Thoughts on gas prices

Re: Thoughts on gas prices

In article <482c366f$1@kcnews01>,
"C. E. White" <cewhite3@removemindspring . com > wrote:

> I am pretty tired of the whole gas is $4 and the sky is falling
> hysteria.
>
> I just bought a 20 oz Diet Pepsi for $1.25 from a machine at work.
> That's $8 a gallon! And I'll usually drink 4 of those (sometimes more)
> in a day. So I am spending around $5 a day on Pepsi. My drive to work
> is 26 miles round trip. My car gets around 23 mpg making this trip, so
> I am using about 1.13 gallons of gas. Even at $4, per gallon, that is
> only around $4.52 per day.
>
> So who should I get mad at - Exxon-Mobil, or PepsiCo? Or maybe
> Time-Warner - I spend $100 on cable / internet a month. This is about
> the same as I'll spend on gas for commuting to work in a month even
> with gas at $4.
>
> Or maybe the local movie theatres? $7.50 to see a movie??????????
>
> Ed

I agree. The problem with gas in the United States is, it is too cheap.
The price per gallon does not cover the cost of driving. There are
thousands of bridges in need of repair, but no money to pay for the
repairs. Gas taxes barely put a dent in covering the cost of road
maintenance. So this talk of a gas tax holiday is preposterous, esp.
since the gas companies have not given any guarantees that they would
pass the savings onto consumers.

Re: Thoughts on gas prices

On Sat, 17 May 2008 08:20:47 -0400, Shawn Hirn <srhi@comcast . net >
wrote:

>
>I agree. The problem with gas in the United States is, it is too cheap.
>The price per gallon does not cover the cost of driving. There are
>thousands of bridges in need of repair, but no money to pay for the
>repairs. Gas taxes barely put a dent in covering the cost of road
>maintenance. So this talk of a gas tax holiday is preposterous, esp.

Totally, agree. IMO, we should be thinking the opposite way since
people are used to paying high gas prices, now would be a good time to
raise the gas tax substantially. Since people have demonstrated that
they are going to pay nomatter how big the price increase, Let's add a
dollar or two to the gas tax (as always, preferrablly at the state
level) and get the DOT's the money they need for road and bridge
repair/new construction and what ever is left can be used for other
transportation related things.

>since the gas companies have not given any guarantees that they would
>pass the savings onto consumers.

Exactly. All this gas tax holiday crap is going to do is to transfer
even more money into the pockets of the ceo's and saudi arabian
suicide pilots.

--
"That's interesting. I hadn't heard that. ..."
--George W. Bush on the prospect of US$4.00 gas

Re: Thoughts on gas prices

> I agree. The problem with gas in the United States is, it is too
> cheap. The price per gallon does not cover the cost of driving.
> There are thousands of bridges in need of repair, but no money
> to pay for the repairs. Gas taxes barely put a dent in covering
> the cost of road maintenance. So this talk of a gas tax holiday
> is preposterous, esp. since the gas companies have not given any
> guarantees that they would pass the savings onto consumers.

Since oil companies don't set the price at the pump, to think that
they CAN pass any "savings" is flawed logic to begin with.

The problem with the gas tax "holiday" is not that I'm against
lowering taxes. Far from it. But artifically lowering the price
only increases demand and raise the price right back up where we are
now.