I'm SO glad that I only take public transportation to get around...yeesh...
It's the tree huggers who keep calling for restrictions and restrictions. Libs want us to stop burning fossil fuels, but bitch when supply goes down.
Won't let us drill in AK because you'll kill a few acres of trees...do you have ANY IDEA how huge AK is??? Won't let us build more refineries...keep putting additives in the fuel to make our vehicles less efficient...
And they are celebrating because this mess is giving them political points. It's the ultimate victory--cause the problem and give your opponent the blame.
As for Exxon's profits, they provide a product and a service, and we pay for it. If you don't want them to get as big a profit, buy from a BP or a Gulf or something instead. Our free market is great. Before you criticize someone else for making money, consider this:
You are CEO of a company for decades and decades. You saw the gas shortages in the 70s during the Carter administration. You made it out of that situation. You have built your company. It has consumed your time and your energy, and now you are finally able to retire. Some people are jealous of the wealth that you have ammassed and demand a congressional investigation. But these people are the same people who buy your product!!
it's BS. More than half of what you pay is determined by taxes and investors. Learn about the industry before you hop on the band wagon lead by Good Morning America and other freeloading Libs.
Won't let us drill in AK because you'll kill a few acres of trees...do you have ANY IDEA how huge AK is??? Won't let us build more refineries...keep putting additives in the fuel to make our vehicles less efficient...
And they are celebrating because this mess is giving them political points. It's the ultimate victory--cause the problem and give your opponent the blame.
As for Exxon's profits, they provide a product and a service, and we pay for it. If you don't want them to get as big a profit, buy from a BP or a Gulf or something instead. Our free market is great. Before you criticize someone else for making money, consider this:
You are CEO of a company for decades and decades. You saw the gas shortages in the 70s during the Carter administration. You made it out of that situation. You have built your company. It has consumed your time and your energy, and now you are finally able to retire. Some people are jealous of the wealth that you have ammassed and demand a congressional investigation. But these people are the same people who buy your product!!
it's BS. More than half of what you pay is determined by taxes and investors. Learn about the industry before you hop on the band wagon lead by Good Morning America and other freeloading Libs.
just drop some supplies and they'll be happy
Whoa whoa whoa. After such well thought out posts in other threads, you come with this? Clearly this is not a clash of liberals and conservatives. Both sides are getting screwed over. Everyone bitches when supply goes down, not just liberals. And had we built or worked toward building generators using renewable resources for the last 20 years like so many people across the board wanted, we wouldn't be in this situation where we are paying ridiculously for gas.G3|Genius wrote:
It's the tree huggers who keep calling for restrictions and restrictions. Libs want us to stop burning fossil fuels, but bitch when supply goes down.
Won't let us drill in AK because you'll kill a few acres of trees...do you have ANY IDEA how huge AK is??? Won't let us build more refineries...keep putting additives in the fuel to make our vehicles less efficient...
And they are celebrating because this mess is giving them political points. It's the ultimate victory--cause the problem and give your opponent the blame.
As for Exxon's profits, they provide a product and a service, and we pay for it. If you don't want them to get as big a profit, buy from a BP or a Gulf or something instead. Our free market is great. Before you criticize someone else for making money, consider this:
You are CEO of a company for decades and decades. You saw the gas shortages in the 70s during the Carter administration. You made it out of that situation. You have built your company. It has consumed your time and your energy, and now you are finally able to retire. Some people are jealous of the wealth that you have ammassed and demand a congressional investigation. But these people are the same people who buy your product!!
it's BS. More than half of what you pay is determined by taxes and investors. Learn about the industry before you hop on the band wagon lead by Good Morning America and other freeloading Libs.
I like your generalization about Alaska too- Alaska is huge, what's a few acres of trees? Because clearly a few acres of trees would be the only impact drilling would have on the Alaskan environment. I do agree that we need more refineries here though, that is a big deal.
I hardly believe that hippies, liberals, and tree huggers alone caused the problem of the US (and world for that matter) relying on fossil fuels for everything.
As for Exxon's ridiculous profits, you are right in one regard...they provide a service, a commodity, and can charge whatever they want for it if people are willing to pay. However, if your company is making a world record profit, would you still dip into your governments' coffers to get tax breaks and other benefits that clearly your company has the financial means to pay for/absorb? How "free" is our market?
It is very clear that you despise liberals, hippies, and treehuggers. Which is fine, just don't put blame on them for a problem that everyone created.
Edited for spelling
Last edited by KEN-JENNINGS (2006-05-02 10:06:50)
I don't know if anyone's said this yet, but the US has a completely shit public transportation system compared to other countries. If you don't live in a major city, you basically HAVE to drive everywhere. Other countries don't have as much of a dependence on gas, so their governments don't subsidize it as much.elite wrote:
british prices are TWICE as much as the usa, so dot moan, we are the ones gettin all the bullshit
I completly feel that less fossil fuels should be used and people like the americans and euros should invest more in renewable technology.
Oil is a commodity. It's price is not determined by the companies that sell it, it is determined on the futures market by investors and speculators. Oil companies reap a massive profit when the price of oil is less than that predicted by the speculators, but they do not set the price themselves.
The US government doesn't subsidise Oil costs. Oil is cheaper here (as compared with most European countries) because their fuel use taxes are much higher. Having said that, even in the US, up to 1/3 of the price of fuel is tax, so you can imagine how much of it is tax in Europe.skratch-x wrote:
Other countries don't have as much of a dependence on gas, so their governments don't subsidize it as much.
Or we could all take M1A2s, FAVs etc to work and then we won't have to refuel at allR_I_P_6 wrote:
just drop some supplies and they'll be happy
I read this earlier today in an exerpt from a book by John Stossel and thought it was fitting to this discussion:
Don't get me wrong. I get just as irritated as anybody with the current cost of gasoline in the US. But if you look at gas prices since the Oil Embargo, it hasn't gone up much until recently, and is still cheap compared to inflation.
http://www.abcnews.go.com/2020/Stossel/ … amp;page=2MYTH: Gas prices are going through the roof.
TRUTH: Gasoline is a bargain.
The media periodically get upset about "record" gas prices.
"The price of gasoline has risen again to a record high!" said one newscaster in 2004. "The high prices are making it harder for some to keep their heads above water," said another.
Drivers assume what they see at the pump confirms what they've heard on TV. One told me the prices are "scary." A woman said gas was "going up and up and up, and it's the most expensive it's ever been." And she was on a bike.
The media were saying that gas prices were at record highs for one simple, simple-minded reason: They are economically illiterate, so they didn't account for inflation. That makes the numbers look bigger than the costs actually are. Such reporting is silly. Not adjusting for inflation would mean that the movies Meet the Fockers and Rush Hour 2 outgrossed Gone With the Wind.
It's not as if the reporters would have to work at doing calculations to figure this out. Not only are there instant inflation calculators on the Web, but the U.S. Department of Energy accounts for inflation in its annual report of gas prices. At the time I'm writing this, the average price of gasoline in the U.S. is $2.26 per gallon. Once you account for inflation, that means gas today is sixty-seven cents a gallon cheaper than it was in 1922, and sixty-nine cents cheaper than in 1981. True, after Hurricane Katrina the price did reach an average of $2.87 per gallon-but that still is lower than the record average set in March 1981 of $3.12 per gallon.
By failing to account for inflation, the media have some Americans so alarmed that they can't think straight. "What costs more," I asked customers at a gas station, "gasoline or bottled water?" The answer I got from almost everyone was gasoline. At that very gas station, water was for sale at $1.29 for a twenty-four-ounce bottle. That's $6.88 per gallon, three times what the station charged for gasoline. It gets sillier. I asked gas station customers, "What costs more, gasoline or ice cream?" Again, most people said gasoline cost more. But at $3.39 a pint, "premium" ice cream costs about $27.00 a gallon.
We should marvel at how cheap gasoline is-what a bargain we get from oil companies. After all, it's easy to bottle water, but think about what it takes to produce and deliver gasoline. Oil has to be sucked out of the ground, sometimes from deep beneath an ocean. To get to the oil, the drills often have to bend and dig sideways through as much as five miles of earth. What they find then has to be delivered through long pipelines or shipped in monstrously expensive ships, then converted into three or more different formulas of gasoline and transported in trucks that cost more than $100,000 each. Then your local gas station must spend a fortune on safety devices to make sure you don't blow yourself up. At $2.26 a gallon (about forty-six cents of which goes to taxes), gas is miraculously cheap! But what we heard from the clueless media was, "Gas prices are at record highs!"
Don't get me wrong. I get just as irritated as anybody with the current cost of gasoline in the US. But if you look at gas prices since the Oil Embargo, it hasn't gone up much until recently, and is still cheap compared to inflation.
Last edited by atlvolunteer (2006-05-02 14:32:51)
yes, inflation is a factor, however to compare gas/oil prices to water is ignorant in my opinion. Maybe compare how much they have gone up adjusted to inflation, to see how much the price of water has gone up vs. gas, but once you start comparing two commodities that are priced differently for good reason, mixed and misleading statistics arise. There are too many different factors that go into the production/distribution/consumption of water:oil or ice cream:oil or coffee:oil to compare the two.
Last edited by KEN-JENNINGS (2006-05-02 15:01:19)
Skimmed through but isn't 3 litre's a gallon?
3.8 for a US gallon, 4.5 for a UK one.cpt.fass1 wrote:
Skimmed through but isn't 3 litre's a gallon?
http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=define%3Agallon
Ahhh all I remember is going to Canada once(they surrender and we came to an agreement), and thinking damn gas is so cheap here then I filled my tank and it was like 3 times as much. Thanks unoriginal
"Knowledge is power"
"Knowledge is power"
If this is True a lot of People should STFU and Stay SU.Agent_Dung_Bomb wrote:
Unfortunately the price issues just aren't in the US. With India, and especially China, becoming far more industrialized, they are creating massive demand for oil. When demand is high and supplies are low or limited, prices go up. Let's not forget that unrest in the Middle East has a tendency to do this as well, such as the recent rangling with Iran over their nuclear program.
Also realize that there hasn't been a new oil refinery built in the US for ~15 years. As such we lack refining capacity and must import much of our gasoline already refined, which adds cost to the final product at the pumps.