$2.29 a Gallon!!

[Brucelee]

Blah, blah blah.

I am still waiting.

How much SHOULD gas cost and how did you arrive at that number?

[Brucelee]

"Desperate times call for bla bla bla"

Whose desperate, I am not!

I love free markets. If I want to drive a Prius and save on gas costs, I can.

If I want to drive a Hummer and pay to fill that up, I can.

As gas prices rise, more Prius' tend to be sold, less Hummers.

Demand diminishes, supply stays the same, prices drop.

The reverse is try also.

Let the good times roll.

Unless you want to rail against the MAN.

[Perfectlap]

well the rest of us are desperate!
The family of four that now has to pay 100% more to heat their already expensive to heat home and fill up their gas tanks now and have less money to kick into their non-existent 401K and junior's college fund. Which therby forces them to shop at Walmart with what is left which leads to them relying more heavily on "made in China" which sends another's family's job to Beijing and they're now on umeployment/public assistance.

Meanwhile the top dogs of the oil and gas industry are picking out the latest offerings from Maranello. Ha!!

Make no mistake we are in the midst of an energy crisis that has lead us into a war that has severely undermined our militaries reputations and we're all going to take a bite out of that S#*T sandwich to pay for it all.

Gas should cost what you are willing to pay for it. I'm willing to pay $1 per gallon.
Guess what? Aint nobody selling it for a buck so my BoxsterS sits collecting dust.
Guess I'm going to have to pay $2.80 for 93. Whatever they feel like charging we have to pay! It's like saying how much do you want pay for that Liver transplant?
It doesn't matter what you want to pay whatever they charge you have to shell out. Or you can die a slow painful death. If the Hospital decide to triple the cost even though their costs aren't rising proportional to the increase it doesn't matter. You still have to pay because you can't get your Barber to do the liver transplant (well not anymore)!
Add to that manipulation of the market by speculators (much like the currency markets going haywire because the Treasury Secretary catches a cold) and BINGO allot of people have made a ton of dough betting on futures while we are cursing the gas pump at the Exxon.
p.s. most individual investors lose money buying unleaded gas futures.

[Brucelee]

"Gas should cost what you are willing to pay for it. I'm willing to pay $1 per gallon"

I love this statement. In your line of work, you should get paid what you think you deserve.

Do you?

Likely not! What you are paid is that point where the compensation is equal to what you are willling to TAKE and what one employer is willing to PAY.

That would be supply and demand meeting at an agreed upon rate of pay.

How much is your boxster worth, same thing!

Your thoughts on how much you want to pay are irrelevant to Porsche. That number is always very low. I want my Boxster for 15 grand please!

However, in the aggregate, what millions of folks are willing to pay IS relevant to Porsche.

So it is with gas. If folks are NOT willing to pay $3.50 per gallon IN THE AGGREGATE, the price will fall.

How do they do that? They simply buy less of that $3.50 price. That HAS been happening recentlyh and will continue to happen as folks search out substitutes.

Scooters, small cars, motorcycles, driving less etc.

That is the way it works now.

Or, you can have government controlled pricing.

Want to try that for a while?

I don't think so.

BTW-We Americans have the highest standard of living on average in the world. Why are you trying to get me to cry for our economic plight? We have the lowest gas prices and yet you whine about it because they are higher than they were.

Grow up, commodity prices change often and more often than other goods and services.

Deal with it.

[Brucelee]

"Meanwhile the top dogs of the oil and gas industry are picking out the latest offerings from Maranello. Ha!!"

Sounds to me like you simply jealous!

[bnorman]

All this reminds me of a bumper sticker I saw in the '70s when we had to have odd/even rationing because of price controls on fuel. It read: "Eat More Beans. . .America Needs the Gas".

[deliriousga]

Originally Posted by bnorman

All this reminds me of a bumper sticker I saw in the '70s when we had to have odd/even rationing because of price controls on fuel. It read: "Eat More Beans. . .America Needs the Gas".

ROFLMAO!! Thanks for laugh, and thanks to MN Boxster for quoting actual figures. Boy, I want to be Mr. Rove. He seems to be able to rule the entire world with no end in site. But then they would assign 3 more black helicopters to monitor my daily commute and calls to aunt Suzi.

No use arguing with closed minds that refuse to even account for the normal market forces that have the greatest effects. It's like saying two opposing fronts had nothing to do with a tornado that destroying refinery. It was Almighty God Rove who called it out of the sky so his buddies could raise the price of gas and make milliions.

I'm outta here.

[Perfectlap]

Originally Posted by Brucelee

"Meanwhile the top dogs of the oil and gas industry are picking out the latest offerings from Maranello. Ha!!"

Sounds to me like you simply jealous!

Ha! I now plenty of folks who have more money than I could ever begin to know what do with and I have never wished I was in there place. That amount money seems to only have complicated their lives.

There's nothing wrong with getting paid, it's the American way. People just seem indiferent to how so many our enriching themselves at the cost of our future healthcare, clean air/water, fiscal outlook and manufacturing base. It used to be that these folks got rich but everone in AMERICA benefited in the long term and the government rewarded that way of doing business. Nowadays those special interests get rich and the benefits go overseas while messing up everything at home (while our current government makes it as easy as possible). and who the hell is going to pay for all these debts when the clowns in Washington have departed this Earth??

anyhoo, I've previously worked with/in federal law enforcement/investigation both in public and private sector capacities. I've encountered/befriended all manner of prosecutors. My doubts about our ability/desire to go after corporate cheats in all sectors of trade and finance is not limited to what I read on judicial watch or see on tv. I've heard plenty straight from the horses mouth. The list of one time idealists fighting for the little guy turned-fed-up-cynic, is a very very long one. "we were trained to go after corruption/collusion and then told to back off and concentrate on something else" is a refrain I've heard too many times.


anyhoo...Karl Rove secretely running the world ? That guy couldn't lead a conspiracy out of paper brown bag. The gang that couldn't shoot straight. I laugh when I hear they are responsible for orchestrating this and that. The nutters give them too much credit. Karl Rove and his bunch are merely door mats for coporate wealth. Rove's Pretty good at getting out the vote though, I'll give him that.

[Brucelee]

Perfect,

You can't have it both ways.

One minute, it is a massive govt/industry conspiracy that has our prices moving.

The next minute, the govt can't find its way out of a paper bag.

Ditto, the spot traders. One minute they are pulling all the strings, the next, well, what's a 6B loss?

The fact is, the prices go up, and then they go down.

It is the history of commodities, throughout all time.

The funny thing is that G. Soros, that great liberal windbag, rode the commodities gravy train to Billionaire status.

Now, once he got there, well, time to have the REST of us fund the govt to do everything.

What a hypocrite! He almost took down the British economy while getting rich but now he has a heart!

PS-The bottom of the US economic scale still has it better than it ever did and better than most of the rest of the world.

Not bad for paying no taxes, huh?


PPS-the lastest data on taxes is that the bottom 50% of wage earners pay on average 3% their income in federal taxes. That is down 50% from 2000, when they paid just 4.5%.

This does not count refundable tax credits, which makes the number even lower.

Makes you proud to be an American.