Anyway, those in sports cars have others to haul their tools. And yes, the US did a lot for Europe in the past. But the rest of the world did a lot for the US all the years after…..get your economics right mister, read a paper once in a while.

Anyway, those in sports cars have others to haul their tools. And yes, the US did a lot for Europe in the past. But the rest of the world did a lot for the US all the years after…..get your economics right mister, read a paper once in a while.

Hate those compariasons. When I am drinking 10-gallons of water a day, then we can start a fair compariason. Tired of that argument!!

If you think you can manipulate the price of gasoline with your tirades, then you are … pretty damn funny.

The only thing worse than a gas guzzler is a pompous intellectual. Gimme a Hummer driver any day.

You are just 280 million people, but you use more than 30% or more of all fossil fuels and you have more than 25% of the worlds air pollution on your account so

HEY, WHAT IS WRONG PAYING A BIT MORE FOR YOUR FUEL, STOP MAKING THESE INSANE SUV’S, REBUILT THE ENERGY INDUSTRY AND WHAT SO MORE IS IN AN OBSOLETE STATE.

In Europe we pay $1,00 for a litre, so we subsidise your fuel, the Japanese and Chinese buy your treasury bonds by the bulk, otherwise the deficits of the US would even be worse.

SO STOP COMPLAINING OK.

An ad hominem argument, also known as argumentum ad hominem (Latin, literally “argument against the person”) or attacking the messenger [or shooting the messenger], involves replying to an argument or assertion by attacking the person presenting the argument or assertion rather than the argument itself.

in a debate or in a logic class, you just made the simplest / fastest discrediting logical attack available.

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what i find interesting is that there are a lot of people that complain about price gouging whereas there true economists say that there is literally no such thing as a price gouge but rather an equilibrium price.

Also note that in my argument, I mentioned the some inelastic demand of gasoline (people have to drive to work) but they don’t have to drive gas guzzlers. i realize that it’s no fun to drive and pay $55 (which i just did) to fill an Explorer (V6 — thx Ford) but I choose it b/c i like the room and the utility. we have a i-5 turbo v50 that gets 32mpg and the pain isnt nearly there… it’s my choice and they’re the supplier.

and btw, food more than subsistence nourishment is a luxury… I eat $50 steaks and about $45 dollars of it is pure luxury.

http://www.fairtax.org

. Lets say I own a widget factory. Lets call it British Widgets to keep it simple.

My widget factory has several expenses like labor, energy, steel etc. The largest expense by far is however the steel I use to make the widgets. It costs me a dollar to make each widget and the steel costs me 50 cents. I charge two dollars each for my widgets cause I am a greety bastard. =)

So the cost of my steel starts going up to 60 cents per widget then 70 cents. My first thought since I am a greedy bastard is to raise the price of my widgets by the same amount but I do not want to piss off my customers so I just absorb that extra 20 cents per widget. I do this for the first few weeks and then I have to raise my prices because my steel costs have gone up to 80 cents per widget. I raise my prices to match selling my widgets for $2.80. The demand for widgets is strong though and steel prices keep going up so to keep pace I have to raise my prices to $3.00. My revenue is going up steadily but my profits are staying the same at about a dollar per widget. Now I might bump my price a little to capture a small amount of extra profit but it is going to be marginal profit. Instead of a dollar profit per widget I might try to capture a $1.10 or $1.15.

That is how I would expect things at the oil company to work. Obviously they are going to have to raise prices and they will probably have to raise retail prices slightly more percentage wise then wholesale prices in order to cover extra expenses.

You could however lobby your local government to boost funding for public transit, sidewalks, bike lanes, and give people good cheap alternatives to their car. You could also ask your government to spend a little time doing a little city planning in order to build proper infrastructure to ensure that people don’t need 2-3 cars per family.

And this gets to the point – the government should intrude on our lives as little as they possibly can. However, there are some areas they MUST intrude on to make existance possible. Things that people NEED in their life are not subject to the same “free market” rules as things people WANT (which should be ruled by the “free market”). The b-schoolers here can try to dispute that, but the fact is that our gov’t has already acknowledged that energy is NOT something that can be left to “free market” forces and that they must intrude. If it were truly safe to let energy be ruled by “free market”, we would NOT be involved constantly in middle east fighting, and energy subsidies would not be given out to big oil/energy.

To all of you complaining about big oil, what steps in your personal live have you taken to be less reliant on it. If you have done nothing or very little, than you have nobody to blame for your dependancy other than yourself.

Far more important though is the sacrifice of thousands of lives and billions of dollars by our military to support actions in areas (middle east, central america, etc) that we would have NO interest in if oil/energy weren’t in those areas. People are dying every day so that we can have “cheap” energy.

Free market? Please…. put down the Wall Street Journal and educate yourself to reality.

The Arab countries only have 2 resources in great quantity: oil and sand. And how much do you want to bet that they aren’t selling large quantities of sand? If you cut off the oil supply, you cut off the flow of terrorism by limiting their funding.

Jon.

“your products raw materiels get to market,by the tax payers to keep your pipiline stable and product flowing through.not mention the sacrifice of our soldiers there family and loved ones. and you want a news flash dave some of them have been crippled and mamed others even kille”

Not singling out any particular event (Iraq fiasco), how much do you think our gas would cost right now if we as American’s didn’t make these sacrafices? Do you think it would cost less or more?

“we have the highest oil prices EVER recorded”

Not when you adjust for inflation. You must be young or just forgot the late 70′s / early 80′s. Yes, both Bushes have seen spikes in oil prices when they are/were in office, but geo-political events are clearly the cause for those spikes. You know, war and instability in the middle east. You can make a case that W caused our current problem, but Sr. didn’t invade Kuwait in the early 90′s. You could make a compelling case for your observations, but your rant makes you come across like you wear a tin foil hat.

It’s obvious the price-gouging that’s been taking place the last couple years is directly profiting oil companies in a very big way; why isn’t that reason enough to take action? Because putting $40-$80 in your truck every week isn’t a big deal for the people with the power to do something about it?