Imagine for a moment how much gasoline the U.S. military consumes in one day of conducting the war on Iraq.  We have flown and otherwise transported literally millions of tons of supplies and equipment to this far [...]]]> I suppose someone has speculated this before, but I’ve not seen it.  So here goes ….

Imagine for a moment how much gasoline the U.S. military consumes in one day of conducting the war on Iraq.  We have flown and otherwise transported literally millions of tons of supplies and equipment to this far away place.  And every day the soldiers and auxiliary personnel must be re-supplied, it is never ending.  The amount of fuel consumed by this effort is truly mind-blogging.  I wonder what percent of the total U.S. oil consumption is being used for this purpose.

During WW2 everyone understood they would have to sacrifice for the war effort, it was the “Patriotic” thing to do.  It was a tangible way to participate if one was a civilian.

Scrap-metal collecting drives were organized,  rubber was collected and recycled, the call for this or that went out and the people responded.  More importantly though, rationing was implemented nationally to support the war effort. Everyone complained for sure, but they knew it was the right thing to do.  Most everyday items were rationed, food, clothing, and especially gasoline and fuel oil.
So here we are in the fifth year of this very costly war and the American people haven’t been asked to sacrifice anything, or so it seems.  But I propose that we do have rationing in its most regressive form, “economic rationing”.   It is a form of rationing whereby the least of us are asked to sacrifice the most, and the more properous are sacrificing little or none.  People in Mississippi are sacrificing more of their $30,000 average wage than someone making the average wage in Washington, D.C. of $70,000.

Consider this chart and decide who feels the pain of high food and energy prices the most, the RN, LPN, or their 4-6 assistants, the CNA’s?  At what point does the CNA fail economically?

For a day’s labor the CNA receives $8.38 X 8 = 67.04 before taxes.  After personal income taxes, city and county taxes, medical taxes, transportation taxes, medical insurance, auto insurance, professional insurance, property insurance, etc., etc., a scant amount is left for food, clothing, shelter, and $4.00/gallon gas.  But they buy their gas from the same pump as the LPN, the RN, and the top feeder in this scenario, the MD. Making around $700 for the same day’s work, I think the MD isn’t making much of a “sacrifice” at all.

It’s not hard at all to see how unfair, almost criminally so, “economic rationing” really translates to working class people throughout the country. The CNA in our example above has already lost everything, or will soon, whether they know it or not.   Are you next?

We have brought back recycling and that’s good.  A return to gas rationing, during wartime, would be wise also.