Copyright 2008 Houston Chronicle
Consumers, already hit by $4 gasoline and rising food prices, now will see rises in the price of almost every product and many services, including essential government services such as education and police protection.
Across the nation, school districts are limiting field trips and, in some cases, canceling classes one day a week because they can’t pay the doubled cost of operating school buses. In Texas, the Legislature is going to have to revisit the subject of school finance, again, because the Rube Goldberg system won’t let school districts increase revenues to pay for higher fuel costs, threatening some districts with teacher layoffs, even bankruptcy.
Gasoline at $4 a gallon is burdening most consumers and changing behavior in a way that $3 gasoline did not. Before, Americans could afford to pay more for gasoline by spending less on recreation and other discretionary activities and goods. But the sharp rise in the price of basic food items and, to come, almost everything else means many families just can’t buy the gas they once did.
An added hardship inflicted by high fuel prices is the rise in crime: Thieves are driving off from gas stations without paying and siphoning gasoline from other cars. Some crooks, defeated by locked gas tanks, dangerously drill holes in gas tanks, risking fire and explosion that could destroy property and take life.
It’s unlikely, but perhaps now the U.S. government will adopt a sane energy policy that will provide the nation with more fuel — both hydrocarbons and alternatives — and place downward pressure on price.
