Living Car Free - Gas prices are not "down".

http://66.70.86.64/ch.gaschart?Country=Canada&Crude=f&Period=24&Areas=USA%20Average,Canada%20Average,&Unit=US%20$/G

I thought of this when my sister commented to me about how gas prices are down. It annoys me how the oil companies are so good at acclimating people to higher prices this way. Raise the prices by $1.30 over ten months into the summer, then drop them by $.30 and people go about clapping that prices are down. Meanwhile, prices have gone up by an entire dollar from the average at this time a year ago. It must be great knowing people are this gullible, and being able to so freely take advantage of them.

Yes, some of my coworkers have been discussing how nice it is that the high prices are "finally over". They were just complaining about this same price three months ago! :lol:

http://66.70.86.64/ch.gaschart?Country=Canada&Crude=f&Period=24&Areas=USA%20Average,Canada%20Average,&Unit=US%20$/G

I thought of this when my sister commented to me about how gas prices are down. It annoys me how the oil companies are so good at acclimating people to higher prices this way. Raise the prices by $1.30 over ten months into the summer, then drop them by $.30 and people go about clapping that prices are down. Meanwhile, prices have gone up by an entire dollar from the average at this time a year ago. It must be great knowing people are this gullible, and being able to so freely take advantage of them.

If you were selling gasoline, what would you do with retail prices when the price of a barrel of
oil goes from the $60 range in 2006 to the high$90s in 2008?

The price is rising because of increased demand.

The only "down" there is to retail prices is part of the normal seasonal fluctuation. They'll be back at an all
time high next summer.

$4.00 a gallon for high test here.
But I'm on an island right now, prices here are usually higher.

Gullible isn't quite the word I would use...stupid or ignorant would be more like it. They have no clue and won't until the last drop has been pumped. I saw a similar situation after Katrina hit, people spending hours waiting in line to get 5 gallons of gas:rolleyes: Me I filled my truck BEFORE the storm hit, then didn't drive it unless absolutely necessary. Amazing how much gas my bike needs:roflmao2:

Aaron:)

Yes, the oil companies have once again "conditoned" the public to accepting high fuel prices.

It worked and was proven out during the OPEC oil embargo of the 1970's and still works today. :notamused:

i read that if hurriane Gustav takes out lots of oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico, prices could shoot up to the $5-$8 range.

not that it will affect me a whole bunch.. besides food/shipping prices i suppose.

i read that if hurriane Gustav takes out lots of oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico, prices could shoot up to the $5-$8 range.

not that it will affect me a whole bunch.. besides food/shipping prices i suppose.

But every product you buy is shipped.

But every product you buy is shipped.

right. which is why i said "besides food/shipping prices."

the point was that, as a car-free hippie, i at least don't really need to worry about the price of gas going up. i can absorb rising prices at the market no problem.

All you have to do is look at the Europeans. They are conditioned to pay way more than we do. Their roads are more packed than ours!

Gas prices aren't high enough yet. The real fun is all in front of us.

We'll still have some costs to pay but cutting out driving will eliminate a lot of the costs that others will be paying.

I think it's more that the trend of ever increasing gas prices has stopped for awhile so people are feeling better about it. Traffic has certainly picked up around here.

i read that if hurriane Gustav takes out lots of oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico, prices could shoot up to the $5-$8 range.

not that it will affect me a whole bunch.. besides food/shipping prices i suppose.

Of course, we all know that a storm in the Gulf of Mexico couldn't disrupt supplies enough to change world total supply significantly.

What was telling is that oil and gas prices rose IN ANTICIPATION OF THE HURRICANE IN THE GULF OF MEXICO!!

So, prices are no longer being adjusted for what is happening to supply, they are being adjusted to what MIGHT happen.

I think at this point, Big Oil, can just stop all the BS efforts and just raise prices. I don't need some story about weather in the Gulf of Mexico, or potential wars in the Middle East, or violence in Nigeria, or the nuove riche in China to appease my displeasure at rising fuel prices. Today, Big Oil has the world by the throat and we all know it.

right. which is why i said "besides food/shipping prices."

the point was that, as a car-free hippie, i at least don't really need to worry about the price of gas going up. i can absorb rising prices at the market no problem.

In a moment of brilliance, I decided I wouldn't make a long car trip, partly because of the high price of gas. So I decided to fly.

What was telling is that oil and gas prices rose IN ANTICIPATION OF THE HURRICANE IN THE GULF OF MEXICO!!

its not big oil you need to complain about, but instead the futures market....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Futures_exchange

I think it's more that the trend of ever increasing gas prices has stopped for awhile so people are feeling better about it. Traffic has certainly picked up around here.



I've seen this trend so many times, it's no longer amusing. Regular gas is down from $4.80 to $4.40 locally, traffic has picked back up, but with a larger number of newer compact cars, and with the addition of older compacts and small motorcycles/scooters that have been pulled out of mothballs.

Someone mentioned the price drop to me the other day. I agreed prices have come down in recent weeks but we're still paying 25 per cent more than we were on Jan. 1. That put it into perspective.

I was just complaining to my wife yesterday how the public seems to think gas prices are "down." Saw Robin Meade's show in the morning, and she was talking like that. Naturally, the public would believe CNN early in the morning. My wife replied how the higher gas prices didn't really effect driving patterns around town here at all. How easily our society grows accustomed to higher prices, and then is fooled into believing there's been some relief!

I thought your comparison chart was interesting, in that in late 2003/2004 when I first started driving, I was paying $1.35 a gallon to fill up my 85' Lincoln town car. I think I put nearly five bucks into that thing every day.

I have stopped driving now, but just a few weeks ago my co-workers were paying over $4.00 a gallon. That's a 300% increase in four years. It astounds me that people are considering $3.50 a gallon cheap, not because I think it's too expensive, but simply because how cheap gas really was just a few years ago. It's like the days of sub-$1.35 a gallon were decades ago, not a few years.

You can fool people for awhile, but eventually, people are going to look in their thin wallets and then start searching their pockets for coins. The increases in gasoline prices are going to be felt, especially by those with lower incomes.

People are smart enough to start looking at their transportation and lifestyle and make changes.

People are smart enough to start looking at their transportation and lifestyle and make changes.

Maybe in the snowy Midwest, but for middle TN you are giving people too much credit, I'm afraid. :innocent:

The increases in gasoline prices are going to be felt, especially by those with lower incomes.

I live on a lower income, trust me, no one cares how fuel prices affect lower income people.

It's a classic example of "How to boil a frog"

It's a classic example of "How to boil a frog"

For people who never boiled or attempted to boil a frog, can you explain that?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiling_frog


The boiling frog story states that a frog (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frog) can be boiled alive if the water is heated slowly enough — it is said that if a frog is placed in boiling water, it will jump out, but if it is placed in cold water that is slowly heated, it will never jump out.

In this case, it's a metaphor for stress adaptation, where higher and higher prices are perceived as new norms.

In this case, it's a metaphor for stress adaptation, where higher and higher prices are perceived as new norms.

But does it actually work? Can I really boil a frog without it jumping out?

Apparently, yes. Start with cool water and heat it. I've seen video of it in Psych classes about stressor adaptation syndromes and they sat there contentedly until the boiled.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiling_frog



The boiling frog story states that a frog can be boiled alive if the water is heated slowly enough — it is said that if a frog is placed in boiling water, it will jump out, but if it is placed in cold water that is slowly heated, it will never jump out.

[Edit] too late with research..sorry for extra post

I live on a lower income, trust me, no one cares how fuel prices affect lower income people.

I can't say I know how bad it is, because the gas prices are just an annoyance for many of us. I'm reading a book right now called Asphalt Nation, and it has opened my eyes a bit on how much the lower income folks are affected by the cost of transportation. We spend so much public money newer, bigger roads and so little on improving public transportation. Everything we do in America is car centric. That leads to so much of the urbanization of America and the continuing increase in gas comsumption and air pollution.

I was thinking about bike commuting before reading this book. Now, I'm commuting 4-5 days per week. I've shaved the family gas cost by about $150 per month. Not much, but it helps and I feel like I'm supposed to be doing it.

I'm not car free yet, but moving towards car-light. I think I can keep our family from adding cars as my kids move through their teenage years, at least.

This culture is not only car-centric, but petro-centric. EVERYTHING, every part of the economy and infrastructure is based on oil, not only fueling cars but manufacturing cars (and everything else), look around at all the plastics used everywhere, made of oil in factories powered by oil, resources are extracted in one country, oil is burned ot get them to another country, where oil is used to process them into a product, then oil is burned to get it here then people burn oil to get to the store to buy it then the packaging and eventually the product is thrown away into ever-expanding carcinogenic mountains of toxic garbage delivered there, again, by garbage trucks burning oil. There is already widespread violence and war over control of oil AND the tanks and trucks and planes and the whole military effort is fueled by oil....so soon armies will be fighting wars for access to a resource with which to fight more wars. Ethanol is a scam because it actually takes more fuel to produce that it yields. Almost all major industries would not be viable with out MASSIVE government subsidies, basically your tax money as welfare for the already-extremely-rich (much much more money than is spent on social welfare). Solar panels are ecologically damaging to produce and have short serevice lives. According to Derrick Jensen's book Endgame (maybe the best book I have ever read, excerpts of which are at endgamethebook.org, read the Premises first) 90% of the energy we expend comes from sources other the year's food crop (most of which was grown using oil to power the tractors and to manufacture the pesticides). We're living on borrowed time. This is NOT SUSTAINABLE. We have already past peak production globally, yet more and more people are driving cars, also more and more plant and animal populations are shrinking and disappearing, more and more forests are cut down, more and more peole get cancer, more and more money is spent to develop manufacture and employ weapons of war, more and more the climate shifts, and more and more trivial and thoughtless becomes what passes for news or discourse.

Well said Funky. Problem is most people don't want to hear the truth and few are willing to change.

Well said Funky. Problem is most people don't want to hear the truth and few are willing to change.

I'm a big hippie, but this is one place where the market is really going to help us out. We will not be petro-centric when oil is expensive.

Sadly, I fear, we will still be car-centric (using whatever alternative energy floats your boat).

Not just oil companies that do this . . . happens all the time with other products as well. It's called "capitalism." If you sell something, you're going to try to get the most money for it that you can. The price is determined of course by what consumers are willing to pay. There's always a "tipping point" for products where consumers will simply decide enough is enough and cut back. When it comes to gas prices, we reached the tipping point. Let's say, for example, you develop a new material for bike frames that's by far the lightest, strongest, smoothest riding material ever. You're going to put them on the market priced as high as you possibly can, and still maximize your profits. If they don't sell well, you drop your prices. If they're selling like crazy, up goes the price. Starbucks is a good example. Who in their right mind would pay $4 bucks for a cup of coffee? Well, because Starbucks determined that alot of people will, they have made alot of money. Of course the tide is turning a bit, and Starbucks is now in a bit of trouble. So, if they "drop" their prices from $4 bucks to $3.50, they're doing the same thing the oild companies are doing.

People see cars as "necessary" or "essential" in the USA. Its dumb but all of our infrastructure around us is screaming, "DRIVE YOU FOOL" and are culture echos that sentiment. When gas prices go up people feel that they just have to pay. We need to educate these people....

Don't forget those on the other end of production who suffer under capitalism (or more broadly, industry, or even more broadly, civilization itself). Not only will goods be sold for as high a price as possible but also produced for as low a cost as possible. This means going to the poorest countries where you can pay the lowest wages, with the laxest labor and environmental laws, laws which are often re-written by those with economic (which means political - remember, the primary function of government is to preserve property) clout. It is very hard for me to sympathize with people paying "high prices" for oil. These prices are still artificially very very low. If you consider the human and economic costs of the government subsidies, military activity (to secure oil), and health problems caused by both military activity (depleted uranium anyone?) and the extraction and burning of oil (cancer cancer cancer), all costs that the rich pass on to the poor and the people of the future, oil and this whole lifestyle are extremely expensive, and will very likely cost a great many of us our lives.

We've been here for about 200,000 years. Life didn't change all that much in that time, relatively speaking. How fast has it changed since the advent of civilization 6,000 years ago? How much faster since the industrial revolution 150 years ago? How much faster still in the last 60 years after WWII when car culture (and chemical agriculture) took off? How fast has the health and well-being of the earth all everything on it changed in each of these periods?

Felt this thread deserved a bump...note where prices are today, and compare them to last year's rates.

http://66.70.86.64/ch.gaschart?Country=Canada&Crude=f&Period=24&Areas=USA%20Average,Canada%20Average,&Unit=US%20$/G

Oh Canada! Or should we say, OMG Canada!. Jeeze I thought our gasoline was expensive. Looks like Canada is a buck more per gallon. What do you get for that extra dough, affordable health-care or something?

Funny how truly simple-minded consumers can be. I posted this on another thread, but a friend of mine just bought a 17 mpg SUV last week because "gas prices are down again".

Some quick math = 17mpg auto 10,000 miles of driving. $4.00/gallon gas = $2,353 investment in gasoline

17 mpg auto 10,000 of driving, $5.00/gallon gas = $2,941 investment in gasoline.

Man, that just seems like a lot of dough.

No, gas is definitely NOT down. On Thursday, when I filled up, it was $1.23/litre (I think that's $4.67/gallon) .... on Friday it was $1.36/litre ($5.16/gallon) ... and I've seen $1.40/litre ($5.32/gallon) in the two days since then.

All in one day, the amount I spend on gasoline each month went up about $70/month. Not impressed.


And it's all because of US refineries ... or so we're told.

Funny how truly simple-minded consumers can be. I posted this on another thread, but a friend of mine just bought a 17 mpg SUV last week because "gas prices are down again". :roflmao2: The funniest thing I heard all week.

No, gas is definitely NOT down...And it's all because of US refineries ...
Yeah, it's been a little windy down here lately. I think we're still missing a few offshore platforms too, if you happen to find any of them please send 'em back, much obliged.

Oh Canada! Or should we say, OMG Canada!. Jeeze I thought our gasoline was expensive. Looks like Canada is a buck more per gallon. What do you get for that extra dough, affordable health-care or something?
The other day our gasoline prices jumped by 14 cents a litre from $1.329 to $1.469. We noticed it, but in the grand scheme of things, is it really all that much? For a 50-litre fill, it's an extra $7. That's all. That extra $7 is less than the cost of two designer coffees at Starbuck's. It's less than a meal at McDonald's. It's less than a pair of drop-in sessions at the local gym. Those who want to keep driving will do so. The latest price increase won't slow them down.

The other day our gasoline prices jumped by 14 cents a litre from $1.329 to $1.469. We noticed it, but in the grand scheme of things, is it really all that much? For a 50-litre fill, it's an extra $7. That's all. That extra $7 is less than the cost of two designer coffees at Starbuck's. It's less than a meal at McDonald's. It's less than a pair of drop-in sessions at the local gym. Those who want to keep driving will do so. The latest price increase won't slow them down.


Seven dollars at the pump maybe bearable to most motorists, but let's not forget the ripple effect on other commodities that we buy that are transported using fuel. Factor in those items and it's more of a hit to the pocket book than just a few dollars extra at each fillup.

The other day our gasoline prices jumped by 14 cents a litre from $1.329 to $1.469. We noticed it, but in the grand scheme of things, is it really all that much? For a 50-litre fill, it's an extra $7. That's all. That extra $7 is less than the cost of two designer coffees at Starbuck's. It's less than a meal at McDonald's. It's less than a pair of drop-in sessions at the local gym. Those who want to keep driving will do so. The latest price increase won't slow them down.


Yes, it definitely is all that much!! I have to drive about 1050 kms a month to University right now ... and that price jump had the potential to really add up!! No, I can't move closer to the University ... my job is where I live, and it would cost me more to move than it would to commute, even at the higher price of gas.

As a student, I don't buy designer coffees at Starbucks, I drink cheap and nasty instant coffee. I can't afford meals at McDonalds, I pick up a $0.30 bagal at the grocery store for lunch. And I go to the University gym, which is included in my tuition.

Yes, I kept driving even with the price increase ... I had no choice.

Fortunately ... I filled up the day before the price increase, and then just as I was running out again, someone told me that the gas in one of the small towns around here did not increase, so I went there. And now the prices are dropping again. Thank goodness. Nothing like gouging the students!!!

http://66.70.86.64/ch.gaschart?Country=Canada&Crude=f&Period=24&Areas=USA%20Average,Canada%20Average,&Unit=US%20$/G



Wanted a look at prices from the past few days in comparison to prices over the past few years.

Wanted a look at prices from the past few days in comparison to prices over the past few years.

Here is a look at today's price. About the same as last year at this time. Looks like the price dropped to me. Just in time too, because my wife and I are going to a wedding in Des Moines, 400 miles/7 hours R/T on Saturday/Sunday. This will be my first fill up in months. One tankful will cover it. About $35 for $2.80/gallon for 100% gasoline (10 cents/gal more than rock bottom 10% ethanol) should cover fuel costs at the average 32 mpg on our Sentra at 65 mph with the A/C running.

Every gas station here has a fairly large sign advertising its price for the cheapest grade of fuel. Whenever the price fluctuates, even by a penny or two, people are talking. I understand this. Most people use fuel for their day-to-day lives. So by the same token, why don't grocery stores all have big signs advertising their lowest priced loaf of bread or perhaps the cheapest apples in stock? We have gas price wars but we don't have bread price wars. It's possible to live without being a direct consumer of motor fuel but it's not possible to live without food.

Every gas station here has a fairly large sign advertising its price for the cheapest grade of fuel. Whenever the price fluctuates, even by a penny or two, people are talking. I understand this. Most people use fuel for their day-to-day lives. So by the same token, why don't grocery stores all have big signs advertising their lowest priced loaf of bread or perhaps the cheapest apples in stock? We have gas price wars but we don't have bread price wars. It's possible to live without being a direct consumer of motor fuel but it's not possible to live without food.

Around here grocery stores (i.e. supermarkets) do have big posters advertising their weekly specials and the local Sunday newspaper is filled with their ads for special prices on various products including loss eaders of one sort or another.

Odd, the stations in my area are still at around $3.79. Which is what I would have guessed the price was.
There are some in town in the $3.59 range, with a small handful less than that.

I seem to vaguely remember a news story recently talking about how NC, and Raleigh in particular, are considerably higher than the rest of the country. Apparently that's correct if the posted chart is accurate.

I'll admit that it's nice that I've stopped paying attention to the price of gas. I guess trying not to lose my shirt in the market is enough of a diversion :mad:

Gas prices are down sharply. I don't have a clue about what happened, but it sure happened fast.