Energy Crisis and Oil Holidays

Every morning on my drive to work I notice gas prices are steadily rising. When I was 11 years old I use to pump gas for people for tips. That was in 1988 and gas was .88 cents a gallon. Good luck to someone trying to earn money that way today. We live in a time where oil is as valuable as gold. Our country is willing to go to war over it and the price of it affects every aspect of our lives.

My favorite Democratic Presidential candidate Barack Obama asked ordinary Americans to do their part to contribute to change in this country. Inspired by Mr. Obama's words I thought, what can we do as a country to reduce our dependency on oil. The answer I thought of was simply, but yet difficult to pull off.

Change our work week from 5 days to 4 days, Monday through Thursday, and work 10 hour days. This work schedule is referred to as a 4-10. It would reduce our gas dependency by about 20%. Schools, government offices, and basically every aspect of our society would have to make this transition in order for this to work.

Think about the benefits. Three day weekends every week, spending more time with your family, more rest, and best of all I less day we burn gas driving to and from work. For most people driving to work is their longest commute. I personal drive about 50 miles a day, to and from work. So that's about 2 gallons of gas a day at $3.15 a gallon. So I would save over $300 a year in gas cost and use about 104 less gallons of gas. Can you imagine the benefits of every person that drives to work using 104 gallons less gas a year? Billions of gallons of gas would be saved.

Productivity should remain consistent because everyone would still work 40 hour weeks. Companies would save money because there is one less day of operations. More consumer spending would occur because most people shop and dine on the weekend.

I could go on and on why we should do this, but the reality of it is, it probably won't happen. Some company would loose money, but the benefits to our society should outweigh a profit. At the rate we are currently going we will run out of oil and a company will figure out a new fuel source to exploit. In my opinion all of the current alternatives such as ethanol, drive the cost of other goods up. Just think driving one day a week would be true Oil Holiday.

J. Perkins