Where's the outrage?

You're damn straight. I think you are the only one on this thread who understands how badly the automobile industry raped this country. The youngsters or the ones with no sense of history whine "but I have to own a car where I live." Those who know better realize it's the automobile industry that made it that way. That's where the outrage should be directed.

Recommended reading:
Asphalt Nation
The Geography of Nowhere

 

If I hadn't already hit the "Ignore JackS" button - hard - I'd be flattered. Good book suggestions, too.

 

Sadly, no IB from me as I completely agree.

 

Rusty called it a few posts up and it's one of the larger reasons, I think, that we are having this problem. The oil companies are constantly trying to get us used to prices. When there is a "reason" for prices to go up, they go up at a much larger rate than they ever come back down. I have seen one station raise prices by a nickel a gallon twice in one day. I would be willing to bet that their costs did not change twice that day. And they never, never, come down at the same rate that they went up.

I Think a free market would work if the oil companies were not artificially inflating prices. Ever wonder why all the gas stations in your town are generally within a nickel of each other price wise? And why does no station ever have a sale? If Lays wants me to buy their chips instead of the competition, they might put them on sale to get me to try them.

Gas stations never do that.

 

And its not like gas has gotten a whole lot better. It's the same thing we've been putting in our tanks for 20 years. If anything the price should be going down as efficiencies are found in getting the product to market. Now if they had a gas that gave cars better mileage that would be something.

 

I'm tired of hearing about how high the prices are in Europe, so we should shut up about it. The difference is most of their countries are the size of Delaware. Driving within England isn't the same as driving within the U.S.

 

Al Gore doing much walking or bike-riding?

 

Isn't Delaware the size of Delaware?

And isn't it still in the United Sates?

 

I find this thread amusing, but maybe that's just because I've never had to pay over $3.00 a gallon. (Must be the joys of being able to reach out and touch an oil pipeline)

But let's play devi's advocate for fun.

Gas stations in your town are always within a nickle of eachother because they compete against eachother. If there's one that has vastly higher prices, it will get almost no buisness. The only reason there is change at all in terms of prices between local gas stations is location, location, location. A station near higher traffic areas in your town can charge more than one in lower-traffic spots. And those stations might just be across the corner from eachother.

Why price never goes down, as much as it seems to go up? (it does go down at times folks. Let's remeber that. Until this month, prices were pretty darn good, at least here.)
Well, don't throw supply and demand out the window just yet. It just turns out the invisable hand can butt f@#$ you pretty good. The bitch of gas is that its demand is very, very very inelastic. Not perfectly, by any stretch of the imagination, but much more so than say your demand for say, Pepsi. You're still going to buy at a minimum, X gallons of gasoline a year at virtually any price as long as it doesn't get extreem ($20 a gallon or something). That's just the nature of the oil market, and so what if a company, which owes it to its share holders to be profit-maximizing (You shouldn't invest in a company that's not), uses it to its advantage. Pepsi Co. would too if they lived in such a market.
(In case you can't tell, I'm too lazy to quote more than one person, although this post deals with more than one comment.)

What else was said? Oh, yeah, that demand wasn't going up. Tell that to 2 billion industrializing Chineese. China, for better or for worse, is going to have the biggest impact on the world of any country over the next 50 years, this is just an example. The gas we aren't buying, oil companies are more than happy to sell to the Cineese, who are finding a new love for the automobile. Oh, yeah, and all that pesky power they need too. This is a market that's just starting to be tapped. And since the price for oil isn't developed in the conventional sense, but is set via the futures market, the prospect of an industrialized China, and, eventually, India, should keep driving up gas prices for years to come.
This of course sucks worse than a baby with a vacuume cleaner near a black hole, but still, such is life.

Anyway, this is getting long. I'll leave you with this:

"Separately at a House hearing, lawmakers were told that crude oil prices have played a relatively minor role in the sharp increase in gasoline costs over the last three months, putting the blame on lower gasoline imports, refinery outages and continuing growth in demand from motorists."
Take that for whatever its worth.

Anyway, enjoy ripping into this!

 

I'm just not sure that electricity and water are the best analogy because those just by the nature of the beast lend themselves to natural monopolies, while the same isn't true for gasoline.

(On a side note, the tax breaks given to oil companies are ridiculous. Now THAT messes with the free markets!)