Reply #26: Short response

[gratuitous]

That is, in part, why goosing the price of gas to more than $4 a gallon was a bad idea for the corporatists. When people were having to watch their fuel consumption, or make choices between gassing up the family sedan and buying other stuff, it made for a bad business environment. For a little while there, my observation was that people were mindful of their consumerism and began evaluating a lot more closely what they were buying, when, and why. People were even careful to bundle trips (say, to the grocery store, the bank, and Little Marblehead's soccer practice) so as to save gas.

This was very bad for consumerism, and spawned a whole new crop of more competitive advertising to nudge folks back to where they buy without quite so much thinking.