Well, that’s the only way to explain the causes when the reflexively right-wing Toronto Sun starts frothing at the mouth about “unregulated derivative speculators” while the staunchly left-wing Toronto Star claims “The oil industry doesn’t like high gasoline prices any more than you do.”
Jon, who sent me links to both articles, titled it “Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together… mass hysteria!”
I think the election has unhinged people — or at least finally driven out the pins for those who were already well on their way to being unhinged. [. . .] Go to Google and search the Sun‘s site for “fat cats AND pigs” and you’ll find a Saganesque hyperbole of hits from just the last three days. And a similar number of calls for increased government regulation of the oil industry.
I’ll cut the linked Sun article above some slack, as the author does mention unwashed hippies as being part of the problem — the guy does just a little to maintain the Sun‘s conservative front — but the overall tone from the paper in the last few days has been just a little weird.
That, and you could see the track marks all over yesterday’s Sunshine Girl. What is that paper coming to, I ask?
Update: On the other, other hand, here’s Stephen Gordon from the Globe & Mail‘s Economy Lab on why high gasoline prices are good for Canada:
If there is a proposition in economics that can aspire to law-like status, it is surely Easterbrook’s Law: “All economic news is bad.” This is a truly powerful insight, and it explains how phenomena that would ordinarily be seen as good news are generally portrayed as a problem demanding government intervention. And so it is with the recent rise in gasoline prices.
[. . .]
So how can higher gasoline prices be consistent with increased purchasing power? The answer is that we are observing a relative price shift. The prices of some goods — notably gasoline — have increased. But the prices of other goods have fallen, most notably imported goods that have been made cheaper by an appreciating Canadian dollar. The overall net effect on Canadians’ buying power is positive.
To be sure, there are some people for whom this shift is genuinely bad news: many with low incomes may not be able to easily reduce their consumption of gasoline. But the real problem facing these households is that they have low incomes.
Sigh. There’s still a lot of insanity in the Stephen Gordon article:
The proper remedy is to provide increased income support for those who need it.
I suggest we do that by preventing those in need of income support from buying beer and smokes.
And there’s this insanity in an item to which Gordon links:
If we’re concerned about the income problems associated with home heating costs – the affordability issue – the proper remedy is an income solution: give more money to low-income households. If we’re concerned about whatever price problems there may be, the proper remedy involves increasing the cost of GHG-emitting home heating. And if we’re concerned with both, we can implement both remedies simultaneously: increase the cost of home heating and give more money to low-income households.
Jesus wept.
Much of the pricing problem for residential electricity (hydro) and natural gas is due to government meddling: hydro rates have soared under McGuinty’s green wind embezzlement program, and global warmening fraud is driving up the cost of natural gas. The solution is NOT to be found in further government meddling. Cut the social engineering crap and let the prices fluctuate according to supply and demand.
And what the hell is this nonsense about giving “more money to low-income households”? Huge numbers of “low-icome households” are low-income households because the inhabitants have no impulse control: they just cannot resist that smoke, beer or easy lay. Do we really think that these people are going to spend a further subsidy on electricity and fuel? Subsidize those who are legitimately incapacitated and cannot work, but eliminate the incentives encouraging people to indulge their addictions and live off of the public teat.
Comment by Lickmuffin — May 12, 2011 @ 14:49
Yes, that’s why I pulled out the more convincing portion as a pull quote. If it helps, consider it necessary political camouflage in an attempt to get your average Globe reader to finish the article before exploding.
Comment by Nicholas — May 12, 2011 @ 16:18