gas prices

[chequita guevara]

neat

[DanS]

I walk to work, the grocery store, liquor store, carry-out, etc. We have Zipcar too, but I have never used it. If you use a cab from time to time, it's not that expensive. For longer travel, I just rent a car.

Walking everywhere does expose you to crackberry addicts who might run you over.

[Drake Tungsten]

gas prices

Yep.

[DaShi]

Originally posted by DanS
I walk to work, the grocery store, liquor store, carry-out, etc. We have Zipcar too, but I have never used it. If you use a cab from time to time, it's not that expensive. For longer travel, I just rent a car.

Walking everywhere does expose you to crackberry addicts who might run you over.

Zipcar is actually cheaper for me than a cab because I can use the company discount.

[KrazyHorse]

Originally posted by DinoDoc
How so?

Gallons per passenger mile.

[SlowwHand]

http://www.gasbuddy.com/

Gas prices in any given area.

[Drogue]

Re: gas prices

Originally posted by Dis
My main problem is I think prices are aritificially high. Oil companies are making record profits.

Define "artificially" high. Surely any firm in any industry is charging whatever price they feel will maximise their profits. Is the price of food artificially high because WalMart make huge amounts? Is the price of using a search engine too high because Google are making huge profits? The latter I think shows the point clearly - huge profits are not caused by artificially high, since any price is simply an arbitrary price decided upon by the company.

Issues about it being due to lack of power plants or whatever else is masking the point, but perhaps contributes. Prices are high because people are willing to pay lots and there's not enough competition keeping the price down. The latter of those isn't about to change, considering the market forces in oil are pretty much set by where it's found. Therefore it's about changing how much you're willing to pay, or about government involvement to part-nationalise or regulate the industry, which in most non-US country would likely lead to higher prices since the government would take into account social issues (such as pollution, congestion, and such) into pricing it.

[Drogue]

Re: Re: gas prices

Originally posted by KrazyHorse
The fact that oil companies are making record profits has nothing to do with whether or not prices are "artificially" high.

As much as you may be an ass at time, you probably were right earlier, you're pretty smart. It amazes me how few people understand basic economics.

[SlowwHand]

Prices are high because people are willing to pay lots

The key point. Casting your dollar vote.
If prices are too high, don't buy. I don't mean skip a damn day against the Top 2 or 3, I mean, drive less.
Go local. See things in your area that you never took the time to see.
Take mass transit, if it's available. You're paying a tax for it, I'm sure, if you do have it. Why pay what you feel is too high on gas, and ignore totally that which you already pay for having available?

The only way to change gas is to change habits. Period.

[Barnabas]

Cars are of the devil

gas prices

except for people who live in very cold places, for them it sucks

They should grow fur

[SlowwHand]

Is that a Greek joke?

[Japher]

I find this argument to be hypocritical on my part

On one side I feel that if ppl are willing to pay the price than they should charge what they can

On the other side, gas prices don't just effect the cost of commuting my lazy butt to and from work, it also effects the costs of the other things I buy. Therefore, by charging higher prices for gas they are actually controlling inflation. And, IMO, inflation shouldn't be controlled by greedy corporate entities that would rather pass the cost of production pitfalls on to the consumers than to dare impede on their record profits.

For this reason, I feel that gas prices should be regulated, though this would just give the power of inflation over to some other greedy smartarse. Maybe gas should be tied to some indicie or something, I don't know, but I don't like that a president with and oil company would turn a blind eye to such a prevalent issue.

[DAVOUT]

Originally posted by Japher
For this reason, I feel that gas prices should be regulated, though this would just give the power of inflation over to some other greedy smartarse. Maybe gas should be tied to some indicie or something, I don't know, but I don't like that a president with and oil company would turn a blind eye to such a prevalent issue.

Not a good solution.
Iran does that for internal political reasons they fixed a very low price. But they import more than 50% of gas consumed; the price of gas imported increasing, they were selling below cost and were obliged recently to decide a 25% price increase.

[Zkribbler]

Re: Re: gas prices

Originally posted by Drogue

Define "artificially" high.

We've had this discussion before.

The problem is not with the retailers nor with the companies that drill for oil. There's enough of both so that we obtain fair prices through their competition.

The problem is in the bottleneck of the refineries. IIRC, there's only six companies in the U.S. that do the refining.

One problem is the millions (probably billions) of dollars that it costs to build a new refinery. Plus would-be refining companies have to deal with NIMBYism. (I have my suspecions that maybe the lack of refineries might also have to do with a possible agreement by oil companies to keep the number of refineries at a minimum.)

The bottom line is that the lack of competition between refining companies leads to an oil-refining cartel. There are charges that oil companies close down some of their refineries "for maintainance" in order to lower supply, boost prices and thereby profits.

If this is true, their profits would be "artifically high," i.e. not set my market forces but rather by unlawful manipulation of market forces.

[Dauphin]

If oil companies were setting 'artificially' high prices, and at the same time they pissed away money on disproportionately high salaries for all their staff, excessive rent payments and other expenses, incompetent finance management etc such that they made no profit, the arguments of 'artificially' high prices would not go away.