Why Gas Prices Dont Change!

LOL Last Stand


But all joking aside, a hole town in Texas is starting a boycott against Exxon/Mobil today that will last until they reduce the price of gas to $1.50 per gallon. Sounds like a good idea to me.

 

Well well well.
Welcome to Peak Oil.
A non-renewable resource.
Imagine that.
Peak - means the halfway point in consumption. Using half of what's there.
Meaning from that point it's all downhill.
Recently many smart brains have been overtaxed, debating just when Peak will happen
(or if it already has...)
Who cares?
Last year, next year, this very year - or sometime within our lifetimes - it's all the same.
The world as we know it - for about the past 100 years, has been systematically put together with cheap oil.
The emphasis here is on the word "cheap."
When gas was 17 cents a gallon, no-one gave a rat's ass what the gas mileage of their vehicle was.
Now they do.
When gas was 17 cents a gallon, we had only used about a third of all the oil we were going to find. Perhaps less than even that.
Now we are at, or past, or fast approaching the halfway point.
Which means, as a decreasing commodity, the price of it rises, folks.
That is a simple law of economics.

Which means that all that rampant transportation going on out there is going to become more expensive.
Which means the 3000 mile Caesar salad is just a bit ridiculous, what?
Which means that all this globalized "shell game" that's been handed down is a fool's game.
The trinkets shipped from Shanghai that show up on Wal*Mart shelves are only cheap because of the $2/day labor in China.
Imagine how expensive this will become when the penny a pound shipping cost becomes 50 cents. There goes the profit margin.
Which means it's time to build the factory in Pittsburgh, all over again.
(with brief stops in Juarez and Winnipeg along the way.)

- a 12mpg SUV overdriven at 140mph down the I-94 makes a whole lot of sense doesn't it?
- a 3500 sq ft McMansion with a 300/month cooling bill and a 400/month heating bill makes the same kind of sense.
Imagine sports fans of the future turning green as they watch NASCAR re-runs
rev up for another round............
Aw we've been awful silly.

Cheap oil just bubbled up out the ground - for quite a long time. It doesn't do that much anymore.
Technology is not propulsion fuel. It is the means of delivery. It all (all of it) requires feeder fuel and development fuel.
Veggie gas requires feeder fuel.
This means that a buck's worth of the stuff requires an expenditure of - perhaps, 40 cents?
A buck's worth of petroleum used to cost about a nickel to process.
Lots of profit.

Well - the oil companies have to realize their profit somewhere.
So they raise the price - and keep on doing so. They are going to make that margin someway, or another.

What to do?
The only sensible thing there is: retraction. Cut down. Reduce. Stop using the stuff the way we do.
The one thing no-one wants to hear.
Lord no - not when they commute 100 miles a day to work and put in that much more running errands and chauffering the kids around...
When I grew up in my little city - my dad drove me somewhere exactly once, from the age of 8 until I left home for college.
That was the day I had to go to county court to answer for a B&E I committed at the silly age of 15 (all to impress some silly girl.)
Once. That's it.

Can no-one read the writing on the wall? The oil companies WANT us to consume all that gas! That's how they make their money.
That's why they killed Main Street, and all the walkable public domain that went along with it.

Solutions? Alternatives?
Something to consider:
An 18-wheeler with a deisel cab pulls one container.
150 of these rigs pull 150 containers.
A 150-car train uses 4 locomotives.
One locomotive consumes about the equivalent of 10 deisel cabs. (and that's by ancient consumption standards. Newer models get better fuel economy.)
Do the math.
4 locomotives = 40 deisel cabs.
150 containers get long-hauled for the equivalent gas consumption of 40 cabs.
Which means this way you save 110 cabs' worth of fuel.
So why are all those trucks still out there cluttering up the interstates?
They guzzle fuel like drunks, that's why.

We live in a society that fell in love with cheap easy motoring, that's for sure.
The honeymoon is over.
About time for a divorce.

 

welcome to capitalisem my freinds,
but yeah, gasprices are worse here, we would love to have ur prices, we pay 2$ pr liter.and a gallon is almost 4 liters, meaning we pay around 7.5$ gallon. thats in Norway.

 

What is the minimum wage in Norway, Steely?

 

we dont really have one.

 

The only reason I mentioned it, Steely, (and perhaps it was a 'leading question') is that as far as I'm aware, Norway has one of the strongest economies in the world.

When we see the US in films and on TV, we imagine that most Americans are wealthy, but I was wondering if Norwegians are better off financially than a lot of US citizens, hence the more expensive price in oil? I don't really know, so I can't judge.

Also, what percentage of that $7.50/gallon is actually Norwegian tax? Scandinavian countries tend to have the best welfare system in the world for their people (and good for them), but welfare costs money, which must come from somewhere, i.e. petrol and alcohol.

 

well dont remmeber the % of how much was taxes, but the goverment, put more and more taxes on us, and give less and less to us, Norway is blossowing with money cuz we got all these taxes, but the ppl dont get it, we pay for a lot stuff we dont get. and we just got a goverment change, and they put on more taxes and cut on stuff, the alchole is crazy expensive also, same with sigarets, and same with other things. there is even a tax on cans, so buying a can of coke isnt something u do often cuz they are so expensive compaired to bottles and stuff. and i have a idea how the avreage america is, i know the movies everything is flowered up.
But we could still aford cuttes in the taxes in general. but no the goverment puts on and give less.

 

I didn't know that about Norway, Steely, but thanks for that, because sometimes we forget that there are also other countries in the world apart from America (I don't mean that in a sarcastic way, it's just that most members are American so it's natural to focus discussion on their country).

The other thing that concerns me was a news clip I saw today which said that Americans are now some of the worst paid workers and work the longest hours. I did see all the report, so I don't know if they meant in the world, or the NATO countries.

If conditions are as bad as they say, then I would think that the oil price in the US would be just as bad (if not worse) on the average American than everyone else. Obviously I'm not talking about the middle class here, but the people on low income.

 

yeah, i know.
but i think they have to mean the Nato countries, cuz the workers in africa, asia and latin america get a lot worse paid, they get like nothing for 12 hour shifts, like on banana plantations. there is this campain here called "bend it bana" and they claim to spend lots of the money on helping banana plantation workers, but they did this thing on tv and shows that thouse workers dont get nothing. and that they live in floaded places in grappy huts.
and they work long 12 hour shifts for minimum wage, and they cant live for that cuz its to little. and lots of Norwegians have bought that type of banana, cuz they tought it went to there cuz its a big firm that has the add, the leading banana and fruit firm here. so it was really a disapointment.
but lucky for us there is a working enviromental law that protects workers a lot here, so make sure we have to take our holliday and get paied and dont get scammed. goot for us, dont know if you americans have that tough. do u? if not maybe its time to air it to the politics, so they make a law on how workers are allowed to treat u and arnt allowed to treat you. and how many hours they are allowed to work, have to their holiday. and so on.
think maximum hours allowed to work here i Norway is 8 hours or something around that, if u work after that your firm is making a crime keeping on you on the job. and can get in to the leagal system and get fines and even prison time. and there is even a govermental institution that watches over and take random tests on how it is for the workers and if its to bed, they shut the place down to its good enough to work in. prity nice system.

 

It's quite ironic, because we owe the 8 hour shift to the people of Chicago, who rebelled against unfair treatment. People sometimes forget that they can stand up for their rights.

 

yeah i know, its sad.