Why? Because there are so many inextricably tied and convoluted factors that there can never be a release from this constraint. One must consider: politics, oil price speculation, alternative fuels, inflation, current growth patterns, supply vs. demand, and, finally, ourselves.
We, the American people, are the greatest gluttons for fuel consumption on the planet. We gorge on flagellates like popcorn at the movie theater. We cause the rest of the world to look to us to see where future demand lies, and every year, consistently, it has increased across our country--because of storage of barrels for the future, consumption in metro, suburban or rural areas, future expectations, bets and calls on the NYSE and CME (Chicago Mercantile Exchange), as well as our latest feelings toward the "strangers" in the middle east.
Politics is to blame, for example, because of love/hate relationship with the middle east creates a sort of caustic and abrasive relationship dependent upon biased symbiosis. We'll invade your country, assert our politics on you, judge you, and buy oil from you at a semi-reasonable price, but our leaders will still chastise and condemn your actions, as well as ignore your plights. Additionally, any government, regardless of political allegiance, is blamed for the price of gasoline, as if they, personally, could somehow influence prices to increase or decrease. News flash: oil is a worldwide commodity, which fluctuates daily and is traded and priced months in advance, often with (unseen) people making millions off of price fluctuations in either direction.
Speculators are paid not to try to make the price of oil to go down, to ease the burden on the hardworking blue-collar families across the country, but to earn cash for their investors, regardless of their personal feelings to the prices they pay when they fill up at the pump. A recent article on CNBC quoted an oil speculator, whose colleagues have been vilified recently, who said that he actually cringes when he must bet up the price of a barrel of oil, knowing that he will be seeing these price increases several months down the road when he fills up his luxury SUV on Saturday mornings. While the person, of course, spoke on condition of anonymity it is most certainly an educated college graduate (job requirements!) whose upbringing was probably something modest to lower upper-class at best. While they're now seeing exorbitant prices, the price of gasoline only 10 years ago was something much more manageable.
Look at Zillow.com sometime for the houses in your neighborhood. Use their charts to see what prices of homes were back in 1990-2000. Home prices are comparable to levels from the year 2000, but have still not fallen below the levels of 1990-1995, when everything, in retrospect, seems to have been more affordable. Oil, likewise, was also something that was under "control." This blogger remembers prices flirting with the $1.00/gallon mark while growing up, and remembers when I first began driving that prices were barely above the $1.53 mark. I was able to fill up the tank of a small SUV for $25. That same SUV sucks close to $60 now for the same tank, only 10 years later.
So is this swing necessary or are we creating a bubble? While some have hypothesized that we are in a bubble, the reality of oil prices, and thereby, gas prices declining at such a rapid or steady pace as the housing bubble caused housing prices to, is just plain foolish. Oil is tied to the growth and advancement of society, and unless a new "miracle" alternative fuel is found and successfully introduced into the market, thereby making competition plausible, we are, and will continue to be, slaves to the oil and gas fiends.
Inflation, growth patterns, supply and demand and alternative fuels can clearly only barely scratch the surface of this oil price problem, and the surface of oil prices is toughening by the day, becoming more like granite than the clay surface of bygone decades. So even if we, as gluttonous Americans, were to curb our gas thirst for 6 months to the tune of 25%, we would barely see the impact of it; in fact, some studies show that the price would actually rise because many speculators would then drive the prices up to make more money, other countries would gobble up the excesses for their reserve stores, OPEC countries would institute a production decrease to meet with the falling demand, and positive political relationships would begin to disintegrate as the necessity and symbiosis went by the wayside.
We must budget for the future, and know that even with prices having doubled (or better) from their decade-ago levels, we are still paying less per gallon (or litre for those semantically obsessed) than European and Asian countries and will enjoy "tolerable" and "feasible" levels for the foreseeable future, granted there is no large-scale new war instituted by any new incoming administration come November. We may think $4 is exorbitant, but $5 or $6 is not off the table, nor is it unfeasible for most families. It's a burden, it's an inconvenience, and it dictates that our economy will continue to shrink and may stay at "floating recession levels" or even stagnation levels, but it won't cause 50% of cars to get off the road and people to have to quit their jobs en masse because they can no longer afford the commute.
Our world is changing and with it come some disagreeable side effects. We must learn to survive knowing that our extra money will no longer go toward a vacation or a night out, but toward the necessity of getting to and from work.
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