I know: It's definitely not price gouging (insult away, BTW)

It's more than a pain in the butt for me. I haven't gotten a raise bigger than 3% in 7 years. I live 50 miles from my office. When I bought my house, I lived closer, but was then transferred to an office farther away.

The last two cars I bought (one I mainly drive, one my wife drives) were both more fuel efficent than the ones before. I've got a year and a half to go on my car loan, when that's paid off, I'll be buying a Civic or Prius hybrid. Meanwhile, I'm paying twice what I paid on 9/11 (it was 1.63.9 here, I remember that too). Demand isn't that much higher, supply isn't that much lower. We do have an administration that seems to encourage energy companies to charge as much as they can. (Have we already forgotten about the tax break for giant SUVs the Bushies rammed through? It wasn't good on all of them--just Hummers, Suburbans and Excursions. You know, the real gas-suckers). Please don't talk to me about wealth redistribution. It's happening now--just from those in the middle class and lower class TO the already wealthy.

Yes, it's gouging. No, we won't be able to do anything about it.

 

And finally, JR chimes in with his sumg, anti-American slant.

What percentage of the world GDP is produced by the US?

 

Absolutely, there is. Remember how gas prices went through the ceiling on 9/11?

 

When I asked on another thread what a gallon of gas should cost in a world where oil is $78 a barrel, Football Bat said that the rule of thumb is $25/barrel : $1/gal. So I'm not sure how realistic it is to have to kind of prices I think some in this thread want when oil bubbles up a dollar a gallon every time someone in Iran farts. Hell, I want <$2.00/gal gas myself (which we had here as late as February of this year), but how realistic is it? And if it's just a matter of big bad oil companies hording profits and making unilateral decisions to jack up prices, why hasn't someone started a company to undercut them (the Wal-Mart of gas?).

 

Because there is no such thing as a free market when it comes to oil.

There are a few enormous oil companies. And that's it. And even they need the full might of the US military to protect their investments sometimes.

 

No, they wouldn't have an immediate impact, but they'd likely have a larger long-term impact than drilling in the ANWR or off the coast would. Those things wouldn't do enough to bump up supply to have much of an effect, but we can do more, much more, to cut demand enough to have an impact.

 

GALLON OF GAS by The Kinks

http://kinks.it.rit.edu/discography/showsong.php?song=119

 

If only it were that simple. The Wal-Mart comparison isn't fair because oil companies deal in a product that has a finite supply, a supply which is controlled by the whims and politics of other nations, OPEC, etc. If we were talking about a product that is easily produced and distributed using resources which aren't limited, then the Wal-Mart comparison would be more appropriate.

And simply digging for more oil, especially in ecologically fragile areas, doesn't fix the problem. It's a temporary band-aid, and in 20 years or so we're facing the same problem again.

 

When you figure out how the oil companies are responsible for rigging the system -- that it's not increased demand from China/India, an absurd degree of instability in the Middle East, the loss of many Gulf drilling stations because of last summer's hurricane season and continued demand from US consumers leading oil as a commodity to go higher -- you explain it all to us, OK?
I'm sure you can then present the follow up lecture about how gold went from about $375 to nearly $800 an ounce because of the "Every Kiss Begins with Kay" campaign.

 

U.S. produces about 20% of the world's GDP, almost identical to the GDP of the European Union who also  consume about 30% less oil than the U.S.

Nice of you to show up, though.

 

Fixing prices is illegal, Al.

 

You think the oil and gas companies are fixing prices?

And gouging is illegal, too. Only problem is, "gouging" is a hard-to-define term, especially when we have so many gas company apologists out there.