The price of gas in your area

I guess that is why the price of gas is exactly the same everywhere. How's that state mandated minimum wage working out for you? Comparing California to Tennessee is crazy talk. Georgia is a state that is run much better. There are plenty of better ways to attract industry (like free TVA power) than to shift the tax burden to the lower/middle class. The South is run much differently than California. Corporations do not rule Tennessee... this is basic basket of goods kind of stuff here...

There are alot of people here that spend most of what they earn just in order to live. People who are earning signifigantly more are consuming at the same rate more or less. Where you have one segment donating 10% of what they earn to Tennessee you have another paying basically the same, but make 5x or 10x the money. That money just goes right into their ERA because their 401 is already at the lawful limit... I don't outright favor an income tax but I see it as taxation that is more fair than a regressive one.

Government at the state level here is a businessman's boysclub. Tennessee is corrupt with greed. i.e. -Tennessee Waltz ... the mentality comes from some being born poor and aspire to wealth... only to step on their fellow man in grasp of every stinkin red cent they can grasp. I guess greed is the common denominator. Our social programs to help those who need it are a joke. I'm not talking about welfare... I'm talking about everyday things you take for granted in California... here we call it hippie bs.

 

If you're talking about the long term answer to our energy crisis, then YES, of course we need to find alternative energy sources other than our present sytem.
But until that happens we need more oil. Open up Alaska while the brains develop new ways to power our machines. Increase the supply, especially in places where we don't have to send our young people to die in order to keep the supply stable....
I see me veering off into politics if I go on, so I'll stop now. :banned:

 

The sales tax on food in Tennessee is CRAZY. I'd rather have an income tax than be taxed 10% evertime I go to the grocery store.

 

BS.

What is the main reason the price at the pump goes up IMMEDIATLY when there is merely a threat that a hurricane might do some damage?
Why does the price at the pump go up IMMEDIATLY after the president of Iran says something stupid?
Why does the price at the pump go up IMMEDIATLY when someone can say the supply MIGHT be compromised for any reason or scenario that can be dreamed up,
but when a huge new oil deposit is found that will add to the supply they say it will take 6 years or more to have an effect.

And why do oil companies, which made the largest profit margins in the history of world over the past couple of years need to stick the customers with the price of drilling the new oil that they will sell and set even bigger records in profits with?

 

BP-

I am not saying that is my mentality but that is the mentality of the state. If you do not have an income tax then the corporations do have to pay the state to be there. Taxes are lower so the cost of producing your good is less. You need employees to hire so the people that lives around your home location get jobs. It is a reason allot of companies have pulled out of Silicon Valley. San Francisco is over 20% business real estate unoccupied right now and I know Oakland is pushing 30%. Taxes are too high so they have to move. States try all types of things to attract companies so they can get people employed. If there is no place to work people will move out of state. No people mean no sales of good, no sales of goods mean the state does not get the money it needs to fund the schools and hospitals and what ever else they need to fund. Oregon does the same things. Huge unemployment rate up there because no one has a place to work.

Allot of people spend all there money just to rent a home and live in CA. It seems like a tax on the poor because everyone has to eat and if you make less a higher percentage of your income goes to taxes. But if you create an income tax then each dollar a company earns has that much less purchasing power. If I am company A and I can decide between two states one that will charge a 1.5% income tax or one that will not charge me a tax at all I go to the state with no income tax because it makes my company more profitable. 1.5% more profitable. This is an old hat theory of trickle down economics that says the company will then reinvest the money they save into the community and everyone will benefit. We all know that does not work but it works to an extent. A corporation that employs 2500 people or more is a huge boost to any state. The governator has a big truck he drives around to other states to try and urge corporations to move into CA. Why, To employ more people.

 

That is your particular view and it mainly stems from a "that’s not fair" attitude. No offense but the US economy does not work on what is fair and what is not fair. It works on quick to react. Prices will always shoot up and crawl down. If I could make a price on a product and the market has already absorbed the price then why am I going to lower the price back down. There is defiantly no profit in it for me as the producer of the product. If there was a direct increase to profits because I lower my prices then the price would defiantly go down but it does not. It only cost then money they have already made. Plus you have to remember that the owners of the station hinder prices.

If I own a gas station and it take 2 weeks to get the gas out of my tanks why would I lower the price immediately to react to an oil find. The other huge thing you need to remember is that OPEC controls the supply. It use to be econ 101 to talk about how OPEC failed and now it is strong and crippling the US. If we produce 100 million barrels a day out of these new oil rigs OPEC reacts by lowering there supply by 100 million barrels to keep the price at an inflated level.

Our only real option would be to get a source that could supply more then 75% of the US oil requirements or at least enough that the OPEC nations would take major loses if they took the supply down to the level that would require. The US is like a giant coke head and OPEC is out supplier. Until we can get off the stuff we are going to pay what ever they charge us. We are hooked and finding a little stash is not going to answer the ultimate problem of us being an addict.

 

I absolutely agree. Hummers and the like should be banned.
No matter what we do, the demand for oil (if it is not replaced) is going to skyrocket with China developing.

I would like to see AMTRAK developed into a more attractable option for traveling on vacations and such. Pour a fraction of the money we give the airlines into making better tracks and more stations and transfer time options.

Trying to get our wasteful society into being more efficient seems like a hopeless cause sometimes

 

Can't blame OPEC for everything when our own oil companies are setting records in profits.
I have nothing against making profits. But fuel is not like some luxery we douse ourselves in. It is vital to our way of life, and a lot of poor people go cold in the winter or sacrifice on other essentials in order to have enough to buy fuel that the OC not only make profits from, but record setting profits.

 

The record profits are only a sign of good investing. I am not sure how much you know about futures markets but basically the smart oil company finance guy sees the trends of prices rising and buys a future stake at today’s prices in the market. Then they react on it a year or so down the road. There are specific time frames to react but that is what we are seeing now. Oil companies acting on there future options that they bought a while ago.

I am sure the next question is why are they setting prices on the oil now and not on the price they are reacting on. The answer is basically it is not a smart move. It would cripple those companies in a few years. Not taking profit now that is guaranteed and reinvesting it into better methods of refining. Watch in the next 5 years you will see these same oil companies struggling because there future options have run dry and they are paying the higher rates that they have set the prices against now. Do not be fooled that OPEC does not have a huge control over the market. They are just sitting back right now waiting for all of those previous investments to run out and start taking huge hit to the US market.

The dependency on oil is our own fault. Ford and GM already produce the entire fleet of cars in the Brazilian market and they run on fuel derived from corn. The top two car makers in the US and one of the US's largest crops are used to do the same thing gas does right now in the US but we are not willing to produce the car that can use it because we do not want to fund the stations and states to make this an option. It makes not sense. It is almost an example of cutting off ones nose to spite the face. Hybrids are just a faze we will go through before we get off of our oil dependency. Think of how much even in the last 20 years fuel has gone up per gallon. Now think what it will be like in another 20 years when the oil supplies start to exhaust themselves and we are looking at the prices mention in the EU nations.