You said — “OK, you don’t remember oil at $147 last summer with gas at $4 —or any prices before that, and you don’t care about what happened before and you only care about what you got right now and it’s not enough.”
I remember it very well, having to pay those prices... LOL..
I saw the same thing back then. back before the high point of prices and oil, somewhere around the middle of the summer. I saw prices that would jump five and ten cents, literally overnight, just on a “speculation” of a price jump, without one having taken effect yet. And when there were temporary downward slumps (smaller one than we had just recently), the prices wouldn’t budge at all on the downside.
And it’s not about “what I’ve got” but rather how it works to jump on the upside on rumor and speculation about “possible” price increase, and big jumps — while when *real price decreases* happen (not speculative), they don’t hardly budge on the downside. That’s what I’m talking about. It happens all the time.
Now, as I’ve said — these businesses are there *solely* for making money and nothing else. If they can charge $25 a gallon, then they should, according to most of the people here on Free Republic. And if that is the prevailing “free market opinion” of most here, so be it.
But, if one does complain about high prices — then — one is going to have to change the economic system to address that, and it’s going to be something different than free market prices and mechanisms. In that case, the “people” will have to define “essentials” that everyone must have and then make the prices “affordable” for everyone — as an “alternative market system” — or else let companies charge $25 a gallon, if they can do it...
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And then you said — “Ah youth —I remember it well...”
I remember it, too — at 49-cents a gallon... LOL...
LOL! --and everyone was complaining about price gouging at the pump too!
There are some very good people in the oil business that give to charities and do volunteer work just like we do. Our goodness won't stop us from changing jobs the minute someone else offers us a promotion and double the pay becasue we need to look out for our families and that doesn't make us bad guys. So it doesn't make the oil people bad guys either.