How much did you pay for gas today?

About 1.90 in my neck of the woods.

 

A mild threadjack but I thought this was the place for it. What do you think of this idea from Charles Krauthammmer (a conservative BTW):

"Good grief. I can give you (20 percent reduction in gas consumption in 2 years): Tax gas to $4 a gallon. With oil prices having fallen to $55 a barrel, now is the time. The effect of a gas-tax hike will be seen in less than two years, and you don't even have to go back to the 1970s and the subsequent radical reduction in consumption to see how. Just look at last summer. Gas prices spike to $3 -- with the premium going to Vladimir Putin, Hugo Chávez and assorted sheiks rather than the U.S. Treasury -- and, presto, SUV sales plunge, the Prius is cool and car ads once again begin featuring miles-per-gallon ratings.

No regulator, no fuel-efficiency standards, no presidential exhortations, no grand experiments with switch grass. Raise the price, and people change their habits. It's the essence of capitalism."

I actually would be in favor of it. Of course, it takes me less than 10 minutes to get to work.

 

Two problems:

1. Hybrids and alt-fuels didn't suddenly become popular the moment Katrina landed in the swamps of Grand Isle. Hybrids have been hot for some time now, even when gas prices were routinely sub-$2.00/gal nationally. Sure, the dramatic spikes in gas prices the last two summers thrust even more spotlight on them, but other than the acceleration of the burst of the SUV bubble (and it would have happened, because CUVs are more accessable and cooler-looking to most would-be SUV buyers, even removing the MPG edge), a lot of what we're seeing would have happened anyway.

2. The essence of capitalism is NOT the federal government unilaterally sticking customers with a $2/gal tax just because it can. The essence of capitalism is what we're seeing now: companies angling to get a handle on the alt-fuel winner, be it E-80, hydrogen or dark matter excreted from Nibbler's ass. Plus it ignores that a doubling of gas prices absolutely fucks the lower-middle class the worst directly and has immesurable negative impacts indirectly, when the cost of shipping goods goes through the roof.

 

A week ago today, I paid $1.95 per gallon. Today I paid $2.15, an 8-cent jump from yesterday.

 

Gas has gone from $1.98 to $2.25 in the last 10 days here.

Fucking crooks.

 

So gas prices take another big jump on the same day Exxon's $39.5 billion profits are news. That makes sense.

 

The place I got $1.99 gas from on Monday is still sitting at $1.99. A few places went up a few cents, but nothing epic. Depending on where you are, maybe there's something happening to hurt supply or something that's only hitting your area.

Because you'd think that Republicans and big oil would be better engineering a pricing conspiracy.

 

Went up from 1.83 to 1.89-1.95 here in South Carolina this week... still not too bad.

 

Up here in flyover country it had dropped into the $1.70s about a month back, but it jumped big-time in recent days. Now it's in the $2.15-2.29 range, depending on where you get it.

I caught a break heading back from a game last night. Station out in the boonies was $2.19 when I was going TO the game, but on the way back it was at $1.99. Needless to say, I filled up.

 

Paid $2.17 to fill up a nearly empty gas tank before work. From the break room, where I grabbed a quick snack from the fridge, I saw the price had dropped to $2.11 in less than three hours after I stopped there. Nice.

 

2.29 in the PNW. Down 40 cents from three weeks ago.

 

It's hard for me to imagine that places in the U.S. still have gas under $2 per gallon. We haven't been under $2 per gallon in two or three years.

I paid $2.27 per gallon today and was thrilled.