Filling my tank at the City Market gas pump yesterday, I noticed that the price of gas had dropped by a few pennies per gallon, and I found myself wondering how that had happened.
I mean, who makes the decision to save me a few pennies on gas?
I don’t think it’s President Biden, even though he seems to want to take the credit, like he did something to make the price come down.
“I’ve been working to make sure that when the price of oil comes down, the price at the pump comes down as well, and comes down in real time,” he said during a July 22 briefing. “The good news is that’s happening, but it’s not happening fast enough. We’ve made progress, but prices are still too high.”
Show me $2 a gallon, Joe, and maybe I’ve give you some credit.
Anyway, there I am, standing with the gas nozzle stuck in the tank, slowly emptying my debit card, and I’m thinking about how truly dangerous it might be for a president or king or dictator or oligarch to mess with the price of gas.
You mess with the price of gas, and you mess with the wallets of some of the world’s wealthiest people. The Saudis, for example. From what I’ve read, you don’t want to mess with the Saudis.
There are other important people you don’t want to upset, as well.
Which got me thinking about what it’s like to be a king or oligarch, and actually have control over the price of gas.
(Assuming that U.S. presidents don’t have that type of control, as much as they wish they did.)
If I were king and I could control the price of gas, I would sure as hell be careful about who was cooking my dinner, and who was ringing the doorbell. Because I would know that a lot of ambitious people wanted my job, and that most of them were not very nice people. Nice people don’t want to be king. Nice people mostly want to be liked. They stop for pedestrians crossing the street, for example. If you accidentally drop your wallet, they pick it up and bring it to you. “Hey, I think you dropped your wallet.”
Maybe that’s the main reason why Joe Biden doesn’t have control of the price of gas. He wants to be liked. So he has to let other people be in control, but then try and take credit later.
A king doesn’t need to be liked, but he has to be afraid.
Also, a king doesn’t need to get a job pumping gas at a gas station after he leaves office. But that kind of thing can happen to an American politician.
The weird thing is, maybe even kings can’t control the price of gas.
Some analysts, who know a thing or two about prices, are suggesting that we — the consumers — started cutting back on the amount of gas we were buying, when we saw the price going up.
That’s something even a king can’t control. Consumers, who have empty debit cards, and who are bringing their bicycles out of the garage and dusting them off.
Dusted-off bicycles. It’s enough to make a king really afraid.
Underrated writer Louis Cannon grew up in the vast American West, although his ex-wife, given the slightest opportunity, will deny that he ever grew up at all.