Does politics really influence gas prices?
It seems many people want to blame their country's politicians for high gas prices, in particular Barak Obama even though gas prices were higher at points in the 80s. Can politicians really do something about prices?
Politicians can do little - if anything - to influence the prices of gasoline or anything else.....
All the rhetoric that we're now hearing.... blaming Barack Obama for today's gasoline prices, and claiming different gasoline prices in the future as a result of having someone else be POTUS.... are specious and silly.....
Gasoline prices are a function of oil prices. If the price of oil goes up, the price of gasoline is going to go up. When the price of oil goes down, the price of gasoline will go down--but not as quickly, Gas stations have to charge a higher price for a longer period to make up for the money they would lose when buying higher price gasoline on Monday and the price of oil drops on Tuesday. The station is still stuck with higher priced gasoline and has to recover as much of his investment as possible.
Political rhetoric and saber rattling can push the price of oil upward and that in turn will push the price of gasoline upward, but that is a function of the speculators, who respond to a number of outside influences.
Politics can, I mean the government controls the import of oil. But supply and demand does as well. If you notice gas prices change during election time and after an election. I could be wrong but it seems like that to me. It seems to go up around election time, and down after it is done. But you also have to think about the supply and demand in this country as well a other countries. Other countries, have a lot higher cost of gas than we do. We have it better than they do. Even though we consume more than they do, we still cost less. We have more demand. But we will not touch our oil sources in our own country. If we did, that would create a lot of jobs, and revenue. I think even if we did get our own oil, we would sell it more than we use it ourselves. Just for import and export purposes.
Political policy, particularly regarding energy and foreign affairs, has a strategic effect on gasoline prices. There is little government can do to have a tactical impact on them. The answer, then, is yes, and no.
Most politicians, however, are disinterested in that, especially during a campaign season. Their focus is always on the tactical, and they are always looking for ways in which they can demagog issues. Before he became president, Obama attacked Bush for high gas prices. Now he's president, his political opponents attack him for them. They deserve one another. None of them is worthy of our defense for what he does.
The common threads are hypocrisy and misrepresentation. Pols all but universally have those characteristics. The current crop of presidential aspirants, including the sitting prez, certainly do. It's got nothing to do with truth or fact, it's all about getting themselves elected. It's disappointing when private citizens pick them up and parrot them, and that goes double for us writers on Hub Pages. We are supposed to be more concerned with truth than campaign spin. Let me suggest something novel: let's all try harder to live up to that expectation.
by Leslie McCowen 12 years ago
Boehner says they have been working waaaaay too hard....time for another vaca.What do you say, $10,000 that they go to Tahiti?
by Suzanne Levac 13 years ago
I just heard that it is very probable that the gas will go up to $5.00 a gallon in the near...future in the United States; do you think it will happen? And why is it going up that much?
by Gary Anderson 12 years ago
Worried about the price of gas? Our oil companies aren't. They export oil in the SF Bay and in April will start exporting West Texas Intermediate (WTI) from the Gulf of Mexico. http://www.businessinsider.com/the-asto … rum-2012-3Here is my response. We can thank libertarian thought for the...
by Randy Godwin 6 years ago
Gas prices are soaring as usual under Republican leadership. This will hurt middle and lower classes more than it does those who got the lions' share of the tax cuts. Not only do we have to repay the Chinese for the money we borrowed , we now have to pay higher prices for fuel. I hope those wanted...
by Jimbo'daNimbo 12 years ago
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government … gas-pricesBeware the Jabberwock my son............Did you know that the low gas prices that the Democrats claimed were too high four years ago and demanded George Bush be investigated over are why our economy "collapsed"?Did ya? Did ya huh?
by Doug Hughes 13 years ago
When gas prices were going up, Wingnuts were tripping over each other in a rush to blame the president. Even though he had nothing to do with it.President Obama ordered a release of strategic reserves. Prices have dropped over 50 cents per gallon in Florida.What do we hear now?
Copyright © 2025 The Arena Media Brands, LLC and respective content providers on this website. HubPages® is a registered trademark of The Arena Platform, Inc. Other product and company names shown may be trademarks of their respective owners. The Arena Media Brands, LLC and respective content providers to this website may receive compensation for some links to products and services on this website.
Copyright © 2025 Maven Media Brands, LLC and respective owners.
As a user in the EEA, your approval is needed on a few things. To provide a better website experience, hubpages.com uses cookies (and other similar technologies) and may collect, process, and share personal data. Please choose which areas of our service you consent to our doing so.
For more information on managing or withdrawing consents and how we handle data, visit our Privacy Policy at: https://corp.maven.io/privacy-policy
Show DetailsNecessary | |
---|---|
HubPages Device ID | This is used to identify particular browsers or devices when the access the service, and is used for security reasons. |
Login | This is necessary to sign in to the HubPages Service. |
Google Recaptcha | This is used to prevent bots and spam. (Privacy Policy) |
Akismet | This is used to detect comment spam. (Privacy Policy) |
HubPages Google Analytics | This is used to provide data on traffic to our website, all personally identifyable data is anonymized. (Privacy Policy) |
HubPages Traffic Pixel | This is used to collect data on traffic to articles and other pages on our site. Unless you are signed in to a HubPages account, all personally identifiable information is anonymized. |
Amazon Web Services | This is a cloud services platform that we used to host our service. (Privacy Policy) |
Cloudflare | This is a cloud CDN service that we use to efficiently deliver files required for our service to operate such as javascript, cascading style sheets, images, and videos. (Privacy Policy) |
Google Hosted Libraries | Javascript software libraries such as jQuery are loaded at endpoints on the googleapis.com or gstatic.com domains, for performance and efficiency reasons. (Privacy Policy) |
Features | |
---|---|
Google Custom Search | This is feature allows you to search the site. (Privacy Policy) |
Google Maps | Some articles have Google Maps embedded in them. (Privacy Policy) |
Google Charts | This is used to display charts and graphs on articles and the author center. (Privacy Policy) |
Google AdSense Host API | This service allows you to sign up for or associate a Google AdSense account with HubPages, so that you can earn money from ads on your articles. No data is shared unless you engage with this feature. (Privacy Policy) |
Google YouTube | Some articles have YouTube videos embedded in them. (Privacy Policy) |
Vimeo | Some articles have Vimeo videos embedded in them. (Privacy Policy) |
Paypal | This is used for a registered author who enrolls in the HubPages Earnings program and requests to be paid via PayPal. No data is shared with Paypal unless you engage with this feature. (Privacy Policy) |
Facebook Login | You can use this to streamline signing up for, or signing in to your Hubpages account. No data is shared with Facebook unless you engage with this feature. (Privacy Policy) |
Maven | This supports the Maven widget and search functionality. (Privacy Policy) |
Marketing | |
---|---|
Google AdSense | This is an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
Google DoubleClick | Google provides ad serving technology and runs an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
Index Exchange | This is an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
Sovrn | This is an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
Facebook Ads | This is an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
Amazon Unified Ad Marketplace | This is an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
AppNexus | This is an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
Openx | This is an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
Rubicon Project | This is an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
TripleLift | This is an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
Say Media | We partner with Say Media to deliver ad campaigns on our sites. (Privacy Policy) |
Remarketing Pixels | We may use remarketing pixels from advertising networks such as Google AdWords, Bing Ads, and Facebook in order to advertise the HubPages Service to people that have visited our sites. |
Conversion Tracking Pixels | We may use conversion tracking pixels from advertising networks such as Google AdWords, Bing Ads, and Facebook in order to identify when an advertisement has successfully resulted in the desired action, such as signing up for the HubPages Service or publishing an article on the HubPages Service. |
Statistics | |
---|---|
Author Google Analytics | This is used to provide traffic data and reports to the authors of articles on the HubPages Service. (Privacy Policy) |
Comscore | ComScore is a media measurement and analytics company providing marketing data and analytics to enterprises, media and advertising agencies, and publishers. Non-consent will result in ComScore only processing obfuscated personal data. (Privacy Policy) |
Amazon Tracking Pixel | Some articles display amazon products as part of the Amazon Affiliate program, this pixel provides traffic statistics for those products (Privacy Policy) |
Clicksco | This is a data management platform studying reader behavior (Privacy Policy) |