Argument against high gas prices

On Jun 6, 10:34 am, "Gig 601XL Builder" wrDOTgiaconaATsuddenlink.net
wrote:
wrote:

You have an arrogant attitude. I have more in my 401K than you do,
but that's not the point. I have a legitimate right to gripe about
over-inflated gas prices which are clearly a result of poorly managed
supply (not increasing demand). Investing money in the industry which
I don't have at my disposal (and no, 401K funds typically don't allow
you to target one or two stocks) as a way of saying "if you can't beat
them, join them" is BS. Also, trying to insult my education is
juvenile. You are what, 25? 28? You act like 17.

Dean

You seem to be under the misconception that it is the oil company's job to
keep prices as low as posible. This is not the case. It is their job to keep
profits as high as they can. Obviously the market is able to deal with
prices at thier current rate because according to all the reports I've seen
holiday driving didn't drop a bit this past memorial day weekend.

I didn't go anywhere... not at these prices! I'm not claiming its the
oil companies fault anyway, its really our EPA restrictions that
prevent new refineries from being built. Think that is going to
change?

wrote in message
oups.com...

I didn't go anywhere... not at these prices! I'm not claiming its the
oil companies fault anyway, its really our EPA restrictions that
prevent new refineries from being built. Think that is going to
change?

Depends on whether people want to believe every excuse the oil industry
comes up with while it's making record profits by throttling the oil supply.

Do the math. There's a theoretical finite amount of petroleum. As an oil
baron, your job is to extract the maximum value out of every drop that you
can. Abundance reduces profit margin. All you have to do is keep the supply
limited an blame the war, Katrina, lack of refineries, unrest is the middle
east, speculation that oil prices will rise, EPA regulations, treehuggers,
"unexpected holiday shortages", whatever. If everybody had diamonds, they
wouldn't be worth a fortune.

Energy supply and rate manipulation worked for Enron, they just didn't do it
as smartly or with as much support.

-c

"Gig 601XL Builder" wrDOTgiaconaATsuddenlink.net wrote in message
...

You seem to be under the misconception that it is the oil company's job to
keep prices as low as posible. This is not the case. It is their job to
keep profits as high as they can. Obviously the market is able to deal
with prices at thier current rate because according to all the reports
I've seen holiday driving didn't drop a bit this past memorial day
weekend.

How's general aviation doing? How are the airlines doing? Who do you
suppose is subsidizing all those federal bailouts?

Notice that the cost of groceries and postage are going up? Notice how the
cost of airplane rentals is going up?

At what point do we say "It's not the oil company's job to keep oil prices
as low as possible, but it's America's job to protect its own economy
instead of letting Exxon make record profits while the entire US economy
suffers?"

If you guys want to get Draconian about it, I think it's perfectly fair for
Uncle Sam to push back. Don't Tread on Me, et al.

-c

gatt wrote:
"Gig 601XL Builder" wrDOTgiaconaATsuddenlink.net wrote in message
...

You seem to be under the misconception that it is the oil company's
job to keep prices as low as posible. This is not the case. It is
their job to keep profits as high as they can. Obviously the market
is able to deal with prices at thier current rate because according
to all the reports I've seen holiday driving didn't drop a bit this
past memorial day weekend.

How's general aviation doing? How are the airlines doing? Who do you
suppose is subsidizing all those federal bailouts?

Notice that the cost of groceries and postage are going up? Notice
how the cost of airplane rentals is going up?

At what point do we say "It's not the oil company's job to keep oil
prices as low as possible, but it's America's job to protect its own
economy instead of letting Exxon make record profits while the entire
US economy suffers?"

If you guys want to get Draconian about it, I think it's perfectly
fair for Uncle Sam to push back. Don't Tread on Me, et al.

-c

All America has to do to stop Exxon from making record profits is to but
less gas. Since the amount of discretionary driving this past Memorial Day
weekend didn't drop it seems that the American people really aren't that
concerned with the current price of gas.

General aviation sucks as industry though there are several bright spots.
Fuel costs are part of the problem especially in the recreation sector I
don't think that's all of it. For some reason people just don't seem to
won't their own airplane. People are spending just as much on boats that
burn just as much if not more gas than aircraft do.

As far as bailouts go they need to stop. I might not say that if it weren't
for the fact that there are airlines out there making money.

It's when the government gets involved that everything will get really
screwed up.

"Gig 601XL Builder" wrDOTgiaconaATsuddenlink.net wrote in message
...

All America has to do to stop Exxon from making record profits is to but
less gas.

Since the amount of discretionary driving this past Memorial Day weekend
didn't drop it seems that the American people really aren't that concerned
with the current price of gas.

Ah, yeah. All the people talking about it all the time aren't really
concerned.

How's GM doing these days? How about the airlines? Taxpayers gotta keep
bailing them out. Must be a reason nobody wants a Hummer anymore, but, I
wonder what it could be.

Fuel costs are part of the problem especially in the recreation sector I
don't think that's all of it.

Naw. $4/gallon at the boat fuel dock for gas that cost $2/gallon in 2002
at the same pump has nothing to do with why I don't put my boat in the water
anymore, and kayak instead. And, nobody's at all curious as to why the cost
of gas nearly doubled in the last two years. Fuel costs. Naaah. Gotta be
something else.

For some reason people just don't seem to won't their own airplane.
People are spending just as much on boats that burn just as much if not
more gas than aircraft do.

I don't drive my boat anymore because of the cost of gas. Nor do my wife
and I take long roadtrips in our jeep. Nor do my friends. Back during and
right after college, you'd not have caught a friend of mine buying a new
vehicle that wasn't American made. But now, they're buying Toyotas which,
you might remember, is wiping the world's ass with Ford and General Motors.
That's because the latter can't seem to deliver a fuel efficent vehicle, at
least until the Escape came along. (One of the Toyota buyers bought an
Escape hybrid and loves it.)

-c

gatt wrote:

At what point do we say "It's not the oil company's job to keep oil
prices as low as possible, but it's America's job to protect its own
economy instead of letting Exxon make record profits while the entire
US economy suffers?"

The economy is suffering? The DJIA is in record territory.

Hey, how about you quit sucking the gub'mint peepee and have them give up
their 45 cents a gallon for sitting there and doing nothing (and, yes, half
of fuel taxes goes into the general toilet...I mean general fund; the vast
majority otherwise goes to prok-barrel projects, such as freeways to no
where in Wet Virginia, or bridges to no where in Alaska)



If you guys want to get Draconian about it, I think it's perfectly
fair for Uncle Sam to push back. Don't Tread on Me, et al.

Thug!

"Gig 601XL Builder" wrDOTgiaconaATsuddenlink.net wrote in message
...
gatt whined...and whines...and whined:


It's when the government gets involved that everything will get really
screwed up.

Every time, in every way.

The only surpluses that government creates are parasites, elsewise, they
only create shortages.

This, one can thnk for mental midgets like "gatt" and a couple generations
of publik skool grauites. For this, Walter Williams must explain it using
terms and concepts a ten yeaar-old can grasp...sometimes.

On Jun 6, 8:46 am, wrote:
On Jun 6, 9:39 am, kontiki wrote:



wrote:

Oooh, so if I invest a whole $500 in oil, I might make what, $500 if I
am lucky? Wow, big deal...

Exactly. Do you expect them to just start paying you money while until
you save enough beer money to buy some shares? Sheesh go collect a
welfare check.

It takes money to make money in the stock market.

That's the general idea.

If you don't
already have it, you have nothing to leverage to make any real money.

Really? Wow I didn't know that!

Talk about needing an education! By the way, I have a B.S.E.E. and
have taken economics courses on the time value of money, so I
understand that anything less than $100K invested in oil isn't going
to make enough money to really be worth crowing about. With the cost
of living rising as fast as it is, you need to be making at least 10%
on your money, and $100K will only earn about $10K annually at that
rate of return. Housing, transportation and medical are the biggest
rising cost factors and they aren't included in the consumer price
index, specifically so that the government can claim low inflation!

Is $500 big money to you?

You are full of crap dude. I started with about $7K that I rolled over
from a 401K account from a previous job. I eventually rolled it into
a Roth and made modest contributions and investments over a period of
the last 7 years. Now the balance is over $80K and I didn't have to
break a sweat. And yes, I've taken the time to learn about investing
and researched stocks on my own. I've bought and sold shares in oil
companies over that time and made money. Its not rocket science.

You have a loser attitude.

You have an arrogant attitude. I have more in my 401K than you do,
but that's not the point. I have a legitimate right to gripe about
over-inflated gas prices which are clearly a result of poorly managed
supply (not increasing demand). Investing money in the industry which
I don't have at my disposal (and no, 401K funds typically don't allow
you to target one or two stocks) as a way of saying "if you can't beat
them, join them" is BS. Also, trying to insult my education is
juvenile. You are what, 25? 28? You act like 17.

Dean

Gas prices are inflated to you. They are not inflated to the guy who
is working to sell TO you.
Buy a more fuel-efficient car, car-pool, whatever. Just quit griping.
The supply isn't poorly managed. The oil pool is finite. It used to
bubble out of the ground on its own; now they are drilling exploratory
wells as deep as 13,000 feet. It's running low and playing hard to
get. AND there are more people wanting it. I do SO wish I had
invested in oil stocks about 5 years ago...

We used to have more mass transit in this country. CAR companies
worked hard to get rid of it in the first half of the 1900s, and it
worked quite well. Bummer.
Today, people can stop buying the guzzlers, and that would go a long
way to end the carping about the price of gas.

As far as the 401, "takes money to make money", etc. Many of today's
rich are not Kennedys--by which I mean they didn't inherit money and
influence, but they somehow made it. And not likely by just working
60 hours per week. They invested what they could, early in their
careers. Making $500 on an investment isn't much, but keep rolling it
back in. Next time you have $1000, next time $2000, etc. After a
while, you have some real money. Most young people today could easily
retire rich if they stopped with the $5 bottled water, cut back a bit
on the Starbucks, and bought wine for a buck less per bottle. Put all
that away from the time you are 20, and in many cases it's a pretty
good starter nest egg.

"kontiki" wrote in message
...
wrote:


Oooh, so if I invest a whole $500 in oil, I might make what, $500 if I
am lucky? Wow, big deal...


Exactly. Do you expect them to just start paying you money while until
you save enough beer money to buy some shares? Sheesh go collect a
welfare check.

It takes money to make money in the stock market.

That's the general idea.

If you don't
already have it, you have nothing to leverage to make any real money.

Really? Wow I didn't know that!

The best leverage is SMART'S.

Lynn Tilton, whose company, Patriarch Partners, just bought MD Helicopters a
couple years ago, was a single Mom ten years ago, and is now worth over $1
BILLION from stock investments.

There's a number of people doing stock analysis who made their fortunes
starting with just a few hundreds. Before my wife "retired" from the stock
brokerage business to run OUR business, she knew, personally, dozens of
self-made millionaires.

What do they have that Dean hasn't got?

Lemme guess...

"Matt Barrow" wrote in message
...

There's a number of people doing stock analysis who made their fortunes
starting with just a few hundreds. Before my wife "retired" from the stock
brokerage business to run OUR business, she knew, personally, dozens of
self-made millionaires.

What do they have that Dean hasn't got?

People used to defend Enron. An electrician down the road from me that
worked for PGE--whom Enron acquired--lost his $330,000 retirement
investment.

Apparently, the Enron book-cookers were just smarter and had something they
the electrician didn't have. Nobody defends Enron anymore, but, at the
same time, nobody listened when a handful of people predicted disaster.
(People did the same with the dot com industry, but as long as people were
making money hand over fist, they didn't bother to listen.)

-c