"Harry Krause" wrote in message
. ..
RG wrote:
Unless you have a magic wand and pay a reduced price at the
pump.............you certainly are.

The only magic wand in play here is the one that Harry feels is up his
rectum. Like you, the price I pay for gas is the price determined by
current market conditions.


The oil industry needs to have its books audited by really independent
outside accountants, and face excessive profits taxes.

Your hatred has bred naiveté. It has blinded you to the world we now live
in.

You are probably a much more educated man than I. But in all my studies of
business finance, economics, the Internal Revenue Code, and the United
States Constitution, I have never come across a legitimate definition of
"excessive profits", or for that matter, a suggested punishment of same.

"RCE" wrote in message
...

"Harry Krause" wrote in message
...


I just love these rationalizations you guys use in an attempt to make
everyone feel better about being butt-fu*ked by the Friends of Bush.


Using your expression, we've been butt-fu*ked one way or another by every
administration since Harry S Truman's.
The older I get, the more I realize it and the more disgusted of
politicians and politics I become.

RCE


Yup. All politicians should spend two terms. One in office and one in
prison.

On Fri, 21 Apr 2006 21:51:41 -0400, Harry Krause
wrote:

RG wrote:
74 cents a gallon? Wow!
When considering inflation, the 1976 USD was worth $.27 to a 2006 USD.

A $.39 increase/gallon in 1976 in today's USD's converts to a $1.44
increase.

And you were saying?


Let's focus on what you're saying, or at least making an attempt to say.
You either don't understand the concept of reduced purchasing power due to
inflation, or have difficulty explaining it. A 1976 dollar was worth more
in terms of purchasing power than a 2006 dollar. The exact opposite of the
way you stated it.

The Consumer Price Index was established in 1967, which shall be referred to
as the base year. The CPI index for the base year is 100. The value of the
index as of March 31, 2006 is 578.86, the latest statistic available. The
index value for 1976, the year of comparison in this thread, is 170.5.

This means that a 2006 dollar is worth only $.1728, when compared to a 1967
dollar (100/578.86). This also means that a 2006 dollar is worth only
$.2945 when compared to a 1976 dollar (170.5/578.86). Therefore, it can
also be said that a 1976 dollar was worth 3.4 times what a 2006 dollar is
worth (578.86/170.5) in terms of purchasing power.

Therefore, your calculation of a $.39 increase/gallon equating to a $1.44
increase in today's dollars is a bit overstated. The true math equates $.39
to $1.33 ($.39*3.4). However, this seems like an odd way to examine the
situation. Why not just compare the cost of a gallon of gas then versus
now, in terms of inflation adjusted dollars? A 1976 price of $.74 per
gallon, after the mentioned increase that year, was offered in an earlier
post. I'm not sure if that number is 100% accurate, but I have no quarrel
with it. Using that 1976 value, and the CPI data offered above, that means
that a gallon of gas today should cost $2.52 per gallon ($.74*3.4), if gas
was to have increased in price commensurate with the CPI. The only
conclusion that can be drawn from this is that the cost of gas appears to
have risen slightly higher than the aggregate cost of living when using 1976
and 2006 as your goalposts in time, a conclusion I don't find particularly
profound or shocking. Actually a bit of a bore, not really amounting to
much. Not entirely unlike yourself, Jim. Using any different slices of
time for comparison would likely yield different conclusions, or at least
those drawn about the cost of gas.





I just love these rationalizations you guys use in an attempt to make
everyone feel better about being butt-fu*ked by the Friends of Bush.

Harry, have you ever found a thread in which you couldn't insert your 'Bush
hate' rhetoric? What adolescent crap!
--
'Til next time,

John H

******************************************
***** Have a Spectacular Day! *****
******************************************

What's going on with Big Oil today is analogous.


Perhaps, but it's not a certainty. But even if the analogy is accurate, it
is still conceptual in nature. Much like the concept of price gouging, the
definition of excess profits is very obscure and vague, if it exists at all.
There is a reason that price gouging charges are rarely prosecuted and
almost never successfully so. Without a clear and precise definition of the
concept, proving a case is nearly impossible. At this point, one man's
definition of profiteering is another man's definition of capitalism in its
highest form. Who gets to choose who's definition is the most just? And
it's not just a simple matter of numbers. There is clearly an element of
morality involved here, and any attempt to legislate morality is always a
bit of a sticky wicket. And so goes the perils of a free market society.
At any rate, it would seem that the general gist of your solution to the
problem would be to redistribute wealth from a particular corporate sector,
in this case Big Oil, to the government, via a special provision in the tax
code or a piece of legislation. What a surprise. In other words, robbery,
as you see it, by corporations is unmitigated evil, but robbery by the
government is chaste and just. This has rarely been a good plan, but it is
very Sherwood Forest chic.

But never mind all that. Let's assume for a moment that you indeed were
King of the Forest, and that your heist and shakedown of those that actually
generated the riches through legal means of production was complete. Now
that the coffers of your administration have been enriched in the name of
social justice, what next? From my perspective, your blatant act of
thuggery simply replaced one crime (assuming you believe one has been
committed in the first place), with another. The deck chairs on the Titanic
have successfully been rearranged, but the ship is still in peril. Women
and children first. The true root of the problem has not even begun to be
addressed. And without that, the status quo is pretty much maintained.

The root of the problem is so obvious, it amazes me how little attention it
gets in the banter that always follows a run up in gas prices. Well not
really. It's human nature to point a finger of blame 180 degrees away from
one's self, and Big Oil is such an easy and readily accepted target. Fish
in a barrel, as it were. Much easier than a true analysis of the real
problem, for which there are no easy solutions at hand. We have met the
enemy, and he is us. And it's not a pretty picture.

Are you aware of the astonishing rate of daily conversion of bicycles and
oxcarts to motorized vehicles in China and India, as well as other
developing economies? Do you realize that this process is in its very early
stages and is irreversible? Do your realize that as global wealth and
affluence increases exponentially, so does energy consumption?

Are you aware that all the dino juice that exits today and will ever exist
tomorrow has long since been produced, and that it gets increasingly more
difficult and expensive to find and extract from the ground as time goes on?

Can you tell me the last time a new refining facility was built in the
United States? A new nuke plant?

Are you able to draw any parallels from the above questions with the
irrefutable economic laws of supply and demand? Do you think any of this
might be responsible for the price of a gallon of gas?

Perhaps the central issue is not one of excessive profits, but rather
excessive consumption, of which we are all guilty to some degree. But just
as there is no standard for the concept of excessive profits, there is no
such standard for the concept of excessive consumption.

It seems to me that the only sure way out of this mess is a real and viable
alternative to oil-based energy. It is as obvious as it is elusive. So, I
guess that if I was to expend a bunch of my bodily energy banging a drum for
a cause, it would have much less to do with the evils of profiteering, and
would have more to do with creating epic-sized incentives in the area of
alternative energy research. So, if I were King of the Forest, I'd be
thinking of ways to get the energy companies and the scientific community to
get all over this issue. The promises of riches usually will get most
people's attention. You prefer the stick, I prefer the carrot. I'd also
try and find a way to address the sad state of our educational system, with
one of the targeted goals to increase the level of interest and competence
of students in the sciences. Technology got us into this mess, and it's
going to have to get us out of it. There should be a national sense of
purpose and dedication to the cause similar to the one of putting a man on
the moon in the 1960's. Maybe in a decade or two, we can think out way out
of this. In the meantime, fasten your seatbelts. It's going to be a bumpy
ride.

Are you able to draw any parallels from the above questions with the
irrefutable economic laws of supply and demand? Do you think any of this
might be responsible for the price of a gallon of gas?


I forgot one that I intended to include. I think it's important enough to
add to the equation:

Are you aware of the cosmic joke that has managed to locate most of the
world's oil in countries run by crazy-assed lunatics?

RG wrote:
snip

Are you aware of the cosmic joke that has managed to locate most of the
world's oil in countries run by crazy-assed lunatics?



Are you referring to Texas of the 1980s & '90s?

" JimH" jimh_osudad@yahooDOT comREMOVETHIS wrote in message
. ..

Regardless, I do not agree with or want folks to feel better about the way
the oil companies are raping us. I have posted facts supporting that
position, including posting of the billion dollar profits of Exxon and the
million dollar payoff given to the retiring CEO of the same company.


As much as I'd like to blame bush, aren't these oil prices less related to
bush tactics and more related to increasing world demand and static or
decreasing world supplies.

My gripe is with our consecutive administrations and the consecutive
generations of voters which have failed to prepare for this very energy
challenge that we all know existed. With open global markets and an absence
of product to sell to the world (our major export is our consumerism), we
find ourselves crying about the price of gas because our personal economies
are overwhelmed by our dependence on gas. In my lifetime, the oil crisis of
the '70's should have been our wakeup call. And, finally, my personal fear
that we are at the mercy of other countries for our energy needs is what
will be a major factor in the fall of the US Empire.

Then, there's my personal conspiracy theory to add to the mix: the oil
industry is manipulating supplies and prices to force us to allow the
devastation of the continental shelf and arctic tundra for US oil profits.
Again, a failure to make a break from our dependence on non-sustainable oil
supplies for our countries energy needs.

"Bryan" wrote in message
m...

" JimH" jimh_osudad@yahooDOT comREMOVETHIS wrote in message
. ..

Regardless, I do not agree with or want folks to feel better about the
way the oil companies are raping us. I have posted facts supporting that
position, including posting of the billion dollar profits of Exxon and
the million dollar payoff given to the retiring CEO of the same company.


As much as I'd like to blame bush, aren't these oil prices less related to
bush tactics and more related to increasing world demand and static or
decreasing world supplies.

You'd think, except for one thing: The price swings are too fast to reflect
world demand. How quickly did we just go from $2.50 to $3.00? Three weeks?
Demand most certainly did NOT increase by the same proportion. This is
nothing but a game. Until we have a "hard" solution, I have an idea. Get
futures traders the phuque out of the oil business. They serve no useful
purpose. "Oil prices rose due to fears of this that or the other thing....".
Bull****.

"Don White" wrote in message
...
RG wrote:
snip

Are you aware of the cosmic joke that has managed to locate most of the
world's oil in countries run by crazy-assed lunatics?

Are you referring to Texas of the 1980s & '90s?

Not surprising that you would think so, Don. Your blame-o-meter for all the
world's woes has always been stuck pointing in a southerly direction. You
might want to send it in for a reality check and general recalibration.

Until we have a "hard" solution, I have an idea. Get futures traders the
phuque out of the oil business. They serve no useful purpose.

Actually they do. If your business profits are significantly influenced by
the price of oil, futures contracts pay a very important role in the
stabilization and predictability of those profits. It's called hedging.
But I suspect you knew that.