Being robbed

I think we need to take a ride and forget about it for a while. I personally need to. But when you get back I would like to know what peoples take on federal anti-gouging laws is? Its not regulation its the threat of legal trouble if you are going with the flow and making outrageous profits off the people.

 

That is tough brother. I remember when I was a kid and my Mom went from making 10.00 plus an hour to 6 something an hour. The company she worked for was bought out and the new leadership cut everyones pay. I have been working since I was 11 years old. I have no complaints about it, work ethic is one of the best things to learn at a young age. But having that type of lifestyle switch is not fun.

Spike talked about living week to week. I think we have all done that and my wife and I are in a blessed place were we arn't doing that now. And we are trying to keep from it too. But in a consumer society you have to really start to change lifesytle habits. And man some of those habits die hard.

Keep your head up, brighter times are coming.

BZ

 

Don't know, havent' been exposed to that, but there are hybrids in Canada, even one guy who used to post to the Prius board with a Prius Cab in Canada. With something like 200,000 miles on it. There are Prii in every state in the union, so although mine may not have been exposed to -30, other Prii have. I will say cold weather does impact mileage, but it still ain't bad.

 

depending on the driving I do, I get between 45 - 55 MPG
to a large extent, the AC has no impact, since on the Prius, it doesn't run on the gas engine, but off the Hybrid Battery pack, & in normal driving the hybrid battery pack stays pretty much topped off
In really slow traffic, where I am driving "on the battery" the AC can have a small affect, as the gas engine eventually will have to come on to keep the battery from going dead

 

Again, I never said trucks and or SUVs should be banned. Don't think they should. People can buy what they want, but have to know what is coming when they do.

Not everything in B&W, I think I even offered that things are really more complex than most would have

But I did say I have relatives in ME, who don't drive 4WD vehicles. My last steady GF before I met my wife was from MN (Hibbing to be exact), and went to the University of North Dakota; both those place know snow. Her car? a very sad little Ford Escort.

Maybe I am just jaded; 'cause my job has me going thru people's finances everyday. I just see that way, way too many of us in this country live way beyond our means. Last year we had a negative savings rate nationally for crying out loud. And buying vehicles we cant' afford to keep running, is one of the larger issues I see.

When I moved to CA, I had to sell my motorcycle. Loved it, missed it. Couldn't afford it, for years after I moved here. Kind of funny really, moved from New England, where I had been for years, and couldn't really ride for several months out of the year to SF CA, where I could ride nearly year round -- and the irony is I no longer had a bike. The world was just teasing me :tongue: But, it didn't fit my new more expensive budget.
Love my bike, but if now I took a significant pay cut, it would go on the block fairly quickly. Heck, when my wife and I bought our condo, part of the budgeting was I went from my BMW and CBR to a VFR, I was supposed to go back to getting a BMW, but never did...

 

I think the oil companies make an unreasonable profit, and that they raise prices just to increase those profits, at every opportunity. In the first "oil shortage" in the early 70s, the Chesapeake Bay was full of parked tankers that couldn't unload because the refineries were full, and yet, we consumers, were sitting in mile-long lines just to buy a few gallons of gas. The gas was held back, just to raise the price. There was no shortage then, and there is no shortage now.

When Katrina hit, prices shot up by a dollar a gallon, and never returned to their previous levels. WHY? BECAUSE THEY COULD GET AWAY WITH IT!

I agree that we Americans, are some of the most wasteful people in the world. I also agree that we need to change our attitudes about public transportation and other means of conservation in the near future, but that doesn't justify what the oil companies do to artificially inflate prices. That borders on criminal.

I also don't think there's a damned thing we can do about it.


Lane

 

Although I strongly believe in capitalism and reasonable profits, greed is another matter entirely. From my point of view, it is a form of mental illness, or mental imbalance, or pick the term of your choice. The biggest problem with greed is that there is never enough money, power, or whatever, to satisfy it.

It used to be that corporations prided themselves on how many people they employed, and how many benefits they offered. Now corporations cut 100,000 positions and the executives give themselves bonuses for the wonderful cost savings they have implemented. Generally the excuse that is used is, "The shareholders want to see a return on their investment". Well, yeah, I suppose they do. The stock market used to be a vehicle for long-term gains, not over-night riches.

But I digress, and I apologize for doing so. Yep, we are getting thoroughly and completely screwed over. I don't buy the argument that just because we haven't been getting as screwed over as the other countries, that it somehow makes it OK. It is not OK. Corporate and individual greed is, more than anything, an embarrassment.

 

True there was no shortage then, the Arab League wanted to penalise the West for supporting Israel in the '73 Yom Kippur War and they did show they could cause the world hurt whenever they chose to.

Read up on " Peak Oil ", dependant on which reports you read the world has either reached or will reach Peak Oil within the next few years. Once Peak Oil bites and added to China's & India's expedientially increasing demands as economy's grow you'll soon wish you were only paying $5 US per Gallon at the pump again. :frown:

 

Capitalism. It works. It's good. I hope they keep making huge profits. Otherwise, what's the point? If someone prefers Socialism and government controlled industries, they should move to one of those countries. But take a look at their gas prices before you do.

How about removing some of the enormous taxes on gasoline, or at least dropping them temporarily until we can once again drill for our own oil, refine our own gasoline, and build nuclear facilities? We've gotten silly, and now we're paying for it. It's our own fault.

 

At 4+ billion in profits per quarter, I'd say big oil can build more refinereies and do more exploring and drilling, if they choose. The government won't step in until a depression hits (I feel it is something that is coming), and probably not then. I have heard it said, and I cannot remember who adn maybe I am misremembering, that the U.S. is not in a recession. Hmm...housing market is falling, the dollar isn't worth the paper it is printed on, price for food and other necessities are rising, and teh working man's wage is not increasing (at least at the rat inflation is). Sounds like a recession to me and I cannot see where it will get better. I may be cmopletely off base on all this, just my worthless .02. Oh, btw, I saw an artilce on MSN the other day that said it cost 2 cents to make a penny.

 

News Flash: You are getting ripped off just as badly when you pay to make a telephone call (wireless or land line), watch TV, and when you fire up access to your internet provider. THESE are the biggest rip-offs to the consumer. Give you lousy service and charge you super-premium prices! At least there is no record of exactly how you use your gasoline (unless you trip a photo-radar camera!)
Sorry, gotta run and pay some bills!!

 

Just for the sake of accuracy..

The Imperial Gallon is 4.545 litres.
Pump prices in the UK are shown per litre, so current prices for unleaded premium are around £1.08 per litre
: £4.91 per Gallon
: or $9.57 per Gallon...

note that the major part of the cost is Governmental Taxation - over 80%.

they also keep nudging the figure up virtually every year - an extra 2p per litre or more.

 

They do choose to build refineries and drill for oil. Our legislature prohibits them from doing so. Did you help elect these people? I didn't!

 

With respect, I disagree. I used to be quite involved in the environmental movement but ended up parting company with them because, and this is no joke, many of them are genuine basket cases. They seriously think that by taxing people out of their cars and off their bikes they will be able to take the world back to some sort of mythical agrarian golden age in which everyone walked and used horses and carts and the world was jolly and happy and there were no problems, even though no such golden age ever existed.

The past was a time of poverty and deprivation and greatly restricted freedoms; you can wave as many philosophies and Acts of law about but few have had as much an impact on our freedom as the simple ability to move around when we want, where we want in comfort, at speed, in privacy and on our own terms. Any country that has a population who can move about at will, will always struggle to keep them shackled.

As governments and various interest groups try and kick us out of our cars and bikes just remember there's more at stake than we think.

EDITED TO ADD: Actually the point I'm making is that this thing transcends gasoline or any specific fuel. If the age of fossil fuels is nearly over, fine; let's develop alternatives. But I strongly believe that to remain free and have any control of our lives and destinies personal freedom of movement is essential. It's no coincidence that personal and political freedoms and freedom of movement have always developed hand in hand.

 

Don't give up hope mate; in the UK we need to get past the twin forces of polite apathy and 'I'm alright jack' cynicism, both of which contribute greatly to the general public not getting together to help themselves. Once things get past a certain point people WILL stand up and be counted.

The major fuel protests of a few years ago, when roads/cities were bought to a standstill, refineries picketed and forecourts dried up had a much bigger effect than people think. Prices went down pretty sharpish and planned tax rises were put off for some time. The government have admitted that the country was just hours away from big trouble as shops were unable to restock. The armed forces were very close to being called out to help when the protests ended. It was a victory for the motorist, (although slightly Pyrrhic as the governemtn then went and made changes in the law to make such protests harder to get away with in future.)

Without those protests, fuel prices would have topped £1 per litre far far earlier. They had an effect and though people feel jaded and are despairing at the moment, a point will be reached when the public will stand up again. We just need to be prepared this time to keep the pressure on and change the discourse. People are so polite here we let interest groups rule our lives without complaint; we need to stand up and make clear that whatever the environmental arguments, we can't let our lives be ruined in this way. It's up to governments to encourage - force even - the development and uptake of new technologies in order to ameliorate the problems caused by current engines etc. That's the way this issue may be solved (or at least made better) not by taxing people into poverty, which is what will happen. Our society is built around cars; most people can't just choose to not use them, so as taxes/costs rise all that will happen is more of our earnings will be eaten up by transport costs; ally that with the fact that cost of living will also rise in line with fuel cost rises and there's only one outcome for most of us

 

Peak oil is real; it's just that we don't know exactly when it will occur or whether it has already occured. Of course there is more oil to be found, and we may never actually run out in the forseeable future, but the remaining oil will become more and more expensive to extract. As for doing more drilling in the U.S., including Alaska, at the rate we use oil, all that would be used up within a few years anyway so it wouldn't help for long.

The greatest threat to national security may be our dependence on importing oil from unstable countries which are not necessarily friendly. A sharp reduction in how much we can import would have very serious consequences.

In my opinion, a large portion of the income tax should be replaced with an energy tax. That way, total taxes would remain about the same for the average taxpayer, but there would be a strong incentive to use energy, including gasoline, more efficiently. We cannot indefinitely continue using oil at the rate we have been, especially as China and India increase their demand for oil. If we face the problems now rather than wait for a crisis, it will be a lot easier to deal with.

 

Does anyone know how much actual oil production occurs in mainland China & India. As they are the up & coming consumers, are they sitting on potential gold mines or is there active, agressive production in those countries?

 

From the CIA World facts site China produces about half its required oil & India about a third, of greater interest the UK produces a little more Oil than it uses but US less than half, no wonder the Brits are miffed at their Gas prices.

China
Oil - production: 3.73 million bbl/day (2007 est.)
Oil - consumption: 6.93 million bbl/day (2007 est.)

India
Oil - production: 834,600 bbl/day (2005 est.)
Oil - consumption: 2.438 million bbl/day (2005 est.)

UK
Oil - production: 1.861 million bbl/day (2005 est.)
Oil - consumption: 1.82 million bbl/day (2005 est.)

USA
Oil - production: 8.322 million bbl/day (2005 est.)
Oil - consumption: 20.8 million bbl/day (2005 est.)

 

I dont drive my truck except to work and I still use $80 a week in gas and that hurts very bad . I have to haul materials ,tools and haul off debris from job sites . BIG OUCH if gas does go to $4 a gallon.

 

HELL YES, bring it on, and in the contract i get free gas for life. i have to say that the gas prices going up sucks and they just rube it in our noises, and we take it, we need to stand up to them and that will never happen