Sad and true
Most folks don’t know how business works. And, for some reason, profit is a bad word to a lot of people. To illustrate this, in the very near future there will be gnashing of teeth and accusations of price gouging as, by most accounts, the price of a gallon of gasoline starts to rise.
March 3rd, 2011 at 10:24 am
Most businesses do not operate on speculation…
March 3rd, 2011 at 10:34 am
The sadder and truer is how the number jobs lost in our economy can be directly tied to each penny increase in the price of gas.
March 3rd, 2011 at 10:46 am
John Smith,
Go back up the supply chain of everything from gasoline to Grape-Nuts and you’ll find you’re wrong.
March 3rd, 2011 at 10:50 am
Some businesses operate entirely on speculation. Hedging, futures, insurance, etc.
March 3rd, 2011 at 10:52 am
Economic illiteracy marches on…ahem, *cough* even in these comments.
March 3rd, 2011 at 12:14 pm
I’m guessing that most folks understand that gas prices rise as the price of oil rises – what bugs me is the non-linearity of it: the spot price of oil goes up, and within minutes, the price at the pump goes up – not because the gasoline being sold suddenly cost more for the station to buy (yesterday or last week), but because the next load certainly will – BUT – when the price of oil drops, pump prices don’t begin to drop until all that high-priced gasoline has worked it’s way through the system and is finally replaced with lower-cost gas.
March 3rd, 2011 at 12:20 pm
Since small businesses are the majority and a majority of small businesses fail they obviously do not base their business on speculation… You know failure to look to future expense or lack of planning if you will…. Hence MOST businesses do not base themselves on speculation….
The detection of Subtly is becoming a lost art I see.
Gifts for the obvious are rarely gifts. They blind you to reading between the lines.
March 3rd, 2011 at 12:48 pm
Along with its spelling, apparently.
March 3rd, 2011 at 1:09 pm
Too bad there are laws against a gas station owner posting price as $x.yy + tax.
The Statists dont want the average person to think it is their fault. Sure, you are all sheep, and we only need to trim your wool… dont mind the missing one, he wasnt feeling well and was taken to the hospital…..
March 3rd, 2011 at 1:13 pm
My Father had to pay $10,000 in fines because he was found guilty of price gouging at his Gas Station a couple years ago during a gas crisis.
He was making 5 cents for every gallon he sold at the time…not a 5% profit margin mind you (that would have been 20 cents per gallon.)
He went out of business shortly thereafter, along with two other stations in the same town. There is only one there now, and people gripe about gas prices and how long they have to wait at the pump.
During that same time, government made 40 cents per gallon!
March 3rd, 2011 at 1:27 pm
Actually my problem is grammar not spelling. Used it as an adverb without a verb to modify…
March 3rd, 2011 at 2:20 pm
There is a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of normally-agreeable people suddenly started arguing with each other.
March 3rd, 2011 at 3:05 pm
Sticky prices are sticky, but no-one wants to sell a commodity for more than it costs to restock it.
Works to our disadvantage on gasoline. Works to our advantage on nearly everything else.
When many European countries switched from their own marks or lira to the Euro, it had the unanticipated side effect of making the price of everything unsticky at the same time. Boy did the fur fly!
Around here many of the gasoline retailers get a sizable proportion of their income from convenience-store food, drink, and cigarette sales. I have a feeling that they have been preemptively increasing their prices in case of a regional emergency (like spring floods), because if they have to constrain their prices due to “anti-gouging” laws, they run out of fuel. Without fuel to sell, they also lose the casual traffic that buys the much higher margin stuff from inside the store.
March 3rd, 2011 at 4:12 pm
I wonder why nobody in the MSM, or any liberals for that matter, aren’t yelling about how this is Obama’s fault and how his oil cronies are making obscene profits…. Actually, I know why. It doesn’t fit the narrative.
March 3rd, 2011 at 6:03 pm
When acquaintances/coworkers complain about the rising cost of oil/gas, I suggest that instead of directing their ire at oil companies they turn their attentions towards the Federal Reserve, their fiat currency and the debasement of the same via QE … but all I get is the oft seen “Divide by zero” expression.
Fugg’em, my motorcycle gets 70 mpg.
March 3rd, 2011 at 6:04 pm
All businesses operate on speculation. When you spend what it takes (100s of thousands to billions) to start a business, you’re betting that it will, some day, pay off. That’s after you’ve litteraly lost sleep, wondering where your next meal, or your next mortgage payment, is coming from. You’re betting the whole farm. Then you’re expected to donate to every kid who walks in the door asking for money for anything from the school band trip to the “save the polar bears” campaign, to the local quilting club. And you’re an asshole who only thinks of money. Then, when you think you may just be starting to get somewhere, you get the next tax bill, and you realize you’ve only been working for the government, the accountants, and the lawyers the whole time.
You realize at that point why we’re all fucked.
March 3rd, 2011 at 9:56 pm
What kills me is we have several different state taxes on gas here. One of the taxes is based on a percent of the wholesale cost. So, the higher the wholesale price of gas goes, the more the tax is, and the price at the pump goes even higher. The last week or 2 the pump price has been going up about 10 cents a day. Should hit $4/gal this weekend.
March 4th, 2011 at 1:58 am
I’d just like to see some porn on a flatscreen at the pumps so I feel like I’m not the only one getting screwed.
Gas prices went up another cent today,between this time last week and today,they had climbed by at least 5c.