e on foreign oil. That may be wishful thinking, since the oil companies seem to think that "alternative energy source" means a new place to drill for oil.

For working people who need cars to get to their jobs, high gas prices are a real hardship. SEPTA is geared to get people to jobs in Center City, but for years, job growth has been largely in the suburbs. That leaves tens of thousands who need to get to work where mass transit may be inconvenient or nonexistent.

High gas prices are like a tax that eats into workers' pay, leaving less to live on. A friend in sales spends $60 to fill her tank and can drive 300 miles a day visiting clients across the region. "I'd switch to a car with better mileage if I could, but I'd have to pay the dealer to take mine," she said.

Last fall, Lee Raymond, chairman of ExxonMobil, told Congress that gas prices were high because of global supply and demand. "We're all in this together, everywhere in the world," he said.

Not exactly. In 2005, ExxonMobil posted a profit of $36 billion, higher than any company ever.

Raymond himself made more than $51 million that year. That's nearly $1 million a week - more than $28,000 an hour for a 35-hour workweek. That breaks down further to $468 a minute, $7.80 a second - while some workers try to support their families on the $5.15 an hour minimum wage. So, $7.80 a second buys a little more than 2 ½ gallons of gas at $3 a gallon. No wonder Raymond doesn't worry about the price.

And when he retired at the end of last year, Raymond pocketed one of the largest retirement packages in corporate history, worth nearly $400 million.

Maybe you think Raymond deserves all that money, considering the huge profits the company made on his watch. But the company's success isn't the product of one person, or even a handful. Instead of handing him an almost inconceivable sum, why not give it out in bonuses to all the employees, or in rebates to consumers?

As Steve Talley asked recently in the New York Times, "What can any human being on this earth possibly 'do' to justify that much money? Reverse global warming? End religious strife? Halt hunger worldwide?"

No, sorry to say.

Mr. Raymond's company sells a product that adds to global warming while it helps prop up governments run by religious extremists and dictators, and probably even expands the number of hungry in the world by widening the gap between the industrial haves and have-nots.

And speaking of gaps, take a look at the income gap in our own country. According to Business Week, in 1980, the CEOs of our largest corporations earned 42 times the pay of the average U.S. worker. Twenty years later, in 2000, the CEOs pulled in 531 times that average salary.

The Bush tax cuts for the rich only add to the problem. Most of the benefits - 54 percent - go to the top 5 percent of all taxpayers.

I guess they need the money. With fuel so high, it must cost a bundle to gas up their private jets. It's something to think about the next time you're standing at the gas pump watching the numbers fly by.

Deborah Leavy is a public policy consultant who often works on civil-liberties issues. E-mail her at deborah.opinion@gmail.com.