Did you know that Obama is going to save us and the future of the county by mandating that we increase the average gas mileage of our cars? Just how that is going to save us, I am not sure. When I talk to my school teacher friends, they all say that, "it is about time we had cars that get better gas mileage". They seem to agree that Obama is going to save them and provide them with cheaper gas. Most of the world pays more for gas than we do, so why do we feel so bad? In past blogs, I pointed out that no matter what Obama does, he is not going to reduce the price of gas. How about a little 4th grade math on the subject?
Let's start off with a car that now costs $20,000 and gets 35 miles per gallon. Obama wants that car to get 40 miles per gallon. Isn't that a good idea? Again, my school teacher friends bow down and kiss the ground under Obama's feet. I don't think they did all that well in 4th grade math or those awful word problems. The car that now costs $20,000 will increase to $25,000. There is no free lunch except in the school cafeteria. If we figure that the buyer drives his cars 100,000 miles and at the end, they are both worth $5,000, we have a nice word problem. Also figure gas at $4.00 per gallon. The question that we need to ask is, "how much does it cost to drive each car one mile?"
We have to take into account the cost of the car and the cost of gas. For the $20,000 car, we will consume $15,000 of its original value driving the 100,000 miles. That works out to $0.15 per mile and for the Obama car, it is $0.20 per mile. Now we save gas on the Obama car and that works out to only $0.10 per mile for a total of $0.30 per mile for the Obama car. Isn't this math just great? Now for the Old car that only gets 35 miles per gallon. It will cost $0.114 per mile for gas so that it has a total of $0.264 per mile.
How can that be that I save money on the old car? The Obama car will cost my family more, but wait. We are going to save the world by buying the Obama car and all my school teacher friends think that is just fine. It will be just one more reason that they will need a "small" raise in pay next year.
When I talk to my rich capitalistic friends who run companies that hire people and who pay most of the taxes that support my union school teacher friends, I get a much different answer. They don't purchase either the $20,000 car or the Obama $25,000 car. They go out a buy an old used car for $5,000 that only gets 30 miles per gallon. That is about what my E320 gets. These old cars are better than most people think and my friends plans on getting 100,000 more miles out of it. I have 248,000 miles on my old E320. The cost per mile for this old car is only $0.05 per mile for the basic car and $0.13 for gas for a total of only $0.18 per mile. This is almost half that of the Obama car.
If I were to add in the cost of insurance knowing that the new cars might have collision while the old car does not need it, the advantage of the old car would be even bigger compared to the Obama car.
The bottom line is that in the economic contest that we are in with the rest of the world, we have to make good economic decisions and Obama and most of those who voted fore him are not. Our way of life and our standard of living are the result of winning in this economic contest and we can't opt out and take our ball and go home in the one. In the past, having a two big oceans on both sides of us allowed us to do our won thing and not consider most of the rest of the world. We took all this "free" land and resources and had an advantage over most of the world for a very long time. That original wealth was divided among a very small number of people so we were individually very rich. Much of that original wealth has been used up and what was left has been divided up further (4th grade math). It is a contest whether you want to be in it or not so get used to it. Doing more dumb things is not the answer. Smart talks and dumb walks.
