

You spent years trying to get me to drive a Ford Gigantor, Chevy Truckles (now with balls!) and Chrysler Mini-my-wallet Van. There’s a reason the car I drive is from 1991, actually quite a few. The largest factor? It gets 26 m.p.g. highway and it’s all-wheel-drive! Why would I pay you for no improvement? Certainly it’s time you set the bar at 50+ for anything that doesn’t tow something. You’ve had years to work on this.