{"id":21900,"date":"2004-03-19T01:01:01","date_gmt":"2011-05-19T07:10:27","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2011-05-19T07:10:27","modified_gmt":"2011-05-19T07:10:27","slug":"gas_costs_less_than_bottled_water","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/admin.rushlimbaugh.com\/daily\/2004\/03\/19\/gas_costs_less_than_bottled_water\/","title":{"rendered":"Gas Costs Less Than Bottled Water!"},"content":{"rendered":"
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?BuzzCharts is in a nostalgic mood this week and has decided to play a hit from the “\u201970s, \u201980s, and \u201990s” ? the misery index. During the stagflation days of the late \u201970s and the deep recession of the early Reagan years and the high-unemployment recession of the late George H.W. Bush years, reporters couldn\u2019t get enough of it. In fact, like most hits, it eventually become over-played.?<\/line>Buzz Charts is apparently a lib website that is trumpeting now the misery index. Well, the reason that they\u2019re not citing the misery — I mean you would think there\u2019s a big misery index the way they\u2019re reporting the economy, correct? Why we\u2019ve got soup lines, we\u2019ve got the homeless, we\u2019ve got people that can\u2019t work because of outsourcing, people are not getting work, don\u2019t know where the jobs are, oh, woe is us, we are in doomed, defeat, trouble, gasoline prices are rising.<\/line> <\/line> By the way, I got in a conversation about this last night with a bunch of people. Does it seem odd to you that — this is a departure from the story but I don\u2019t want to forget this — does it seem odd to you that a gallon of bottled water is more expensive than a gallon of gasoline, and nobody complains about this? Now, you don\u2019t buy gallons of water. You know, a tankfull at a time, but still let\u2019s examine this. Imagine you\u2019re in the oil industry. What do you have to do? First you have to hire all kinds of gizmos and people to find where the oil is. Sometimes it\u2019s out in the Gulf or in the North Sea miles down. You have to find it, then you have to drill down there, then you have to find a way to get it up. Once you\u2019ve got the oil up then you\u2019ve got to transport it from wherever you found it to a refinery, then you have to refine it, then you have to distribute it to gas stations and airports and wherever else the refined product is used. And after you do all that, a gallon of that product costs less than a gallon of bottled water. Can you imagine this oil industry exec saying, “This isn\u2019t fair. Look it all of my up-front costs to get that barrel of oil that will become X-number of gallons of gasoline, and these water guys are simply turning on a faucet somewhere, holding a jug underneath it, saying it\u2019s from a well, not even putting fluoride in it, slapping a label on it, and selling it for more than gasoline.” And when the price of gasoline goes up a nickel, there are shrieks of outrage and conspiracy and shortages. Nobody even notices what the price of water is.<\/line><\/p>\n

The question is popularly asked, “Okay, senator, what\u2019s the price of a gallon of milk?” I now know it\u2019s $3.19 depending on where you are. But ask somebody, what\u2019s the a gallon of water, nobody can tell you. They don\u2019t buy it by the gallon. They buy it in these little six-pack, 1.6 liter bottles and they chug it out there while they\u2019re pretending they\u2019re athletes, while they jog along the bike path, bike trail and so forth.<\/line> <\/line>Now, if you had to go to a pump and get your water by the tank load, and you saw the pump zinging up the price as gasoline does, you\u2019d be complaining about it, and plus we can live without gasoline, I mean we couldn\u2019t, of course, but literally could not live without water. We would shrivel up and die. Not true with gasoline. We\u2019d have to find other things, but it just amazes me what people get upset about. There\u2019s no production costs in water. All you\u2019ve got to do is wait for the rain then find a faucet. In fact, you let the government purify it for you. You don\u2019t even pay for that. You just put your jug underneath the faucet say it comes from a well or a spring that nobody else can find, and then sell it. It\u2019s the same stuff for the most part. It\u2019s not regulated; we don\u2019t know what\u2019s in it. Could be a bunch of amoeba in there for all we know. But yet the price of gasoline goes up and (screaming) panic, “Mabel, we\u2019re not going to be able to have our vacation this summer, we\u2019re not going to be able to drive to Del Rey Beach and get to the Disney cruise boat.” It just struck me, it just strikes me funny.<\/line> <\/line>Now, if you were taking a shower and they had a gasoline pump in there as the shower water is running and you\u2019re being charged I guarantee you people would be worried about the price of water. So it\u2019s just different. But I pitty these poor oil executives, can you imagine, they\u2019ve got to hate the water guys that are making billions, and you go to a grocery store, do you know what the biggest section in the grocery store is now? One single product is water, bottled water. After that it\u2019s the beer, after that it\u2019s the wine, then the potato chips, the healthy stuff takes up the smallest part of the grocery store now because we are obese.<\/line><\/p>\n

Anyway, back to the misery index, uh, you\u2019d think that we are just in a world of hurt here. So why isn\u2019t the press using the misery index? Well, the fact of the matter is, the misery index — we don\u2019t even talk about Carter because the Carter misery index was on 18, right? The misery index is a combination of unemployment and inflation, or interest rates and inflation, something like that. Yeah, well, skyrocketing high, that\u2019s where it was invented to explain the malaise during the Carter years.<\/line> <\/line>All right. The misery index during Clinton\u2019s second term was about 6.8. George W. Bush\u2019s current misery index is 7.6. The average for Clinton\u2019s first term weighs in at a moderate 8.8, and the World War II period, post-World War II average is 9.5. George H. W. Bush\u2019s average misery index, 10.7%. The point is, if you look at George W. Bush\u2019s current misery index, 7.6%, Bill Clinton\u2019s first term it was 8.8. The misery index during Clinton\u2019s first term, worse than it is today. Clinton\u2019s second term it was 6.8. Current misery index, 7.6. There\u2019s hardly any difference. That\u2019s why they can\u2019t use it. There isn\u2019t that much misery is the point. <\/line>All of this opinion that the economy is sour is simply the result of media propaganda is the point. You know, it\u2019s interesting too, every day here, and I must admit, and I am falling down on the job here, every day I\u2019ve got economic stories that are good. This amount of manufacturing up, this job sector up, and I never report them to you because I think you\u2019re just going to think I\u2019m a propagandist. So I don\u2019t tell you about it on purpose, because I think you probably aren\u2019t going to want to hear the good news since you think I\u2019m just going to be trying to give you a phony reason to feel good. Well, I\u2019m going to change my policy here, because the fact of the matter is this good news isn\u2019t being reported and I ought to be the one reporting it when I have it. But I don\u2019t. Instead all this bad news, misery, is up there, and everybody is falling into line thinking that that\u2019s the reality of the day when it isn\u2019t.<\/line>END TRANSCRIPT<\/line><\/p>\n

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?BuzzCharts is in a nostalgic mood this week and has decided to play a hit from the “\u201970s, \u201980s, and \u201990s” ? the misery index. During the stagflation days of the late \u201970s and the deep recession of the early Reagan years and the high-unemployment recession of the late George H.W. Bush years, reporters couldn\u2019t […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":25,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","ngg_post_thumbnail":0},"categories":[],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\nGas Costs Less Than Bottled Water! - The Rush Limbaugh Show<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/admin.rushlimbaugh.com\/daily\/2004\/03\/19\/gas_costs_less_than_bottled_water\/\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:title\" content=\"Gas Costs Less Than Bottled Water! - The Rush Limbaugh Show\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:description\" content=\"?BuzzCharts is in a nostalgic mood this week and has decided to play a hit from the “\u201970s, \u201980s, and \u201990s” ? the misery index. 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