Gasoline prices pose problems for Obama

[emzie]

It isn't an exception. I just don't see how gasoline costing $5 at a gas station makes that station no longer serviceable. Oh well, not my problem.

It's an exception, because the rest of the gas stations in the are are charging 20-25% less. There's a few stations by the Orlando airport charging 5.50+ but it'd be patently disingenuous to argue that 5.50 was what people in Orlando were paying for gas. There are other circumstances at play. For instance, the stations in Orlando are preying on tourists returning rentals, who don't know the price of gas near the airport has been marked up (there are no signs until you get to the pump). I imagine what you posted from the DC-are has a similar explanation.

At the time of posting, the average cost of gas in DC is just over 4 dollars a gallon.

http://www.gasbuddy.com/gb_gastemperaturemap.aspx

The average price. Using any other metric in this case is really silly.

Did you have to walk 11 kilometers to work, or to get groceries?

Seriously, a 6-mile drive to work, or for groceries, is not a hardship. My mom's commute to work is an hour. The nearest grocery store is a half hour in the other direction.

 

[JollyRoger]

I have a feeling that written contracts aren't going to be used on a car.

Well, then that is just a group of idiots asking for problems.

Again, what happens when other people are already took the part-time retail-type positions?

Job availability is dynamic. People take jobs, people leave jobs. Never a permanent situation. Why do I have to explain that?

Exactly! Now if only you would feel the same way about the government! This is our whole point! This is why we hate nanny states! I think you might actually have hope, in the political belief section.

If we took it to the extreme, $6/gallon gas would then sound really good to you as you would find it very difficult to manage the fair market prices sans the current gas welfare.

Here's an idea (I really don't know how well it would work, this is just an alpha stage idea): The government builds the oil refinery, then sells it to the oil company.

Why can't the oil company build it? If they have the money to pay fair market value for it, they have the money to build it. Or are you suggesting that the government sell it to them at a discount? If that is the case, you are asking once again for a high end taxpayer like me to subsidize your mistakes.

Did you have to walk 11 kilometers to work, or to get groceries?

You are only talking 6 to 7 miles? You can't realistically aspire to go Galt unless you show a bit more toughness.

 

[NickyJ]

not[/I] a hardship. My mom's commute to work is an hour. The nearest grocery store is a half hour in the other direction.

Who said anything about driving?

Well, then that is just a group of idiots asking for problems.

Well, I guess normal people are sometimes idiots...

Job availability is dynamic. People take jobs, people leave jobs. Never a permanent situation. Why do I have to explain that?

Because demand for jobs almost always out paces supply. Especially in bad economic times like these.

Why can't the oil company build it? If they have the money to pay fair market value for it, they have the money to build it. Or are you suggesting that the government sell it to them at a discount? If that is the case, you are asking once again for a high end taxpayer like me to subsidize your mistakes.

I thought you were saying that the companies just wouldn't make the refineries. What I meant, was that we make the refinery, and sell it at full price. Then the company would just buy the already existing refinery, and the government gets all it's money back.

You are only talking 6 to 7 miles? You can't realistically aspire to go Galt unless you show a bit more toughness.

Let's see you carry 10 heavy grocery bags with frozen foods in them 7 miles in 90 degree weather.

 

[JollyRoger]

I thought you were saying that the companies just wouldn't make the refineries. What I meant, was that we make the refinery, and sell it at full price. Then the company would just buy the already existing refinery, and the government gets all it's money back.

If the company won't build the refinaries, what makes you think they will buy them? They likely enjoy the limited supply so that they can make more money were gallon.

Let's see you carry 10 heavy grocery bags with frozen foods in them 7 miles in 90 degree weather.

Why would I do that? I have chosen to live within a mile of a grocery store and have enough money to afford gas. If I did live 7 miles from the store and couldn't afford the gas, I would be smart enough to not compound my mistakes in the manner you have described.

 

[Ajidica]

Let's see you carry 10 heavy grocery bags with frozen foods in them 7 miles in 90 degree weather.

Why do you have to carry them? Use that Galtian inventiveness a free market rewards. Get a shopping cart or a red wagon, get a cooler, use your home icemaker to get ice to fill it, and then use that to carry home your frozen foods.

It isn't that hard to do. When my mothers car was broken that was what I was doing over the summer.

 

[LucyDuke]

It isn't an exception. I just don't see how gasoline costing $5 at a gas station makes that station no longer serviceable. Oh well, not my problem.


Well, I am thankful to know that I am not the one refusing to acknowledge it. Thanks for the confirmation.


It's finite, but it's not just going to disappear tomorrow, so why should we bankrupt ourselves over it?


And that is my thinking. "Use it, or lose it." Let's just say that I don't feel like losing it.

Contre covered this.

Tragically.

No, it's not going to disappear tomorrow, but it's dumb to pretend it's going to be plentiful forever. We're guaranteed to bankrupt ourselves later if we do that. It's amazing how difficult it is to get people to even acknowledge that there might be a problem.

Unfortunately using it isn't going to make any difference in the overall problem, and is at best postponing the inevitable anyway.

 

[Zelig]

Did you have to walk 11 kilometers to work, or to get groceries?

No, I don't live in dumb locations - I choose to live close to work and groceries.

 

[Silurian]

Who said anything about driving?

Let's see you carry 10 heavy grocery bags with frozen foods in them 7 miles in 90 degree weather.

Originally Posted by Silurian
3-Buy groceries on line and get them delivered.
4-Plan your journeys so you do two or more journeys at the same time

If you live 7 miles from the grocery store and do not want to put fuel in your car then you need to plan.

For a start
Why do you need to get 10 bags of shopping at once.
Why do you need to buy frozen food when you have to walk.

Go to the grocery store once a month and buy frozen food to fill your freezer and all the other products that will keep in a cupboard for the month.

Get yourself a cycle 14 miles is not far.
Then you can go and get on or two bags once or twice a week.

When you get used to planning your shopping you may be able to use the car less than once a month and so save up trips for when the weather is to bad to cycle for a number of days.

 

[Bordz]

Did you have to walk 11 kilometers to work, or to get groceries?

My parents travel further to work and get groceries, you know what mum does? She gets her groceries on her way home from work We also pay more for petrol therefore your argument is void.

Seriously Americans cannot compare petrol prices with Canadians, Kiwis and Aussies, our urban sprawl has developed in the same way and as such we all have large spread out cities yet these three countries pay more per litre than in the US.

If you are too lazy to change your way of life, well you will suffer in the vacuum of the free market won't you?

 

[Arakhor]

Which just goes to show, some people think that libertarianism is a great idea until they finally fall foul of "free-market capitalism".

 

[El_Machinae]

We don't build refineries here because it doesn't make sense to. Places with the oil are going to want to build refineries, because (a) it's job creating and (b) it allows the shipped product to be more valuable.

I think that ANWR could be safely drilled, but not quite yet. The legislation would need to firm up, and so the price would probably need to be higher to justify. Waiting for better prices and higher standards is actually good for Americans, because the high standards will create jobs. It will still be Exxon taking the oil and selling it on the open market to the highest bidder (and then using tax dodges to avoid the benefit from going to the US).

What a country wants to do (since this is a resource that belongs to the citizens) is to extract as much of the market value as possible in profit. The Exxon shareholders will whine, but it's not like demand for the ANWR oil is going to cease

But people have to worry about whether these ARE the 'good times' when it comes to oil prices. Buy a scooter for commuting in the summer. Invest in insulation. etc.

What's funny (for me) is how clueless we are. Look at all the new bigscreen TVs out there. They consume nearly 3x the energy older TVs did. But people have been swapping them out, and not even considering the fuel costs.

 

[Rashiminos]

It's really amazing to me how unprepared we are for higher fuel prices. People seem to stretch their budgets fiercely, and then are shocked when some prices go up, as expected.

I asked a couple years ago how people's personal 'free market' was going to help solve energy concerns. Everyone just seemed to focus on using less. Where's the innovation? Where's the investment in alternatives? There's nothing at the personal level. People think about buying cheaper cars, but that's about it.

It's already invested in killing MENA inhabitants, to be quite frank. The evolution is taking place in the war and security industries at the present.

 

[Cutlass]

We don't build refineries here because it doesn't make sense to. Places with the oil are going to want to build refineries, because (a) it's job creating and (b) it allows the shipped product to be more valuable.

I think that ANWR could be safely drilled, but not quite yet. The legislation would need to firm up, and so the price would probably need to be higher to justify. Waiting for better prices and higher standards is actually good for Americans, because the high standards will create jobs. It will still be Exxon taking the oil and selling it on the open market to the highest bidder (and then using tax dodges to avoid the benefit from going to the US).

What a country wants to do (since this is a resource that belongs to the citizens) is to extract as much of the market value as possible in profit. The Exxon shareholders will whine, but it's not like demand for the ANWR oil is going to cease

But people have to worry about whether these ARE the 'good times' when it comes to oil prices. Buy a scooter for commuting in the summer. Invest in insulation. etc.

What's funny (for me) is how clueless we are. Look at all the new bigscreen TVs out there. They consume nearly 3x the energy older TVs did. But people have been swapping them out, and not even considering the fuel costs.

It's much more expensive and dangerous to ship the finished product than it is the oil.

 

[NickyJ]

No, it's not going to disappear tomorrow, but it's dumb to pretend it's going to be plentiful forever. We're guaranteed to bankrupt ourselves later if we do that. It's amazing how difficult it is to get people to even acknowledge that there might be a problem.

Nobody but you has said anything about oil being around forever. I'm saying that we should drill so that we don't go bankrupt now, then, once we have some lower prices, work on using other fuels. But saying that people going bankrupt over transportation is good and that we should leave things the way they are is, to be frank, complete and utter stupidity.

Unfortunately using it isn't going to make any difference in the overall problem, and is at best postponing the inevitable anyway.

We should use drill to postpone the inevitable which, in turn, would buy us some time to work on finding other fuel sources. What's so hard to understand about that?

My parents travel further to work and get groceries, you know what mum does? She gets her groceries on her way home from work We also pay more for petrol therefore your argument is void.

Seriously Americans cannot compare petrol prices with Canadians, Kiwis and Aussies, our urban sprawl has developed in the same way and as such we all have large spread out cities yet these three countries pay more per litre than in the US.

If you are too lazy to change your way of life, well you will suffer in the vacuum of the free market won't you?

But do you have the rotten economy we have? Do you have the job insecurity we have? Do you have the unemployment we have?

 

[bhsup]

Here's a good metric for what is being charged in Canada and USA for gas. I am not seeing $5 anywhere in the USA...

http://www.pilottravelcenters.com/L...Complete_Pricing_List.aspx?leftTemplate=false

 

[NickyJ]

Here's a good metric for what is being charged in Canada and USA for gas. I am not seeing $5 anywhere in the USA...

http://www.pilottravelcenters.com/L...Complete_Pricing_List.aspx?leftTemplate=false

My only question: What is C$1.219L? Is it the equivalent of U.S. dollars? Is it something else?

 

[bhsup]

My guess would be Canadian dollars per liter. As of today, $1 CAN = $1.0476 USD.

 

[Rashiminos]

I suggest googling for a "currency converter" and a metric-to-imperial liquid volume converter.

 

[NickyJ]

My guess would be Canadian dollars per liter. As of today, $1 CAN = $1.0476 USD.

Ah, thanks.

I suggest googling for a "currency converter" and a metric-to-imperial liquid volume converter.

It helps to know what the currency is worth, though.

 

[Silurian]

My only question: What is C$1.219L? Is it the equivalent of U.S. dollars? Is it something else?

C$ is Candian dollars
1.219 is a price
L is litre