gasoline prices

[Dead Man Flying]

I say we make the rest of the world drive horse-drawn carriages while we in America reap the benefits of 50 cent/gallon gasoline.  

-- Todd/Leviathn

[Ripsnort]

Originally posted by Dead Man Flying
I say we make the rest of the world drive horse-drawn carriages while we in America reap the benefits of 50 cent/gallon gasoline.  

-- Todd/Leviathn

[beet1e]

Originally posted by lazs2
especially since you have no arguement?

You wouldn't recognise one if it hit you on the nose. Heck, you can't even spell it. Stick to inventing skewed figures about homicide stats. You're good at that.

[beet1e]

.

[Vipermann]

Just for the record my Touareg gets almost 30mpg on the highway thank you very much.

[Maverick]

My Volvo gets approximately 9 MPG but that is while towing our 9.25 ton house behind it and with my 90 BMW K75 RT motorcycle on the back of the tow vehicle. The bike does get a bit over 40 MPG and is much more fun to drive anyhow.

As to how much we drove this year. We drove frm AZ. up to Kansas then NE to Indianna, S to Tennessee, E again to North Carolina to see Seagoon and back to Tennessee for a bit. After a While we were back in Indiana, Wisconsin, Indiana, Missouri (Branson for a couple weeks), back to Kansas for a conferance, W to Colorado Springs to see Bodhi then S to New Mexico and back to AZ. for Dr. and dentist visists as well as spend some time with the kid.

We covered about 17,000 miles as opposed to the 23,000 + last year. This year, who knows. We'll decide where to go as we get closer to the springtime. Right now we are thinking of seeing the DC area after visiting grand kids in TX. and LA. then traveling across the Northern states to Washington, Oregon, maybe a bit of Kalifornia before heading East via Idaho, Wyoming to Kansas for an annual conferance then SW back to AZ. for part of the winter.

It sounds like a lot but when we figured out how much the wife and I drove a year combined back and forth to work as well as all the other driving daily life required we realized we are using less fuel to criss cross the US in our nomadic lifestyle. This way we are also having a grand time seeing the country meeting new folks and some of the people on the BBS to boot. Each trip brings us to new people I have only "spoken to" via this BBS. It's a neat way to get faces associated with board handles and find that they aren't really very different folks at all. We look forward to meeting more of ya's. At least those who can be reached via roads. I refuse to drive across the atlantic or Pacific!:cool:

[BigGun]

I for one Need a big SUV.

[lazs2]

so what is your arguement beet?

should we artifically raise prices here so that demand will go down and you will pay less?

It is stupid...if gas was cheaper over there you govenment would just tax it more...  admit it... you are screwed because you think it is a good idea to have big government...  when it fails... you blame everyone else.

lazs

[FuBaR]

motorcycles rule.

[Charon]

I was thinking that maybe it had somethig to do with this

NJ Sues Oil Companies Over Post-Katrina Gas-Price Gouging
Hess, Motiva Shell, Sunoco and Independents Are Targets

Not a single NJ suit has to do with actual price gouging. The suits were filed primarily because it's illegal to change prices more than once a day in NJ, and some marketers did that (to reflect massively increased wholesale prices changing multiple times per day). The alternative was to close their doors for 24 hours when they found the price of the gasoline they had to buy in the afternoon was 50 cents more than when they checked it and set the day's prices in the morning. Some did close their doors - tough luck of you needed gas. There were also an assortment of bookeeping type errors encountered in the “investigation” that you would expect to find with such a heavily regulated industry with labor quality issues. Yet, for some reason, “gouging” is heavily used in their materials This is a political issue in NJ, a way to get the angry villagers to open the door to the Gov.s office.

I asked the point AG type on the issue (Kimberly Ricketts) via e-mail through her PR handler if she would rather have stations shut down for 24 hours rather than sell gas at a loss, meaning that you may not find gas on your way to work that morning. She refused to comment this common sense question citing "ongoing lawsuits" even though there is a mountain of pro AG press on the issue. Again, not a single suit was related to selling gasoline at a price that would be considered excessive compared to the wholesale price. Nada, none.

At some points it even interfered with the state's below-cost selling laws (can't sell gas below your cost, can’t change price to reflet increased costs...) Rickett’s response was to waive the below cost law so retailers could sell all the gasoline they wanted to at a loss... how swell!

I actually listened to two hours of NJ Assembly committee meeting on the issue. Expert after expert, including consumer advocates and state experts repeatedly said... don't blame the retailer. It wasn't something the grandstanders wanted to hear. You can’t pad your poll ratings by suing a hurricane or two. You can find the meeting on web audio (a special treat) and here is the PDF transcript: http://www.njleg.state.nj.us/legislativepub/pubhear/atr091505.pdf

Gasoline prices are dropping because supply is coming back into the market as refiners continue to come online and the massive imports of gasoline from Sept. onward (that come when prices encourage imports) that leveled the market pretty quickly even days after the destruction.

Charon

[lazs2]

beet said (after he claimed that he was being picked on for being a socialist big government guy)

"is that 60 potential buyers of 12mpg guzzlers like the one Mrs. Storch now drives were dissuaded from buying one when faced with an increase in running costs of $540 per annum, and that's just at the ONE dealership where storch goes. $540, dare I say it, is a pittance - and a price worth paying to see a dramatic reduction in America's over dependence on oil. So if said gas guzzlers were to be surcharged by a fuel wastage penalty of $540 on the sticker price, I'd say that was a fair deal "

So beets solution is a $540 tax to stop people from making choices as a free individual... said tax would go to....... Ta da..... the government to maybe start yet another agency.

Beet has been a socialist so long that he doesn't even recognize it in himself anymore.   He points to a commie and says... "I'm not as bad as that guy"

lazs

[storch]

back in the late '80s there was a gas guzzler tax attached to the 450/500 series mercedes benz.  I don't recall it being applied to any other vehicles.  is that what you would like to see beet1e?  $2.19/gal here today.

[beet1e]

Originally posted by storch
back in the late '80s there was a gas guzzler tax attached to the 450/500 series mercedes benz.  I don't recall it being applied to any other vehicles.  is that what you would like to see beet1e?  $2.19/gal here today.

Storch, not only that, but car firms selling cars in the US were penalised if they did not sell a quota of cars which got gas mileage which was acceptable to the government of the day. In fact the British car firm Jaguar was fined $6m for not producing a sufficient proportion of "economy cars". A Jaguar spokeman at that time explained that Jaguar produced only luxury cars with relatively large engines, and that it was cheaper for Jaguar to pay the fine than to tarnish its image by producing 3-door hatchbacks. So no, Mercedes Benz was not the only car company in the US to be penalised by a campaign against gas guzzlers.

So beets solution is a $540 tax to stop people from making choices as a free individual...

No Lazs, I don't see that a customer having spent $42K on a car would be "stopped" from choosing that car by an extra $540 fuel wastage surcharge, just as they're not stopped by registration costs in states like California where the cost of registering a vehicle is linked to its value. Note that any such fuel wastage surcharge would not be a compulsory "tax" and, were it to be implemented, could be avoided by not purchasing a wasteful vehicle. But... the drop in demand for fuel as a result of tens of thousands of motorists nationwide turning away from 12mpg gas guzzlers could mean that the price drops in such a way that the average motorist realises savings of.... $540/annum. Don't agree with the figures? Maybe you could come up with your own, using your expertise in the newly discovered mathematical field of Lazsmatics, in which any Arab numeral in the range 0-9 is interchangeable with any other, such that 1.7 = 2.0 =2.5 = 3.3 = 5.5, as your sums have shown in certain other threads on this board. As for understanding market trends, we have Lazsonomics, in which the traditional economic indicators such as the Dow Jones index are replaced by the only two economic factors that matter in this field of study: The price of gas, and the cost of a random basket of goods at WalMart.

How do you know that using a lot of gas is not a good thing? conserving only lets the oil companies continue as they have been... let's use the stuff up or force em to find more and get on with it.

Yes, I can see that in the mind of the guy who pioneered the fields of Lazsmatics and Lazsonomics, this would make perfect sense.

[NUKE]

I agree with Laz. Gas is available, so buy it and use it in what ever manner you wish, just like anything else offered for sale. It's cheap over here becaue we don't tax the hell out of it.

Why do we need to save gas again? Because it will run out some day? If we save gas, it will still run out one day.
When the oil supplies begin to run out, there will be incentive to have an alternate to it by then.

Until then, let's just gobble it all up while it's cheap. It helps the economy to have cheap gas. To over tax gas is just stupid.

[NUKE]

took this pic at the pump yesterday. $2.27 a gallon. Note the inspiring message left by some brainy type, "rats" underlined.