Posted on 09/01/2005 4:22:37 AM PDT by chronic_loser
Can you give me a good (meaning one that can be used for determining and prosecuting offenders) definition of price gouging?
--Tell me what a "Christian" is, if you are such an expert.--
Why, do you wish to take the thread even further away from the point?
Tired of people revealing your lack of knowledge you pretend to have?
Either back up your insinuation that you know what a Christian is, or else back out of it.
There are two kinds of green activists and both of them are merely tools being utilized to affect policy.
They are not the true problem. The tax-exempt foundations and oil companies who fund them are.
This is a well organized, well funded pincer move against regular American citizens. On the lower level we have groups such as ALF, ELF, PETA, Earth First! and Greenpeace.
On the higher plane are groups such as (but not limited to) the Sierra Club, World Wildlife Fund, Natural Resources Defense Council and the Nature Conservancy. These organizations interface with the EPA, Dept. of Energy, Dept. of the Interior, various UN projects, other governmental agencies (both US and foreign), multinational corporations and grant providing tax-exempt foundations .
These are the groups which lobby for and litigate against changes in policy.
Both prongs of the pincer ultimately serve the same masters whose goal is to control the means of producing wealth. Our natural resources.
But if everybody keeps filling their tank every time the needle drops down to 3/4 the situation will take much, much longer to correct itself that would otherwise be the case.
"I'm simply asking if part of the high prices are simply for profit above and beyond the expense of the supplies ."
Yes.
It's called capitalism.
They tried it the other way in the soviet union.
It didn't work.
Designed for the non-student, and nary a chart or graph between its covers.
Uh, no.
Talk to my shadow. I'm done with you. Get a hobby.
Involve Government in the oil industry at an intimate level and what you will get is FUBAR.
How can the government assist? By getting the Hell out of the way.
"The political force of people ticked off at paying what they believe is an outrageous and unfair price for a necessity will result in an unwelcome intervention by government. "
Not this year. It'll be forgotten (politically) by 2006 elections. (In my humble opinion, as well!)
That, you have to admit, at least, is understandable, because oil, and specifically gasoline, is more-or-less the blood of our modern economy.
To the extent that scarcity causes and imbalance or disequilibrium between supply and demand, you first statement is correct. The second statement, however, is incorrect. Demand does not change in response to a change in price. Quantity Demanded will change. (Demand is the relationship between price and quantity demanded, i.e. it is the whole line on the graph.) When price increases, quantity demanded decreases. But this does not affect scarcity. The only thing that will affect scarcity is a change in supply. This is why even after the price of oil dropped, and the wholesale price of gasoline dropped, the quantities available have not immediately increased, so the supply has not increased. And since demand has not changed, the retail prices of gas have not dropped back down in response to the reduction in input costs over the last day or so.
How much does it cost to refit a refinery that's been seriously damaged?
Those are the oil companies' equivalents to what we've described as the retailers' purchases of their next tanker trucks full of gasoline.
And, if we're going to look longer into the future, we need to consider the general increase in demand from China and India and the effect that is having on crude oil prices.
Bet you don't need to travel to watch tornadoes, though. Or, blizzards. brrrrrrrrr. :-)
Increasing price here will do little to decrease demand. There are no public transportation systems, and everything is pretty far apart. You still have to get to the places you have to get to.
Spent a few weeks during the Summer 2001 driving around your part of the country. You're absolutely right.
In this modern day, you can't do without gasoline. For one thing, there's a scarcity of horses and horse-drawn wagons. :-)
The original is a classic however.
Now let me ask you, could someone also write an article titled "In the Defense of Pimping"? All they are doing is finding "market" prices for certain a commodity. Sure, they are preying upong desperate women who need money, but thats the "free" market, right?
Exactly.
Damn freedom.
This will give the "smart growth/sustainable development" advocates more ammunition to push their camouflaged central planning.
Those of us who need a vehicle which does not get the greatest mileage, or live/work in areas which have limited options for alternative transportation have been paying for the whims of the masses for a while, now, and will continue to.
It's people like you wot cause unrest. (Sorry, couldn't resist quoting Monty Python as this thread has gotten Pythonesque.)
What exactly are you talking about "paying for the whims of the masses"?
Yes, it is.
Is the person who employs a "desperate woman who needs money" scrubbing toilets and working with human waste for minimum wage "preying" upon them?
How quickly people abandon the concept of free will to suit their own agenda.
This means not even a strategic petroleum reserve.
But the ubiquity of Net connection should make the importance of "where" less important than it is for a whole lot of folks.
I avoided a 35 mile drive to work today by dialing in.
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