Show Me the Money!!!!!

Follow the Bouncing Gas Increase!!!!


The first thing to do in a murder investigation is “follow the money.” If someone got murdered, it’s always good to see who benefits from the murder. The wife may get a whopping amount of insurance, the business partners may have a cross-life insurance policy on the dead guy, or the victim may have double-crossed someone or failed to pay a debt. In any case, following the money is an established investigative procedure.

Well, let’s do a little exercise called “follow the bouncing gas price increase.” We are all getting murdered little by little by gas prices, so let’s see who’s killing us.

Lets start with an innocuous vegetable. Say corn.

Last year’s seed is stored in warehouses at Kernels R Us. Kernels R Us sells it to a local feed store. Kernels R Us gets hit with an extra large shipping bill because the trucks delivering seed now spend 50% more in fuel. The local feed store passes on that increase to the consumer, Farmer Jack. (In this blog, we’re not going to follow the bouncing natural gas price increase, which is also careening towards us consumers)

Farmer Jack drives down to the local feed store and orders his corn. The local feed store delivers to Farmer Jack, passing on their gas price increases to Farmer Jack. Farmer Jack has to work his fields with his John Deere machinery which run on.....you guessed it....gas! Farmer Jack now has to sell his more costly corn at a higher price to cover the increases at the warehouse, local feed store, and his own fuel cost increases.

Farmer Jack’s crop is a good one and he sells it to a corn wholesaler. The wholesaler pays more this year and also has to ship the finished corn product from the field to it’s warehouse in Nebraska for processing, and incurs 50% higher shipping costs than last year.

Once the corn hits Nebraska, it’s churned out into little cans of beautiful kernels and shipped yet again to supermarket warehouses all over the country (If you listen quietly at this point, you will hear the gleeful chortling of Arab Oil Sheiks and Exxon executives).

The supermarket warehouses now ship their canned corn to each of their individual stores, again incurring increased shipping charges. The bright, shiny can of corn then sits precariously on the supermarket shelf awaiting you, the eager corn-chomping consumer. Oh, yea. You get to drive down to the store to pick up your groceries and incur more costs just getting to the store.

You get the picture. Now. Multiply this effect by asparagus, beets, green beans, and broccoli. Then go outside of the vegetable family and think about fruits, dairy, meat, grains, and every other product that is so readily available in our country.

You see, we pay for gas price increases many, many times over. The money trail begins and ends with oil companies and oil exporting countries. But alas, unlike a murder investigation where the murderer gets put behind bars for life, our murderers are doing a funny little money dance all the way to their Swiss bank accounts.

Blawgerman