According to our President....

According to our president.....
"If you're out there wondering... what your life is going to be like, and you're looking at $4 a gallon, that's uncertain," Bush responded to a question posed at a White House news conference. "And when you couple that with the idea that... taxes may be going up in a couple years, that's double uncertainty."
Double uncertainty huh?! That's about as sorry as an answer as, "We're not in a recession, we're in an economic slow-down"

And it isn't just here in America where we're feeling the impacts of rising gas prices.

Baghdad subsidies let Iraqis pay only about $1.36 a gallon!

The U.S. military, through its Defense Energy Support Center, buys fuel on the open market, paying from $1.99 a gallon to as much as $5.30 a gallon under contracts with private and government-owned oil companies. The center then sets a fixed rate for troops, currently $3.51 a gallon for diesel, $3.15 for gasoline, $3.04 for jet fuel and $13.61 for avgas, a high-octane fuel used mostly in unmanned aerial vehicles.
Overall, the military consumes about 1.2 million barrels, or more than 50 million gallons of fuel, each month in Iraq at an average $127.68 a barrel. That works out to about $153 million a month!
Baghdad is currently pumping 2.3 million bpd of oil and expects to boost supply to between 2.6 million and 2.7 million bpd during 2008

Record prices on the international oil markets have driven gas prices across the board sky high, with a gallon of unleaded gas costing about $8.60 per gallon in Germany. (In Germany, gas is sold by the liter with one liter of unleaded fuel selling for an average of $2.29)
And in the UK, predictions are that gas will be 1.50 per liter by the end of the year. (3.79 liters is roughly equal to one gallon) Which comes out to be about $5.68 a gallon in USD.

I guess the question is, what are we going to do about this? Is there anything we can do about this? With the value of the American dollar at an all time low and everything else at an all time high... it seems that we are destined for a substantial increase in poverty levels.
At the current gas price level and average fuel economy of 17.8 miles/gallon, average American workers, who earn the national average salary of $40,409, spend 4.2% of their paychecks ($1,697 per year) on gas needed to commute to and from work.
"And that's the average worker," says Bill Coleman, Senior VP of Compensation at Salary.com. "Consider workers making the national minimum wage of $5.85 an hour ($12,168 per year) who are currently spending 12.1% of their salary on commuting gas."

This discussion could go on and on. Everyone has gripes about our "uncertain" economy and the dilemma that we as American's are facing today. What's your take and how can we make a change that we will be able to see in our lifetimes? Will we ever see a positive change in our lifetimes?