[Sinner6]

Doesn't Walter Williams sit in for Rush sometimes?

[dfwgator]

It's really sad that most people don't understand even the most basic economics.

[technomage]

If you were really enthusiastic about not being a "price-gouger," I'd have another proposition. You might own a house that you purchased for $55,000 in 1960 that you put on the market for a half-million dollars. I'd simply accuse you of price-gouging and demand that you sell me the house for what you paid for it, maybe adding on a bit for inflation since 1960.

Not a bad example. Could also say that those people who in the last few years were "flipping" houses were price gouging.

[Cobra64]

This guy nails it! I've been using this methodology for 40 years in business. We always used NIFO cost basis to establish our selling prices.

It would take a typical dumb, uninformed, uneducated liberal mindset not to understand this simple business concept.

The big eeevil oil companies are causing a sky-falling crisis.

[mysterio]

While I agree with Williams' argument, I don't understand why the free marketeers always use the coffee, bottled water, or house strawman.

1. I can choose not to buy coffee.

2. I have tap water as an alternative.

3. I can buy a cheaper house.

But avoiding fuel purchase is impossible. Even if I ride the bus, I've bought fuel. If I buy anything that has been transported, I have purchased fuel. If I heat my house or turn on a light bulb, I have purchased fuel. So while there are viable alternatives to the strawmen examples the free marketeers push, there are no viable alternatives to our oil addiction. Unless you are living in the Alaskan wilderness and hunting your own food with a bow and arrow, you are buying gasoline in one way or another. And that's why you are seeing people get very, very angry.

[greasepaint]

Do Republicans in swing districts have brains?

I'm getting tired of,
Bush's changes to fuel laws.

May 2006, RFG gasoline laws change, surprise,
prices skyrocket.

October 2006, diesel fuel laws change.
What do you think will hvppen?

[trebb]

Let's start off with an example. Say you owned a small 10-pound inventory of coffee that you purchased for $3 a pound. Each week you'd sell me a pound for $3.25. Suppose a freeze in Brazil destroyed half of its coffee crop, causing the world price of coffee to immediately rise to $5 a pound. You still have coffee that you purchased before the jump in prices. When I stop by to buy another pound of coffee from you, how much will you charge me? I'm betting that you're going to charge me at least $5 a pound. Why? Because that's today's cost to replace your inventory.

However, if coffee then drops to $1.25 a pound, you will still pay the $5.00 a pound until it becomes obvious to customers that there is no way that any of the higher priced inventory is still in stock. Nobody wants to drop prices to take into account that the new inventory is going to cost less. Then it isn't called gouging, it's called smart business sense.

[Bloody Sam Roberts]

It's not the price hikes that get me...it's the failure of prices to fall when the price to the end dealer goes down.
Prices per gallon go up on a daily basis...but take an entire season to fall when wholesale prices fall.
At least, that's the way it seems to me.

[AaronInCarolina]

I get so fed up with the hypocracy of congress-people who whine about so-called price gouging at the pump and record-profits. The true fact of the matter is that for each gallon of gas purchased, the profit made by oil companies pales in comparison to the amount of taxation on that gallon. So the REAL price gouger is state and federal governments. I say if congress people want to make a big deal about oil company profits, let them first limit taxation to NO MORE than what the oil companies profit. Otherwise they can just shut up!

[Diggler]

Last week, the 'replacement cost' of a barrel of crude dropped by a few dollars, for a few days.

The price of a gallon of gasoline didn't drop by 5 cents or so for a couple of days, then go back up when the price went back up a few dollars.

The price at the pump shoots up any time a gnat farts in the ME almost instantly, but when the price of crude falls it doesn't change the price at the pump for at least a week.

[Jason_b]

"...maybe adding on a bit for inflation since 1960."

He "maybe" better add on a lot more than a bit. Like maybe a factor of 6.3 according to the inflation calculator I consulted. Like maybe more because I suspeect the inflation calculator did not take into account the real estate bubble we now have. Williams is great but he's behind on the inflation issue. And that is a shame because despite his claim to be a radical for liberty, inflation is very damaging to liberty as it represents the confiscation of property. I think his advocacy of liberty is rather selective.

[spintreebob]

it's price gouging for me to jack up the price of my house which cost me much less when I bought it, just because there is an increased demand for housing by immigrants.

It's price gouging for me to jack up the cost of my labor to a rate much higher than when I started working, just because there is a shortage of people in my IT skill set.

[Rte66]

If people spent a few bucks to buy some stock in an oil company, they wouldn't moan about the company's "record profits" when they're a shareholder.

[Sam Cree]

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