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Posted: 9/2/2005 10:42:57 AM EDT
[#1]
So....Mr. Nobel Prize For Economics....what do you propose as a solution?
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Posted: 9/2/2005 10:43:30 AM EDT
[#2]
Let the price go up.
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Posted: 9/2/2005 10:45:07 AM EDT
[#3]
Socialist BS? Dude, I saw prices jump almost a full dollar between breakfast and lunch today. That is wrong. Sorry, don't have to like it....
Plus on a local radio station here had a guy call in who supposedly works at a station said his boss told him to raise the price $0.20 "because we can".... If no one here had water, and I had a case of water bottles and was charging $25 a bottle, I'd be lynched.... |
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Posted: 9/2/2005 10:45:48 AM EDT
[#4]
Brilliant. 
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Posted: 9/2/2005 10:49:09 AM EDT
[#5]
Don’t know shit about Socialism do you. You should actually know what words mean when you use them. The government cannot control gas price why pretend they can. You want to guarantee shortages they try price caps. Been there… did not work in 1973 will not work now. |
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Posted: 9/2/2005 10:51:17 AM EDT
[#6]
What makes it wrong? You prefer artificially low prices to support the poor? That's socialism.
So he didn't phase it well. He meant "because we should".
By unprepared mobs of people used to living off the government dole. |
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Posted: 9/2/2005 10:51:27 AM EDT
[#7]
I know plenty about socialism...I didn't say anything about capping gas prices did I? I am bitching about obvious gouging, I'm not asking the gov to come save me...try some reading comprehension... |
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Posted: 9/2/2005 10:53:29 AM EDT
[#8]
The same people who were railing against the Domers making sheeple comments about getting the .gov to save them will be whining for the .gov to bail them out when gas hits $4/gal
 Price controls never work, government intervention in the free markets never works. They just cause shortages. Do you want to go without gas? |
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Posted: 9/2/2005 10:54:03 AM EDT
[#9]
I am talking about "obvious" gouging. Don't buy the gas a the gouging price and see what happens. You will either find you didn't need it that bad or the price will come down on its own.
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Posted: 9/2/2005 10:55:27 AM EDT
[#10]
Well, he's got a point. Pay a lot for gas and you use less of it, and it tends to get allocated to the most valuable things. I often do a driving tour over labor day weekend. Don't think I will this year because I don't like paying $3/gallon for gas. |
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Posted: 9/2/2005 10:56:30 AM EDT
[#11]
Dude, do not try to tell me that the prices rose almost $1.00 in 4 hours because of anything more than because it could...where did I say we should cap it. There isn't much we can do about it, but I don't have to sit back and like it.... |
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Posted: 9/2/2005 10:57:03 AM EDT
[#12]
But what about the children? |
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Posted: 9/2/2005 11:00:04 AM EDT
[#13]
BINGO This is market induced natural rationing… price goes up people use less and the supply stabilizers and there is fuel available when you need it. For those advocating government intervention if you get what you want what you will really end up with is no fuel at all. |
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Posted: 9/2/2005 11:05:03 AM EDT
[#14]
WHO THE FUCK HERE ASKED FOR GOV INTERVENTION? /Ripley on/ Did IQ's suddenly drop while I was away?/Ripley off/ There is a difference about bitching about something and not liking it, and whining that the gov should fix it. If some guys want to sit back and smile and be happy that it now costs you $80 to fill your tank...knock yourselves out. Sorry, if I'm getting gang raped and there's nothing I can do about it....well, I sure as hell don't have to enjoy it.... |
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Posted: 9/2/2005 11:06:33 AM EDT
[#15]
LOL, Well bud your assumption is the oil industry is a free market which it is anything but. Todays industry makes Standard Oil look like a childs toy and if it was any other product the government would step in for price fixing.
Yes there are shortages in parts of this country but there aren't in others yet their price is the same. The price of crude goes up $2 a 55 gallon drum and gas goes up $1 a gallon. Meanwhile the oil companies stocks soar like an Eagle and record profits recorded. Hell Exxon alone has more profit annually than the gross national product of South Korea. Oh yea free market! Free market my ass! I watched an industry spokeman debate this issue yesterday. When asked why doesn't the oil companes just give 20% of their profits till we get out of this mess, he replied "No way!" and when threatened with controls, he replied "We''ll just quit making gas till the government crumbles from public pressure." Arrogant shit. Watch how fast gas goes down when alternate fuel sources start cranking up. Twice now I've watched the oil industry drive these efforts into the ground. Yes, it is a finite energy source and yes one day we will wake up with no gas and no alternative and it will be their making. Hey they won't care for they got theres. You want to fix this thing, insist it is a free market! Tj |
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Posted: 9/2/2005 11:25:00 AM EDT
[#16]
Completely free market isn't a required assumption. Supply and demand still holds. A shortage is an indication of the wrong price level even if it is an illegal trust. Nobody called for the government to cap prices before Katrina. There's no shortage here because $3 is the right price. Our refinery is nearby and only distributes as far as Portland, OR. How much should gas cost? How much profit is OK for a station to make? We can't answer these questions because it's for the market to decide. Attempts to answer them arbitrarily screw it up. That Rembrandt SOB had a monopoly. We should force him to sell his paintings at a price we can afford. Oops, out of paintings. Well, only buy one if you really need it. |
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Posted: 9/2/2005 11:32:24 AM EDT
[#17]
Pearls before swine. 
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Posted: 9/2/2005 11:36:20 AM EDT
[#18]
I never really considered TomJefferson swine before now. I would say it is somewhat suprising. |
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Posted: 9/2/2005 11:38:51 AM EDT
[#19]
It was a joke... |
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Posted: 9/2/2005 11:40:14 AM EDT
[#20]
Hmm. He should talk with some of the (former) air traffic controllers who struck under Reagan. See how well being a jackass works when you're facing down the United States. The Government will sieze any company that tries that kind of crap. It is a threat to national security, and the company executives will find themselves in jail, or worse. The oil industry has managed to get by looting the American public. If they try it with the government, there will be no private oil industry, for a while anyway. Jim |
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Posted: 9/2/2005 11:40:26 AM EDT
[#21]
Example of gouging that can be prosecuted:
Let's say I am in New Orleans and have just made a deal with an oil company to buy 300 gallons of fuel at $3/gal. We agree, sign a contract and the oil company sends the truck. When the truck arrives, the driver - i.e. agent for the oil company - says the company will give me the gas at $6/gal or he takes the truck elsewhere. THAT is gouging. The oil company is changing the price AFTER the fact and trying to exploit the situation. I have no choice and need the gas and he has me over a barrel. NOW, if the gas station sign says $6/gal and I go and buy it, I am NOT being gouged, because I had the FREE WILL to buy or not buy and knew the price up front. As the price rises, people will be less likely to buy, causing demand pressures to ease up and conserving supplies. If the price is held artificially low, people will not conserve and supplies will be more constrained - leading to shortages and gas lines. Prices are the most efficient and effective mechanism to get people to conserve. Way more effective than .gov mandates and rationing. 1973 and 1979-80 are fine examples of the results of price controls and rationing. |
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Posted: 9/2/2005 11:49:54 AM EDT
[#22]
That isn't gouging, that is breach of contract. |
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Posted: 9/2/2005 12:01:28 PM EDT
[#23]
PM me, I'll pay for your membership. You have no idea how many times I've tried to teach these mooks how a market works. G |
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Posted: 9/2/2005 12:27:19 PM EDT
[#24]
quote]Quoted:
Not arguing your point on supply and demand but pointing out price fixing. The cost to refine oil varies company to company as well as the cost of oil. Just because oil goes up on Monday doesn't mean the oil in a tanker already paid for on the ocean cost anymore, yet all the comapanies will match each others price to wholeseller overnight. Instead of brand A selling for less since they have more at a lower cost, they all use the same price. If I did this in my industry, I'd be in jail not for gouging but for price fixing. This isn't economics, it's business and the regulations the rest of us have to follow by law with the exception of the oil industry who gets a special pass. This isn't a Bush thing and has been this way long before him. There is no free market without competition. Rembrandt didn’t have a monopoly nor was his price fixed since you could go down the street and by a VanGough. They didn’t call each other up and agree on a price either. BTW, Trusting corporations to look after you is as dumb as trusting the government to. Tj |
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Posted: 9/2/2005 12:29:07 PM EDT
[#25]
When you're done buttoning up his pants you can come back and join the thread once again. |
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Posted: 9/2/2005 12:34:03 PM EDT
[#26]
The looting going on at the pumps today makes the looting in New Orleans look minor league. I drive about 1,000 a week in my job. To think this sanctioned looting isn't going to have an effect on what you pay for everything is to live in the same dream world that the people of New Orleans lived in until a few days ago. While the oil companies will have a short term influx of capital it will happen at the cost of the rest of the economy and wil negatively impact their profits down the road too. Out of work people don't buy much.
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Posted: 9/2/2005 12:34:56 PM EDT
[#27]
I'm not poor, just cheap and lazy. |
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Posted: 9/2/2005 12:45:38 PM EDT
[#28]
Only true if you try to impose an unrealistic, grade-school model that takes only "supply" and "demand" into account. Of course, in the real world there are a multitude of factors that dictate supply and/or demand independent of one another, even in a "free market," and such a simplistic model is of zero value. (Hey, you're the one who threw out the "E" word...  ) |
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Posted: 9/2/2005 12:48:45 PM EDT
[#29]
You don't have to be so harsh, they're simply products of todays business society where vodoo economics are used to excuse a total lack of business ethics. They will be good soldiers right up until they turn 50 and then corporate America discards them like the used resource they are and then realize there is nowhere turn since they had no ethics to begin with. They can hold hands then. Tj |
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Posted: 9/2/2005 12:49:19 PM EDT
[#30]
What you are describing is price changing quickly due to new information. I'm not going to try defend all the actions of oil companies or corporations in general. But they have good information systems set up and anyone can see the signs on the street. We expect commodities to have the same price regardless of who is selling them when there is perfect information, because everyone would always buy from the cheaper one and the higher priced would sell none and bring down prices. You don't see it in the grocery stores, because it's too hard to keep track of who's selling bread at what price. It isn't economical to drive across town to save 20 cents. With gas, you know and it's worth it, so the prices are pretty close. Before someone starts in on how one station is charging more, let me say that perfect "information" essentially means free communication (including movement of goods). People in Atlanta might not know there is cheaper gas five miles away, and it will cost them a buck to get there. Some of them are already adjusting their behavior out of fear of backlash and they are running out. What is the price of gas at an empty station? |
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Posted: 9/2/2005 12:51:26 PM EDT
[#31]
WTF did I do to deserve these insults?! Suggest that economics is a reality of life? I prefer fantasy to reality too, but I don't express my fantasies on the internet. |
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Posted: 9/2/2005 12:55:12 PM EDT
[#32]
For most American gas is essential for maintaining their way of life much as electricity is or water.
You've made about the best argument I have ever read for government supply and price controls. I'd rather see a free market but hey that's me. They are making their own bed. Tj Edit: Sorry that wasn't meant as an insult but a sad glimpse into reality. Welcome to the real world Neo. |
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Posted: 9/2/2005 12:56:35 PM EDT
[#33]
WOW!
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Posted: 9/2/2005 1:10:35 PM EDT
[#34]
Sorry bud but no fantasy, the world economy is tied to the US dollar. The current increase in the price of fuel will ony feed inflation and a 30% increase in one month is startling and will have a crippling impact on the US economy. The dollar is already taking a hit overseas with rumours of massive dumping. Economist are predicting arilines fail and even Walmart is predicting major price increases as a result of the dollars decline, declining sales, and transportation cost.
This isn't something to shake ones head at and say good for the oil industry for the economic impact is mind boggling in potential dire consequences. I don't think I would be to self assured I was right in the fact the oil companies can charge what they want when nobody has a job to be able to afford to buy any. Tj |
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Posted: 9/2/2005 1:14:50 PM EDT
[#35]
All I can tell you as a trained economist is to let prices rise or fall with the market. In the very short run, 1-3 weeks, we could see $6 gas but the problem will fix itself much, much faster if the market it allowed to do what it does best. We still today suffer because of the price controls of the mid and late 1970s. Manyh wells were abandoned and new fields in the US never developed. Many of these new fields are in areas now declared "critical" by environmentalists.
Higher prices encourage conservation. I'll be biking to work and shopping for the duration. Higher prices also encourage more supply to mcome to market. There is a huge profit motive right now for refineries to get back in business--they can make a lot of money by reopening. Personally, I'd much rather have $5 gas an no lines or shortages than $3 gas and shortages. GunLvr |
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Posted: 9/2/2005 1:24:48 PM EDT
[#36]
Socialism don't work and that is exactly what you are advocating. We had government control in 1973 the result was no gas for anybody. We can repeat past mistakes or learn and drill and build nuclear plants. Prices controls don’t work, never have and that will not change because some want it to. If you want the situation to get much worse the by all means slap on government price controls. We KNOW what will happen under government control… it has happen before. |
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Posted: 9/2/2005 1:26:30 PM EDT
[#37]
The world economy is a much more complicated issue than the price of gas at a station in Atlanta. Macroeconomics, not micro. The oil companies have incentive not to crash the world, but that time may come anyway. Macro is not understood as well as micro. Suffice it to say that economies come and go. Many are to blame, but blame is futile since economics will rule they day whether we want it to or not. |
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Posted: 9/2/2005 1:27:28 PM EDT
[#38]
That's a very practical approach to supply and demand. Everything in a fee market tells us this should be the case and for one am banking by not buying any gas in the shorterm and conserving. My problem isn't in the economics as I stated but my mistrust for the industry to allow the free market to flow pricing with the economics. My mistrust is fed by record profits going on years now. |
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Posted: 9/2/2005 1:41:08 PM EDT
[#39]
Quoted:
Example of gouging that can be prosecuted: Let's say I am in New Orleans and have just made a deal with an oil company to buy 300 gallons of fuel at $3/gal. We agree, sign a contract and the oil company sends the truck. When the truck arrives, the driver - i.e. agent for the oil company - says the company will give me the gas at $6/gal or he takes the truck elsewhere. THAT is gouging. The oil company is changing the price AFTER the fact and trying to exploit the situation. I have no choice and need the gas and he has me over a barrel. NOW, if the gas station sign says $6/gal and I go and buy it, I am NOT being gouged, because I had the FREE WILL to buy or not buy and knew the price up front. [\quote] In any other industry, it would be price gouging. If the Dairy industry were to try to raise the price of milk 50% in Illinois because of a hurricane in the gulf, the .gov would be on them like ugly on an ape, but the Oil industry is special. They have been predicting $3+ a gallon for months, and now they have the perfect excuse to do it. I find it odd that Oil industry profits go up with the price of gas instead of remaining constant - [which they would do if costs were really increasing like the supposedly are]... After 9/11 the local Casey's stores raised their gas to $7.99 a gal for a day or two. The Illinois Att General went after 'em for price gouging, and won. I suppose if all of the rest of the stations had followed Caseys, it would have been OK? |
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Posted: 9/2/2005 1:43:10 PM EDT
[#40]
Bud, you need to read the post using English this time. I didn't advocate no such thing. I said argument was the best I had heard for it and distinctly said I prefer a free market. BTW, 1973 price controls didn't work because the government didn't control the supply. There was no forced rationing or production quotas. What little oil there was the oil companies refused to refine almost as a protest to price controls. As for not working, well I am hard pressed to name a country in the world where they haven't nationalalized the petroleum industry in one form or another. We're about all the free market that is left. Tj |
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Posted: 9/2/2005 1:44:09 PM EDT
[#41]
Possibly, it is dumber. At least the .gov isn't out to make a profit on you... |
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Posted: 9/2/2005 1:46:12 PM EDT
[#42]
Thanks for the levity and the laugh. You comment is really timely as I am now figuring my quarterly taxes. 
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Posted: 9/2/2005 1:49:13 PM EDT
[#43]
The government CANNOT control the supply… we import both oil and gas. We are at the mercy of the world spot markets. What you are advocating is forcing oil companies to produce oil and refine it at below world market prices… a recipe for disaster, stagnation and NO incentive for developing resources or alternatives. Europe de-nationalize their oil industries decades ago. |
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Posted: 9/2/2005 1:51:45 PM EDT
[#44]
Well, I didn't say they weren't after your money, but one can hardly describe our .gov as a profimaking concern... |
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Posted: 9/2/2005 2:01:40 PM EDT
[#45]
Price controls doesn't mean fixed pricing it means fixed profits and controled production. Its the same principle as the water company or electric company. Yes it is counerproductive to new alternatives but so is the price fixing of the current industry. Assuming OPEC is free enterprize is a laugh. We saw this in 1983 when the high price of oil opened up alternatives such as shale, coal, and methonal. It was a boom that crashed to a halt with the drop in oil in half leaving us with the S&L dissaster to bail out. Europe denationalized but they never relinquished government controls. Once again I'm not advocation price controls but do warn if the industry doesn't stop their price fixing price controls are ultimately in our future. Tj |
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Posted: 9/2/2005 2:03:11 PM EDT
[#46]
Yea I know buddy just when you write that check it sure feels like it.
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Posted: 9/2/2005 2:35:07 PM EDT
[#47]
Now I think you owe me an apology, Robo. That was uncalled for, and childish. Just because you are wrong and have made bad arguments is no reason to get angry. G |
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Posted: 9/2/2005 2:53:24 PM EDT
[#48]
Here's another gem of economic reasoning by the ARFCOM brain trust:
www.ar15.com/forums/topic.html?b=1&f=5&t=382242 G |
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Posted: 9/5/2005 11:49:04 AM EDT
[#49]
Of course they make huge profits--oil companies own and lease oil fields and own oil inventories. So when the price is high they make more. But more profits also draws more capital into the industry and leads to more oil production (and we hope more oil firms and competition). GunLvr |
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Posted: 9/5/2005 11:59:35 AM EDT
[#50]
as long as OPEC artificialy limits to production of crude then the free market doesnt exist. |
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