I'll be out of town at the Scholastic Chess of Indiana Team Championships with 3 teams on Saturday in Hammond, IN on Saturday and may not respond to posts late Friday and Saturday.
It's a 550 mile round trip. I calculated the additional cost of gas because of the unprovoked Netanyahu/Trump war in Iran to be $22.
Multiply that by 15 for me and the 14 families going up there from our schools and it's an extra $330 for just the gas our teams will be spending to attend this tournament compared to a month ago.
Multiply the number of $15 by 100 million vehicles every time Americans fill up their gas tanks and we get $1.5 BILLION, $1,500,000,000 more spent for just gas on every tank fill up.
Multiply that $15 more to fill up our tanks by 1.6 billion vehicles in the world and that number goes up to $24,000,000,000 more money spent to fill up everybody's gas tanks on each fill up compared to before the unjustified Netanyahu/Trump war.
This is especially impacting the cost of shipping goods via ground, air or water as fuels is a major expense. This extra cost will get passed on to consumers.
This has ALREADY done great harm to our economy. A few more weeks of this, on top of the other flailing economic indicators means a recession is inevitable.
Not just in the US but globally.
I agree with the essence of your post. I am also pessimistic of the economy. But one point you made is an error of sorts. You cannot accurately assert that there would be 100 million or 1.6 billion vehicles. Because that's what happens (the mkts function) when you have price increases due to supply shock. You winnow out the marginal drive/vehicle, so that reduces the number of vehicles. (minor point)
Thanks very much, joj!
I agree 100% with your assessment.
That is actually what would happen and those numbers would be much too high.
I wasn't trying to do an accurate estimate as much as showing how big of a drag this will be on the economy using the stats on current vehicles on the road as a starting point.
Let's just cut those numbers in half to make it more real, adjusting for your great point.