Gasoline Prices Going Up Again?! :(

[Phil C]

In just a few days in Sinton they have gone up from about $1.83 back up to $1.95!! :eek: :( :mad:


"The fat cats are taking advantage of the holiday demand to increase company profits and bonuses" said the Sinton GodFather passing by on his way to Corpus Christi to a meeting.

[Adidas410s]

Originally posted by Phil C
In just a few days in Sinton they have gone up from about $1.83 back up to $1.95!! :eek: :( :mad:


"The fat cats are taking advantage of the holiday demand to increase company profits and bonuses" said the Sinton GodFather passing by on his way to Corpus Christi to a meeting.

umm...no it's called there are two coldfronts (one in the NE and another coming from Canada and across the plains into Texas) that will drive the price of gas/oil up because of the the increased usage.

Don't let "the man" get ya down Phil! ;)

[zeus63]

don't complain. We're I'm at we are still paying 2.09

[Rainman]

noooooooooooooo

[pirate44]

so what. the farmers our gouging us with the price of a gallon of milk and nobody notices

[eagles_victory]

Originally posted by zeus63
don't complain. We're I'm at we are still paying 2.09 I am saying the same thing as you. I will take 1.95 anyday.

[mustang04]

Originally posted by pirate44
so what. the farmers our gouging us with the price of a gallon of milk and nobody notices

well...milk is a little more important:D

[zooleander]

Originally posted by pirate44
so what. the farmers our gouging us with the price of a gallon of milk and nobody notices most people dont buy milk 20+ gallons at a time

[bullfrog_alumni_02]

i paid 2.79 when i filled up on satuday night. but it feels better to pay 2.79 for the good stuff instead of 3.20 for the cheap stuff.

[Ranger05]

were payin 2.05 here in midland i would love to have 1.83 or even 1.95

[72Yoeman]

Don't blame the farmers for milk prices, they aren't selling direct to you just like cattlemen aren't selling beef direct. Besides when was the last time you complained about the price of softdrinks or BEER when you stopped for something cold - did you blame a farmer for that too??? Like a lot of everything else here it's all the middle "men" and processors takin' their cuts that drive prices up including our gubbermint. Get off the farmers, towndog.

[Leopards,class of 75]

$1.95 in Gainesville, was as low as $1.89 last week.

[whtfbplaya]

Originally posted by 72Yoeman
Don't blame the farmers for milk prices, they aren't selling direct to you just like cattlemen aren't selling beef direct. Besides when was the last time you complained about the price of softdrinks or BEER when you stopped for something cold - did you blame a farmer for that too??? Like a lot of everything else here it's all the middle "men" and processors takin' their cuts that drive prices up including our gubbermint. Get off the farmers, towndog.

Amen

[Pmoney]

went from 2.09 to 2.12 in Snyder

[LewP]

Originally posted by pirate44
so what. the farmers our gouging us with the price of a gallon of milk and nobody notices

I don't drink milk at 65 mph.....

[LewP]

Originally posted by bullfrog_alumni_02
i paid 2.79 when i filled up on satuday night. but it feels better to pay 2.79 for the good stuff instead of 3.20 for the cheap stuff.
I'm sorry, as I'm sitting here facing an artic blast, I don't feel too sorry for someone in Hawaii.. :D

[lepfan]

Originally posted by pirate44
so what. the farmers our gouging us with the price of a gallon of milk and nobody notices
....all the while they are living on government subsidies!!! My husband had a farmer chew on him about how the gas companies were raping the public....another guy chimed in and made a comment on how many subsidies he cashed in on this year and named the new trucks, Harleys, and Lincolns his family was driving....that really pissed him off!!! The truth hurts...not all farmers are like that...but most I have encountered up here are jerks!

[pirate44]

Originally posted by 72Yoeman
Don't blame the farmers for milk prices, they aren't selling direct to you just like cattlemen aren't selling beef direct. Besides when was the last time you complained about the price of softdrinks or BEER when you stopped for something cold - did you blame a farmer for that too??? Like a lot of everything else here it's all the middle "men" and processors takin' their cuts that drive prices up including our gubbermint. Get off the farmers, towndog.
it was a joke for the love of pete!! i raised cattle for 10 years and my gradfather has done it all my life. i know a little about the stuff. get a sense of humor. i was hackin on a fellow Sintonite.:rolleyes:

[piratebg]

Gas went from 1.85 to 1.95 a couple of days ago. Now it is 1.91. I'm not complaining.

[Whsdogs]

2 days ago gas was 1.97...now its 2.13 :(...miss the good days of under 1.50...my good ole days anyway lol

[lepfan]

Originally posted by pirate44
it was a joke for the love of pete

Sorry to say my comment was not a joke....these 'government checks' are a bit out of hand in my opinion....judging by the way some make themselves appear in contrast to the way they live!!!!

[DU_stud04]

went back up to 2.07 in arlington.......a.97 in a few places in the good ole gp(grand prarie)

i miss the old days of 79 cents...riding my bike to get gas for the lawnmower....ahh the good old days

[72Yoeman]

Take a look at who's drawing those checks, how many acres they're "farming", and how big their family is. Every farmer I know around here has been working as many acres as he can plus running cattle to feed & support his family WITHOUT a guvmint support check. There are those around here(and there's a website listing by county their names and check amounts) "farming" 1000's of acres with new equipment, including pickups & "business" cars paid for with our taxes via subsidies who the "making a living" farmers can't compete with.

It's sorta like football teams & towns - don't lump 'em all in the same category and cuss 'em because of the few who "work" the system.

[lepfan]

Originally posted by 72Yoeman
Take a look at who's drawing those checks, how many acres they're "farming", and how big their family is. Every farmer I know around here has been working as many acres as he can plus running cattle to feed & support his family WITHOUT a guvmint support check. There are those around here(and there's a website listing by county their names and check amounts) "farming" 1000's of acres with new equipment, including pickups & "business" cars paid for with our taxes via subsidies who the "making a living" farmers can't compete with.

It's sorta like football teams & towns - don't lump 'em all in the same category and cuss 'em because of the few who "work" the system.

...not all farmers are like that... (this is quoted from a previous post!!!!!) A lot of farmers are getting check to NOT farm certain areas of land....so they make money just for letting it sit there...

I totally have respect for the farmers who are doing all they can...while having no respect for the ones who are totally taking advantage of the system...It is hard to feel sorry for a whining farmer while he is living a lifestyle that allows him to take several trips to Vegas and Denver for days at a time...such vacations are not affordable to most of us

There is a tax issue here in Kansas also....some farmers aren't paying a fair (or any) share

[spiveyrat]

Originally posted by lepfan
...not all farmers are like that... (this is quoted from a previous post!!!!!) A lot of farmers are getting check to NOT farm certain areas of land....so they make money just for letting it sit there...

I totally have respect for the farmers who are doing all they can...while having no respect for the ones who are totally taking advantage of the system...It is hard to feel sorry for a whining farmer while he is living a lifestyle that allows him to take several trips to Vegas and Denver for days at a time...such vacations are not affordable to most of us

There is a tax issue here in Kansas also....some farmers aren't paying a fair (or any) share

DON'T get me started on Kansas taxes!!! :foul:

[slpybear the bullfan]

After reading this thread... please... a warning,

Don't Milk and Drive.

[spiveyrat]

I am a fan of capitalism and "letting the market work it out". I would much prefer the building more refineries, the diminishing of the number of gas blends, etc as opposed to implementing price controls. However, I am still VERY suspicious of oil companies NETTING BILLIONS in profits in a quarter.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

Four Thousand Years of Price Control


by Thomas DiLorenzo
[Posted on Thursday, November 10, 2005] [To receive the Daily Article in your inbox, go to email services, and tell others too!]

Supply and demand have been allowed to work — at least in a limited way — in energy markets, resulting in ups and downs in gasoline prices. Strong demand coupled with regulatory supply restrictions that were worsened by several hurricanes caused gasoline prices to go up. Then as hurricane-damaged refineries were repaired, gas prices began to plummet.

There have been no significant shortages, thanks to the absence of price controls, but Congress is working diligently to put an end to that outcome. Urged on by an economically ignorant public, Congress recently held one of its periodic Grand Inquisitions of oil company executives to demand an answer to the question: "How dare you profit from the American free enterprise system?"

Accusations of "price gouging" — i.e. allowing market forces to set prices — abound, as do calls for price controls. They aren't always called "price controls," but some slick euphemism such as "anti-price-gouging legislation." It's the same thing.

The case against price controls is not merely an academic exercise, restricted to economics textbooks. There is a four-thousand-year historical record of economic catastrophe after catastrophe caused by price controls. This record is partly documented in an excellent book entitled Forty Centuries of Wage and Price Controls by Robert Schuettinger and Eamon Butler, first published in 1979.

The authors begin by quoting Jean-Philippe Levy, author of The Economic Life of the Ancient World,as noting that in Egypt during the Third Century B.C. "there was a real omnipresence of the state" in regulating grain production and distribution. "[A]ll prices were fixed by fiat at all levels." This "control took on frightening proportions. There was a whole army of inspectors."

Egyptian farmers became so infuriated with the price control inspectors that many of them simply left their farms. By the end of the century the "Egyptian economy collapsed as did her political stability."

In Babylon some 4,000 years ago the Code of Hammurabi was a maze of price control regulations. "If a man hire a field-labourer, he shall give him eight gur of corn per annum"; "If a man hire a herdsman, he shall give him six gur of corn per annum"; "If a man hire a sixty-ton boat, he shall give a sixth part of a shekel of silver per diem for her hire." And on and on and on. Such laws "smothered economic progress in the empire for many centuries," as the historical record describes. Once these laws were laid down "there was a remarkable change in the fortunes of the people."

Ancient Greece also imposed price controls on grain and established "an army of grain inspectors appointed for the purpose of setting the price of grain at a level the Athenian government thought to be just." Greek price controls inevitably led to grain shortages, but ancient entrepreneurs saved thousands from starvation by evading these unjust laws. Despite the imposition of the death penalty for evading Greek price control laws, the laws "were almost impossible to enforce." The shortages created by the price control laws created black market profit opportunities, to the great benefit of the public.

In 284 A.D. the Roman emperor Diocletian created inflation by placing too much money in circulation, and then "fixed the maximum prices at which beef, grain, eggs, clothing and other articles could be sold, and prescribed the penalty of death for anyone who disposed of his wares at a higher figure." The results, as Schuettinger and Butler explain, quoting an ancient historian, were that "the people brought provisions no more to markets, since they could not get a reasonable price for them and this increased the dearth so much, that at last after many had died by it, the law itself was set aside."

Moving closer to modern times, George Washington's revolutionary army nearly starved to death in the field thanks to price controls on food that were imposed by Pennsylvania and other colonial governments. Pennsylvania specifically imposed price controls on "those commodities needed for use by the army," creating disastrous shortages of everything needed by the army. The Continental Congress wisely adopted an anti-price-control resolution on June 4, 1778 that read: "Whereas it hath been found by experience that limitations upon the prices of commodities are not only ineffectual for the purpose proposed, but likewise productive of very evil consequences--resolved, that it be recommended to the several states to repeal or suspend all laws limiting, regulating or restraining the Price of any Article." And, write Schuettinger and Butler, "By the fall of 1778 the army was fairly well provided for as a direct result of this change in policy."

French politicians repeated the same mistakes after their revolution, putting into place the "Law of the Maximum" in 1793, which first imposed price controls on grain, and then on a long list of other items. Predictably, "in some [French] towns, the people were so badly fed that they were collapsing in the streets from lack of nourishment." A delegation from various provinces wrote to the government in Paris that before the new price control law, "our markets were supplied, but as soon as we fixed the price of wheat and rye we saw no more of those grains. The other kinds not subject to the maximum were the only ones brought in." The French government was forced to abolish its evil price control law after it had literally killed thousands. When Robespierre was being carried through the streets of Paris on the way to his execution the crowds shouted, "There goes the dirty Maximum!" If only this were a lesson learned by contemporary politicians.

At the end of World War II American central planners were even more totalitarian when it came to economic policy than were the former Nazis. During the post-war occupation of Germany, American "planners" rather liked the Nazi economic controls, including price controls, that were in fact preventing economic recovery. The notorious Nazi Hermann Goering even lectured the American war correspondent Henry Taylor about it! As recounted by Schuettinger and Butler, Goering said:

Your America is doing many things in the economic field which we found out caused us so much trouble. You are trying to control peoples' wages and prices — peoples' work. If you do that you must control peoples' lives. And no country can do that part way. I tried and it failed. Nor can any country do it all the way either. I tried that too and it failed. You are no better planners than we. I should think your economists would read what happened here.

Price controls were finally ended in Germany by Economic Minister Ludwig Erhard in 1948, on a Sunday, when the American occupation authorities would be out of their offices and unable to stop him. This spawned the "German economic miracle."

2005 Smith Prize Winner: $26
Price controls were the cause of the "energy crisis" of the 1970s and of the California energy crisis of the 1990s (only the wholesale price of electricity was deregulated there; controls were placed on retail prices). For more than four thousand years, dictators, despots, and politicians of all stripes have viewed price controls as the ultimate "something for nothing" promise to the public.
With the wave of a hand, or the flash of a legislative pen, they promise to make everything cheaper. And for more than four thousand years the results have been exactly the same: shortages, sometimes of catastrophic consequence; deterioration of product quality; the proliferation of black markets on which prices are actually higher and bribery is rampant; destruction of a nation's productive capacity in the industries where prices are controlled; gross distortions of markets; the creation of oppressive and tyrannical price control bureaucracies; and a dangerous concentration of political power in the hands of the price controllers.

This is what the economically ignorant among the American public is clamoring for Congress to do with regard to today's energy industry. Let's hope that the recent "hearings" in Congress on the topic of gasoline prices were just another public relations charade.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Thomas DiLorenzo (tomd@mises.org ) is a member of the senior faculty of Mises University and a professor of economics at Loyola College in Maryland. He is the author of How Capitalism Saved America (Crown Forum/Random House, 2004)--which is the Smith Prize winner for 2005--and The Real Lincoln (Three Rivers Press/Random House, 2003).

[lepfan]

Originally posted by spiveyrat
DON'T get me started on Kansas taxes!!! :foul:

Do you want to read my 'form' letter I received from the Governor (who used our tax $$ to fly to IRAQ over Thanksgiving)...SHE IS A JOKE!!!!! Reason 19,456,345 to move from Kansas --- ASAP

[spiveyrat]

Yeah, I'm patiently (ok, maybe not so patiently) waiting for her to be voted out next year. :devil:

Not sure if I saw your "form letter" or not. I remember a while back you writing the gov. And I think you told me or sent me "her" response. But if it's happened lately, I don't know about it.

[rockdale80]

Originally posted by spiveyrat
Yeah, I'm patiently (ok, maybe not so patiently) waiting for her to be voted out next year. :devil:

Not sure if I saw your "form letter" or not. I remember a while back you writing the gov. And I think you told me or sent me "her" response. But if it's happened lately, I don't know about it.

So you don't think there should be any limit on the price of gasoline, or any minimium wage at all?:confused:

[spiveyrat]

.

[spiveyrat]

That's right. Prices will take care of themselves unless there is a monopoly or near monopoly involved.

I did say earlier, though that I am suspicious of the big oil companies, though. There are waaay fewer of them out there and it has turned almost monopolistic.

[rockdale80]

Originally posted by spiveyrat
That's right. Prices will take care of themselves unless there is a monopoly or near monopoly involved.

I understand your point of view, but after boasting record profits it makes me wonder how much of a shortage there actually was. I would hate to see what the price of gas would have been without what little legislation there is already.

[spiveyrat]

Remember too, that after Katrina, there were many countries who showed us their goodwill by sending us oil. And temporary legislation was written to limit the number of blends required by all these crazy laws, thus helping to let refineries to become more efficient.

[Brahma73]

I'm still PO'ed about the whole 9/10 cent crap after something that costs $2.00!!!!!!!:mad: