I guess the CNBC guys are catching up to motorcitytimes on gas prices. If you are a regular reader of MCT, you would’ve read about the bite gas prices are taking out of American’s family budget 6 months ago.

Since it is near the end of the year, it makes sense to revisit the subject.

It’s been 30 years since gasoline took such a big bite out of the family budget.
When the gifts from Grandma are unloaded and holiday travel is over, the typical American household will have spent $4,155 filling up this year, a record.

This ‘holiday’ crap is like nails on a chalk board to me! It’s called the Christmas season you goofy lib!  Enough of my ranting.

The CNBC paragraph continues:

That is 8.4 percent of what the median family takes in, the highest share since 1981.

This statement is misleading, because as pointed out previously here at MCT, the 8.4% figure is for a families gross pay and not their TAKE HOME PAY.

Paying for gas today is eating up nearly 9% of the average American’s PRE TAX income. Considering the average American who earns $50,000 will pay nearly 50% of that income on taxes (Federal, State, property, sales tax etc.) the net income bite on that gas bill is more like 18%.

Getting back to the CNBC article:

Gas averaged more than $3.50 a gallon this year, another unfortunate record. And next year isn’t likely to bring relief.

In the past, high gas prices in the United States have gone hand-in-hand with economic good times, making them less damaging to family finances. Now prices are high despite slow economic growth and weak demand.

That’s because demand for crude oil is rising globally, especially in the developing nations of Asia and Latin America. But it puts the squeeze on the U.S., where unemployment is high and many people who have jobs aren’t getting raises.

Sure, global demand is up. but, the real reasons petroleum prices are going up are twofold. One, we have slowed production and exploration here at home especially in the Gulf of Mexico. Secondly, oil is a commodity and with our government’s recent policy of ‘quantitative easing’ (a.k.a. printing money) it now takes more dollars to purchase a barrel of oil. With stagnate or shrinking wages due to high unemployment, this is creating a big sting to consumers and business.

The second half of the misery equation, the “but it puts the squeeze on the U.S., where unemployment is high and many people who have jobs aren’t getting raises” part our intrepid CNBC is lamenting, is closely related to high oil prices.

If we developed our own domestic energy resources (coal, natural gas and oil) it would do wonders for our economy. Reliable, inexpensive energy is the foundation of any modern economy. As posted here at MCT in April, 2010, an excerpt from a Pravda op-ed:

That brings us to Cap and Trade. Never in the history of humanity has a more idiotic plan been put forward and sold with bigger lies. Energy is the key stone to any and every economy, be it man power, animal power, wood or coal or nuclear. How else does one power industry that makes human life better (unless of course its making the bombs that end that human life, but that’s a different topic). Never in history, with the exception of the Japanese self imposed isolation in the 1600s, did a government actively force its people away from economic activity and industry.

Even the Soviets never created such idiocy.

2012 can’t get here fast enough.