Take advantage of the cheaper oil and gas ADVERTISING Take advantage of the cheaper oil and gas The fall of oil and natural gas prices is a boon to U.S. consumers and the economy. Americans should enjoy the break while
Take advantage of the cheaper oil and gas
The fall of oil and natural gas prices is a boon to U.S. consumers and the economy. Americans should enjoy the break while it lasts.
Lower prices at the gasoline pump and in utility bills puts more money in everyone’s pocket, which boosts spending and the overall commerce. Considering the slow pace of America’s economic recovery, the market needs all the help it can get.
The drop in the world price of oil is due to several factors related to supply and demand. One is that the demand from China, which had been strong, is now lagging, a result of its own economic slowdown. Another factor is that the big producers, including Saudi Arabia and now the United States, have not reduced production, for different reasons.
The 12-member Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, a villain in past decades, has lost much of its punch as individual producers have been unwilling to cut production to influence the world price. Chief among the cartel members is Saudi Arabia, which pushed production to record levels last month to maintain its spending on, among other things, weapons and benefits to its people. The aging monarchy faces threats from various sources, including Islamic radicalism opposed to the ruling family.
In the United States, companies drilling for oil and exploring deep gas deposits made the country a new leader in production. While slipping prices have curbed some new exploration for wells, it has not changed the fact that record U.S. oil extraction has slashed dependency on imports.
The countries that have taken a licking on the world market are smaller producers such as Iran, Iraq, the Persian Gulf states, Nigeria, Russia and Mexico. This week, Venezuela called for an emergency OPEC meeting on the plunging prices.
In the meantime, U.S. drivers, homeowners and businesses should take advantage of the situation. No one knows when prices will turn back up.
— Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Actually, research shows that guns do kill people
America’s ritualized response to gun violence is no more comforting for being so familiar. The initial burst of horror. The ricochet of blame. The benumbed kin struggling to understand why guns are so readily available to people who are dangerous, reckless or disturbed.
There are peculiarities to this latest incident, in which two young journalists were killed and a woman was injured on Wednesday in Virginia. The shooting was broadcast on live television; the killer left a grisly trail on social media. What’s consistent with previous violence is the gun.
Gun rights are protected in the Constitution, and the political environment is often (though not always) hostile to even the most rudimentary regulation of guns. But politicians are always eager to show how aggressively they fight crime. So maybe there’s some benefit from a short explanation of how guns make crime worse.
Almost two decades ago, Franklin Zimring, a longtime researcher at the University of California, Berkeley, and a colleague, Gordon Hawkins, showed that the U.S. doesn’t have an especially high crime rate relative to other developed nations. But the U.S. is far more violent. Every conflict, from the mundane to the serious — not just domestic disputes and robberies, but traffic altercations and bar fights — is more deadly in the U.S. because of the presence of guns.
Gun violence is not unique to crime, of course. A gun can explode in the hand of a curious child. It can facilitate a hasty suicide.
Crime control is necessary to contain violence. But so is an effort to deal honestly with guns. That begins with a realization that dangerous people — criminals, of course, but also the mentally unstable — should be prevented from possessing firearms, and that laws will have to be changed to advance that goal. That realization broadly exists already, which is why Americans, including gun owners, overwhelmingly support a system of comprehensive background checks for gun purchases.
In the 1990s, Americans proved they were willing to confront a crime wave. Now they must find the will to deal with the gun wave. The brief lives of Alison Parker and Adam Ward are two more reasons not to give up.
— Bloomberg View
