The Real Reason Gas Costs $4 A Gallon
Clearly, OPEC could produce more oil if it wanted to. But it won’t.
The reason is that OPEC countries produce almost nothing but oil. Their population is growing by leaps and bounds, and because Saudis pay no income tax, the House of Saud will need more and more money to keep its citizens happy, and avoid the fate of toppled leaders in Libya, Egypt and elsewhere.
Since the beginning of the Arab Spring, Saudi King Abdullah almost doubled his Kingdom’s budget, committing billions in subsidies, pensions and pay raises in an effort to keep his subjects from storming the palaces.
This expensive response effectively raised the price of oil needed for the Saudis to balance their budget from under $70 a barrel before 2011 to at least $110 a barrel by 2015.
Like it or not, the bill for keeping the Persian Gulf monarchies in power is now being footed by every American. Every time we fuel our car we send an extra 35 cents per gallon, or roughly $6 per fill up, to the Save the King Foundation. Since oil goes into everything we buy from food to plastics, this adds about $1,500 annually to the expenditures of the average American family.
Paradoxically, we are forced to fund social programs for other nations at the very same time we are engaged in a heated debate about cutting social services and entitlement programs at home. It is a sad state of affairs that in the 21st century the world’s most strategic commodity is still being controlled by a cartel.