[chris1]

What this boob does not get is that cheap oil is the grease that makes our ecnomoy work and run. If people curb spending because the gas is too high to drive to the stores, then the economy will really tank and inflation will skyrocket due to passthroughs of the increases.

[norraad]

Another point flying high over this boobs head is, all this is tightly controlled and out of our hands.

Our Fleet ave. MPG is determined by Big GOV/OIL/CORP..

An entity I like to label Sneakyman Inc..

We could have had almost 40% better MPG for a long time now. But it would have been "inconvenient" .

[cogitator]

If people curb spending because the gas is too high to drive to the stores

Agreed on those points, and Samuelson is a somewhat respected economist on Free Republic. I think he expects that a slow phase-in combined with a shift in the "fleet" gas economy would forestall harsh economic impact -- it would be worse if oil prices went up by themselves and there was no shift in usage patterns.