What I cannot understand is how the American population is allowing oil companies to get away with such
excessive profits without taking a stand against gas prices that, at over $3.00 / gallon, are
over 40% more today than they were 1 year ago. 

To put those numbers into perspective,
Wal-Mart, #1 in the
Fortune 500 for 2007, reported $3.2 billion in profits during the same quarter. 

As a suburban society that is almost entirely dependent upon our automobiles for day-to-day living, the long term effects of these prices are bound to be detrimental to the buying power of millions of families.  Taken in concert with the price increases that are soon to come from businesses whose bottom line is already being affected by increased transportation costs, our economy is poised to fall hard beneath the wake of this perfect storm.   

So how do we address the issue before it completely collapses the middle class economy?  The obvious answers might be to curb consumption by somehow taking responsibility for the current prices ourselves, which to some degree I concur.  However, if we look at the profits that all 5 companies listed above made in just the last 3 months of 2007, it is easy to see that prices are not being driven by supply or demand.  Gas prices and billion dollar profits are being driven by the management of those multi-national corporations and their fiscal responsibility to investors to maximize yields on their investments.   

This problem stems from the reluctance of our government leaders to protect the American public from the type of opportunistic price gouging that would impose a bottled water merchant with
a stiff fine if they attempted the same tactics toward natural disaster victims. 

Perhaps this is more of an important issue for the upcoming elections than it is being made out to be (?). 

For a look at Exxon’s spin on how gas prices are set you can go
here.

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Anyhow, there is no way I could be classified as a typical “gamer” but when I read the article by Josh Quittner on p.32 of the January 21^st, 2008 issue of Fortune Magazine this evening, I had to do a little “research” and check out the site that Josh decidedly did not provide a link to out of respect for the thousands of employers who will likely lose tens-of-thousands of hours in productivity to this year due to this site.

The site / game that I’m talking about is
http://worldgolftour.com/

…Before you leave, I’ve got to say that I checked it out prior to publishing this article and it is AWESOME.

For those of you who don’t subscribe to the print version of the magazine, you can read the article I’m talking about
here. 

As soon as you have about 90 minutes (or more) to kill, check it out.  But before you do, consider yourself warned…this thing has the potential to be highly addictive.

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