Are you willing to take a smaller salary or sell whatever you produce for less within America if you could get more internationally? There is a concept called opportunity cost in financial analysis which states that the true cost of using some resource is the higher of actual production costs OR the highest lost opportunity cost of using or selling that resource for some other purpose. If you could produce a barrel of oil for $7, but you could sell that barrel on the world market for $55, it is costing you $55 dollars to use that barrel of oil not $7, and this would be in accordance with generally accepted accounting practices.
I may be the odd one in the bunch but I'll say yes to that question...
When I go to the gas station, I feel as though they are holding a gun to my head when I pay them, because I'm certainly not doing it willingly...
The CEO gets a bonus of almost a half a billion dollars...There is no person on the face of the earth that is worth anywher near that much money...They are just squandering the money they basically robbed from me and millions of other Americans...
So how does this work??? Do the speculators actually bid on the crude like at an auction??? The Arabs sound like they control the price of crude...I read yesterday that the Saudi's don't want the oil to go below 60 dollars a barrel???