Leadership Quote by Major R. Owens

High gas prices aren’t framed here as an inconvenience; they’re cast as a slow, grinding tax that hits in the one place households can’t easily defend: the margin. Owens’s phrase “eating away” is doing political work. It turns inflation into something predatory and continuous, not a one-time spike you can shrug off. And by invoking “consumer’s disposable income,” he borrows the language of economists to legitimize what is, at heart, a moral claim about who absorbs the pain when energy costs climb.

The subtext is coalition-building. “Consumers” sounds universal, but Owens quickly narrows the spotlight to people “whose livelihood depend[s] on gasoline and diesel fuel” - truckers, tradespeople, delivery workers, commuters in car-dependent regions. That pivot is strategic: it reframes fuel prices from a market story into a labor story. The message is that price shocks don’t just change what people buy; they threaten work itself, amplifying inequality between those who can telecommute and those who must burn fuel to earn.

Context matters because Owens spoke as a politician in an era when energy volatility repeatedly exposed how fragile everyday economics can be. His warning about a “further economic downturn” isn’t neutral forecasting; it’s pressure on policymakers to treat energy as infrastructure, not a luxury commodity. The line quietly argues for intervention - whether through relief, regulation, or investment - while sidestepping ideological buzzwords. It’s the rhetoric of consequence: when fuel gets expensive, the economy doesn’t simply “adjust.” It bruises specific people first, and then everyone else learns the cost downstream.