The Collegian

Issue date: 9/9/05 Section: Opinion

Photo illustration by Karyn Gilbert

"I think that gas prices are a good reflection of our capitalist society. They're above everyone else so they can enslave us to whatever price they choose," says Drew Hamlet. "They're just trying to get us any way they can."

Although gasoline prices have recently hit record highs, if you take a closer look you'll find that they are actually much lower than in some other countries, such as The Netherlands and Norway. Their gas prices, reaching as high as $6.48 per gallon, are obviously much more painful than our $2.89 a gallon.

In the case of these European countries having high gas prices, it's due to gasoline being heavily taxed.

If oil were produced by a government-owned company then perhaps we could have prices as low as 12 cents a gallon, like Caracas, which is done to benefit the country's citizens.

"What we should do is get all of our oil for cheap from Iraq, since we're over there anyway," said Terry DeLettre. "We should get it for the least amount of money we can while we can."

Gas prices shot up a remarkable 30 percent from 2003 to 2004. And get ready for steady increases to come in the near future.

Hurricane Katrina has shut off about 91 percent of the oil production in the Gulf of Mexico.

"We could have a catastrophic failure of the oil and gas infrastructure going into the winter," said James Glickenhaus.

"A lack of gas could negatively affect the nation's economy, on account of the inability to refine oil in this time of crisis," said David Wessel.

Sources say that if every gas station closed down for only one day, that the nation would save enough gas to lower prices back to 98 cents a gallon.

Gas companies are too concerned with making millions of dollars to help the nation's people and economy. So them closing their stations for only one day is very unlikely.

So get ready for steadily increasing gas prices. Maybe even try to use it sparingly.

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