{"id":574,"date":"2009-03-08T20:13:00","date_gmt":"2009-03-08T20:13:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/johnbeckett\/2009\/03\/shortsighted-fools\/"},"modified":"2009-03-08T20:13:00","modified_gmt":"2009-03-08T20:13:00","slug":"shortsighted-fools","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/johnbeckett\/2009\/03\/shortsighted-fools.html","title":{"rendered":"Shortsighted Fools"},"content":{"rendered":"<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC \"-\/\/W3C\/\/DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional\/\/EN\" \"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/TR\/REC-html40\/loose.dtd\">\n<html><head><meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\"><meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\"><\/head><body><p><a href=\"https:\/\/1.bp.blogspot.com\/_cpRXT6ZSHTw\/SbRz6k88HoI\/AAAAAAAAAHc\/O5nHNTMWrKU\/s1600-h\/pruis2.jpg\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/1.bp.blogspot.com\/_cpRXT6ZSHTw\/SbRz6k88HoI\/AAAAAAAAAHc\/O5nHNTMWrKU\/s320\/pruis2.jpg\" border=\"0\"><\/a>Among the rest of today\u2019s bad news is <a href=\"http:\/\/www.dallasnews.com\/sharedcontent\/dws\/bus\/stories\/DN-smallcars_08bus.State.Edition1.1f9874a.html\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">this article from the Dallas Morning News<\/a>. With the price of gas less than half of what it was last year, people are abandoning small cars and buying trucks again. Idiots.<\/p>\n<p>In the interest of full disclosure, I drove trucks (albeit small trucks) for quite a few years. They\u2019re handy to have, particularly if you have a spouse\/partner with a car for the times you need to haul people or groceries instead of furniture or lumber. And if you work in construction or farming, you pretty much have to have one. I have no arguments with those folks.<\/p>\n<p>But I see far too many pickup trucks and large SUVs in the office parking garage, at the grocery stores, and going down Central Expressway with one occupant \u2013 they\u2019re being used as oversized commuter vehicles.<\/p>\n<p>1) Do these people really think that gas is going to be $1.71 a gallon for the five or six years they\u2019ll be paying on their 12 MPG monster? As soon as the economy comes back (and it will come back, maybe not this year, but long before these loans will be paid off) gas will start going up again.<\/p>\n<p>2) Have they forgotten where we get too much of our oil, and what those people do with the money we send them?<\/p>\n<p>3) Have they forgotten what burning fossil fuels is doing to the environment? And do they think the oil is going to last forever?<\/p>\n<p>The answer to #1 is that they haven\u2019t even thought about it and the answer to #2 and #3 is no, they haven\u2019t forgotten, because they never knew in the first place.<\/p>\n<p>When I was a kid, I took some harassment because I tried to think farther out than tonight\u2019s party. I figured that once people grew up, they\u2019d see their lives would be so much easier if they planned ahead a bit. I was wrong. Admittedly, I sometimes take things too far in the other direction, but as a nation we are continuing to make things worse for ourselves and our descendants because we refuse to say no to anything we want.<\/p>\n<p>Idiots.<\/p>\n<p>The good news is that if you\u2019re in the market for a car (and you\u2019ve got the money for one \u2013 not a given these days), you can get a great deal on a Prius, Civic, Corolla, or some other very nice but very practical cars.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Among the rest of today\u2019s bad news is this article from the Dallas Morning News. With the price of gas less than half of what it was last year, people are abandoning small cars and buying trucks again. Idiots. In the interest of full disclosure, I drove trucks (albeit small trucks) for quite a few [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1129,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-574","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v21.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Shortsighted Fools<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Among the rest of today&#039;s bad news is this article from the Dallas Morning News. With the price of gas less than half of what it was last year, people are\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/johnbeckett\/2009\/03\/shortsighted-fools.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Shortsighted Fools\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Among the rest of today&#039;s bad news is this article from the Dallas Morning News. With the price of gas less than half of what it was last year, people are\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/johnbeckett\/2009\/03\/shortsighted-fools.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"John Beckett\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2009-03-08T20:13:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/1.bp.blogspot.com\/_cpRXT6ZSHTw\/SbRz6k88HoI\/AAAAAAAAAHc\/O5nHNTMWrKU\/s320\/pruis2.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"John Beckett\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"John Beckett\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"2 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/johnbeckett\/2009\/03\/shortsighted-fools.html\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/johnbeckett\/2009\/03\/shortsighted-fools.html\",\"name\":\"Shortsighted Fools\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/johnbeckett\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2009-03-08T20:13:00+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2009-03-08T20:13:00+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/johnbeckett\/#\/schema\/person\/b4c8980dc36f971434424c304ca429ad\"},\"description\":\"Among the rest of today's bad news is this article from the Dallas Morning News. 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