Kudos to the maker of this totally awesome entry in Stephen Colbert’s “Make McCain Interesting” contest.

I figured I’d try to provide some perspective on gas prices given the sensationalist, media-powered hoopla surrounding the subject these days.  Granted, prices at the pump today are high in a historically-relative sense, touching similar inflation-adjusted levels that our country saw in the early 1980s.

However, when compared with other countries, gas prices in the United States are relatively low, as they have been for quite some time.  This is due in large part to taxes levied on the consumption of gas in many other parts of the world, namely across the pond where many of our European counterparts have been paying twice as much as us to power their cars for years. This is illustrated in the picture below, which shows discrepancies among gas prices across the globe (darker countries represent relatively cheaper prices at the pump).

Consider the average price per gallon that the following countries currently pay for gasoline (compiled by Wikipedia):

1. Sierra Leone – $18.43
2. Norway – $10.33
3. Turkey – $10.14
4. Netherlands – $10.11
5. Eritrea – $9.58
6. Belgium – $9.39
7. Denmark – $9.31
8. Germany – $9.20
9. Finland – $8.90
10. Italy – $8.78
11. Portugal – $8.78
12. UK – $8.74
13. Sweden – $8.71
14. Iceland – $8.52
15. Hong Kong -$8.33

Prices at the pump here in Japan currently average $6.06, compared to just $4.10 in the U.S. (as of 6-19-08).  Again, these prices are certainly high and I don’t mean to make light of the impact that the rise in energy costs can have on the average American family.  The point I’m attempting to make is that things could certainly be worse.

And allow me another moment’s rant on the topic.  We should stop this charade of blaming oil companies, speculators and OPEC for our current energy woes.  Instead of forcing oil company executives to explain themselves to our spineless and inept politicians (when did pursuit of profit become a crime anyway?), we should instead be holding our Congress accountable for the series of missteps that got us here in the first place.  The actual contemplation of a windfall profits tax on oil companies, whose net profit margins of 8-10% pale in comparison to those found in the TMT and financial industries, represents the height of stupidity.  Google’s net profit margin was 25% during the last quarter; should our fearless politicians call for a windfall profits tax on online advertising?

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