Tuesday, December 19, 2006

The price of oil is going to continue to rise: China is thirsty for more

The Chicago Tribune has a great report (just the first part of three) today detailing how China is now muscling its way into new oil-soaked regions around the world much like the U.S. (with armed forces in 100+ nations around the world, largely to keep our access to oil flowing).

Here's the Econ 101:

Demand for oil goes up -- a lot.
Supply of oil stays the same.
That means the price goes up -- a lot.

So what's a smart country to do?

Invest in transit, particularly transit that runs on electricity. Make your cars more fuel-efficient. Tax oil now so anticipate the price hikes and soften the blow. As John Anderson said in 1980, it's better to tax ourselves and use the revenue for our national interest than to pay the oil shieks billions of our dollars.

Higher oil taxes -- and soon, before the higher oil prices knock us into a recession. Or even worse, before some yahoo oil-patch president starts a Cold War with China over access to oil because we weren't smart enough to tax it domestically and break the habit.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I have a better idea. Bring the jobs back to the US and we won't have to compete for oil. And we will have people working again in the US.

I failed conservative economics at the University of Chicago.