Gas prices reach all-time highFollow

More coffee purchased = more employees hired at the local coffee shop. More tickets purchased = more employees hired at the local theater. Higher gas prices translate to nothing locally. It doesn't take three extra people to sit in a hut and watch you at the automatic pump just because gas costs more. For that matter, it doesn't take extra people to refine gasoline just because it costs more. The full Crain's article did account for local refining/pumping impact but it's fairly minimal.

There is no local economy benefit to higher fuel prices -- it's just a drain. There's nothing difficult to understand about it.

Edited, May 22nd 2007 8:54pm by Jophiel

There's a mighty spectrum between "bad" and "Killing the economy". again, I realize that ignoring this makes it much easier to build strawmen.It has a negative impact. It won't be the downfall of Western civilization. Honestly, I can't understand the disconnect.I'll add again that no gas station ever added employees because the price of gas went up so they needed extra help. I can't make the same argument about a coffee shop selling extra coffee.

Yeah. I think you were taking Totem's statement waaaaay too literally though. When you say "my feet are killing me!", do you really mean for people to call 911 cause you're dying? Same deal. It's an expression...




Bad analogy. If the price of coffee beans goes up, resulting in a cup of coffee going up by say a quarter, does that store increase the number of employees? No? Hmmm...

I'll also argue that no stores increase the number of employees if their profit goes up. They hire sufficient employees to cover the registers and keep the store running. Sometimes that means that the business will make money. Sometimes it wont. If the store makes more money, typically the owner will spend it doing something else. He's not going to hire a couple extra people to stand around just because now he's got the money to do so. Exactly as a gas station earning additional profits because people are spending 5% more on gas then they were before isn't going to do so either.

Still not sure why you think this is different. Now, you could argue that the money lost by the coffee house and gained by the gas station will cause the coffee house to go belly up, and you might be right. But then maybe the gas station owner will use the extra profits he's earning to buy a part ownership in the local coffeehouse and it'll all work out in the end? The money is still ultimately flowing around the same local area in the same approximate amounts.


I'll repeat it again: The far bigger effect is that the overall "cost" for goods and services goes up across the board when gas prices goes up. That's not because a consumer spends money here instead of there, but simply because the cost to actually get the goods to market increases by a measurable amount.

Apparently one he had use use over and over and over in lieu of making a realistic point Too bad that's not what we're discussing. I suppose we can make up an analogies where the cost of popcorn goes up a million-thousand percent as well but that wasn't the point of the theater comparison either.

When the cost of coffee beans jumps 25%, let me know. Until then, the point is that enough people with an extra $20 in pocket to spend on coffee influences the number of employees sufficent to run the coffee shop. Raising gasoline prices doesn't influence the number of employees sufficent to sit in the hut. It merely soaks $20 extra out of the local economy. Even the slight benefit to the gas station owner doesn't amount to anything -- no one claims that the franchise owner of the corner gas station is rolling in extra wealth when gas prices go up. There's also the obvious difference in demand and "need" between gasoline and coffee, caffine jokes aside.I'm not sure why you're unable to understand the situation as presented and instead need to make up irrelevent analogies.I'd argue that they're inter-related but you guys seem to be having enough trouble with the basic concepts that there's no reason to make this even more confusing.

Edited, May 22nd 2007 10:03pm by Jophiel

"Totem is trying to refute the point that he inferred from Jophiel's post that higher gas prices would have a "large" scale economic impact. That's the problem there." --Lurk

Not exactly, Lurk. Jo's initial post had the intellectual excitement factor of tapioca pudding at a chili cookoff. I decided that the subject was worthy of discussion, but needed considerably more pizzazz than the "I like cheese!" blandness of the typical thread he starts. This nothing new, we spar over this very issue on a semi-regular basis.

Totem

Well, it goes beyond that but the employee example served as an easy proxy to the entire thing.Which proves that you still have no grasp on it At this point, I have to assume the disconnect is intentional and you're just trolling. Was fun times, though.

MSN runs on some exceptionally shitty servers. For the amount of refreshes I needed to bring the story up, you'd think I was hitting Clstr 8.

i read it totem, and i guarentee you its a pr piece financed by an oil company.

a way to point you at something other than the truth. yes, congress is at fault to a point. the point being authorizing those 14 BILLION dollars in tax cuts they handed top the energy companies and didnt demand ANYTHING in return at a time when they were already making obscene record profits taken directly out of the consumers pocket.

if any of you followed the enron scandle, it pretty much sumed up how large oil companies work. it was a perfect micocosm of big oil.

they dont but oil today at todays prices. they buy oil futures today for our needs some many months into the future. they buy futures to day to cash in for oil months from now. so that dollar per barrel price you see is what the oil companies expect oil to cost a few months from now based on political climate, terrorism, refinery capacity, EXPECTED demand, all jumbled together into an incomprehensible formula(intentionaly some think) into a spacific dollar per barrel they EXPECT it to cost. they are not buying a barrel of oil, they are buying a certificate they can cash in on a barrel of oil tomarrow.

that cirtificate, weather the actual cost of the oil meets their projections or not, is however what they charge for their product TODAY. their profit comes in when what they paid for their cirtificate ends up being greater than what the oil actually costs based on their super complex formula.

so the oil companies set up shell companies, or work with third world governments as a shell company, to actually produce the oil. sell it to the shell comapny who jacks up the price, then sells it to a subsidary holding company who then sells futures for the oil itself.

enron messed up because their shell companies were here in teh US and thus subject to federal audits. thats the only differance.

i have over simplified what actually goes on because i doubt mabe half of you could follow it from start to finnish, myself included.

the cliff notes, yes, they are rapeing you.

that said, they are a FOR PROFIT company. they are not in this for posterity or the greater good of man kind, they are in it for the dollar. they found the product, they turned it into something usefull, they SHOULD be allowed to charge what ever they want for THEIR product.

free market kicks in when what they are charging ends up being greater than the cost of finding another solution. no one is going to make electric cars if the cost of the bateries is greater than the cost of a couple years worth of gasoline. thats the bottom line. we are not there yet. and probably wont be for a while.

what you CAN do. buy a honda civic or a toyota tracel. they both get almost 40 miles to the gallon, and the hondas are built right here in the good ole USA with american labor. they are on the bottom of the price list too.

that alone will force american car companies to move out of the country...err...produce a more effeciant product. this solution however only empowers oil companies though. you are still using their product, and they will just jack up the price more to make up for the lost revenue for selling less gasoline. they are a for profit company and thats what for profit companies do. same with hybrid technology. it changes nothing. it only lowers your expense for a short time untill the oil companies start jacking up the price to cover the lower demand for their product.

i see alot of talk about building a new refinery. ROFL, your a for profit bussiness, adn you think spending a few hundred million dollars to increase the volume of a product so you can make LESS MONEY for it is a good idea? not gona happen. and no politician who sucks on the loobiests teet is gona try and force it to happen either.

the solution is hydrogen or electric or both. period.

but dont expect any government lobbiest puppet to make that happen. and expect a HUGE amount of resistance toward any company trying to do it on their own from both the federal government AND big oil, up to and including outright buying the company and squashing it, or withholding materials they need to get t done.

that what capitolism is all about. our only hope actually lies in other countries. thats a shame because it guarentees we will be way behind the power curve for inovation and technology for the forseable future.

Japan has had hydrogen/electric vehicals for lease in Japan for 2 years now. no gasoline. no oil. just a hydrogen fuel cell used to extend the range of a battery driven car.

russia has had hydrogen powered mass transit busses on a few of their cities since the 1960,s, because oil was just inaccessable.

germany built a hydrogen powered submarine during WW2. we sunk it, but it was real.

the first boing 707 was hydrogen powered.

it can be done. it can be done now. but look at the big picture. look at how much of this countries net worth is based on theoil industry. look at how many people this industry emploees.

a catch 22. we can significantly reduce oil cosumption NOW. but it COULD force this country into a spireling recession of magnitudes never before seen in the world if its not done carefully.

allto save you a few hundred dollars a year.

expect HUGE political resistance. expect HUGE private industry resistance.

go buy a honda civik.

i think you need to take your own advise.

language is about espressing an idea vrbally. language is not DICTATED by rules, but the other way around. when a group of people verbally express themselves, patterns in those verbal exchanges are found, and those patterns are then used to define the communitation itself.

when mispelled words, contractions, or flat out slang is used often enough, new words are added to the definition of that particular language.

the art defines the rule.

your hung up on spelling, and use and context because it is not used in the way you read in the "rules" you learned in school.

you lost sight of the big picture. its not about the rules. its about expressing the idea. the expresion itself defines the rules. not the other way around as you like to believe.

so, criticizing someone for not following the "rules" for written language is ludicris. the "rules" themselves were formed by bending the rules for the purpose of expressing an idea. the rules are not a finnished product we hvae to or should follow. the rules are a dynamic ever changing definition of the way we CHOOSE to express ourselves.

seems your parents took you to school, taught you how to read the words, but didnt tell you what the words ment. language is art, not science. language is about the communication of an idea, not the format it is done in.

the big picture.

Only when it's done in a language people can understand or read, ya ninny-fuck

Edited, May 24th 2007 11:32am by Kaelesh

Only when it's done in a language people can understand or read, ya **********
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ohhh, you sound so much more mature than i do. im not worthy.