Gas prices on rise for unseasonable spike

What chaps my back-side is the rise in price is based on nothing more than speculation by the wall street crowd! It's not like we lost a well, production was shut down due to a hurricane, or there's any shortage... Nope, just speculators spreading propaganda to line their pockets...

 

we need an artificial rise in the cost of gas that is caused by increased federal taxes.

burning gasoline has created a huge strain on the federal deficit. we have to pay for clean up, toxic leaks such as oil, gas spills, etc. (scientists conducted a study of Puget Sound a few years back and determined that the equivalent of the Exxon Valdez is being dumped into the sound from oil leaks from the cars we drive EVERY 3-5 years)

increasing the cost of gas thru taxes will push down consumption and lower the price of oil caused by speculation. its a win-win. problem with that scenario...its the handful of oil companies with billions to spend on the control of public opinion against the millions of people with their 2 cents... unfortunately the 2 cents is worthless

 

Another member on here says we should be happy and be grateful, the oil companies are being nice to us since they don't pay taxes.

 

Actually,no need to gloat. People that use to belittle the Prius will start coming to you and asking questions of how it "actually" works. You can explain to them that the batteries don't go bad after 2 years and that you don't need to pay $5000 for every repair. etc. The best revenge is for them to know the truth. It will bother them more knowing that they were believing crap and that it is now costing them big time.

 

sorry, i disagree with this. increasing the cost of gas hurts the economy more than it lowers consumption. People still have to drive to work, and not everyone is going to by a hybrid for many legitimate reasons. So you really stick it to the working class when you just dump more taxes on gas.

 

In economic terms, there's a difference in meaning between price and cost. I think what you mean here is 'price', being what we pay at the pump. The cost of gas includes many things like exploration, drilling, refining, and also less tangible things like pollution and environmental degradation. Much as we'd all like to pay less, gas is heavily subsidised, in that the economic cost of using fossil fuels is greater than the price.

 

Disagree on what? The economics? Well that would be wrong because that is exactly what happened in 2008 when gas hit$ 4. Demand dropped....more people took the extra effort to use public transportation or form carpools. Ya that is want happened.

So u can't say it hurt us because it did not. It created an inconvenience that people dealt with in different ways. It was a great thing to happen to this country because for the first time we as commuters realized we did have options

 

Yes gloating is bad form, and gives other prius drivers a bad name. Although toyota gave you a good deal, those of us that bought in November and December when toyota was hiding problems got screwed with resale value.

Although speculation was the cause of the last price spike that is only a minor cause this time. OPEC has just voted again to maintain current production levels, which are substantially lower than those in 2008. The fed's QE pushed down the value of the dollar, and because the bulk of oil is produced outside the united states, oil prices rise in dollar terms. QE2 would further push the price up if it were not for the European debt crisis weakening the euro. The reason for this price increase, is the same as they have been all my life, OPEC, which has monopoly control. They will increase production if prices rise too fast, so that consumption does not drop greatly, but they do not seem to have good control in their economic models.

It is very difficult to attribute the drop to $4 gasoline versus high unemployment and a bad economy. Definitely the $4 gasoline made the economy worse and caused more misery.

I am in favor of small increases of the gas tax to fund those things related to gas use and environmental clean up. If the money is simply flushed down the toilet as most government spending does a huge price increase will mainly hurt some segments of the population, transportation and agriculture. Car pooling can and has happened with $2 gasoline, and changing cars or jobs for higher gas prices is a long process, so a slow steady increase would likely provide the best results.

 

This is certainly true for the short term price swings that currently affect our market. Long term major increases would produce an elastic reaction in our market, but at the expense of economic pain and suffering as we weaned ourselves off of our current petroleum habit.

The question becomes whether we want to suffer slowly while we gradually wean our economy away from petroleum, or put it off in exchange for suffering a massive, cataclysmic economic event in the future? It's not a fun choice to make. If we drag our feet long enough, the choice gets made for us.

Tom

 

Amen. I personally would rather work a little every day starting TODAY.... then tackle an impossible job adecaxe or two down the raod

 

I have found that simple stick figure cartoons illustrating the concept actually work quite nicely and can be drawn on a napkin.

 

Its also worth noting that almost all major oil companies pay almost nothing in income taxes to the US, but do pay substantially overseas:

Exxon Says It Does Pay U.S. Income Taxes - Energy Source - How we power the world - Forbes
What the financial statement says is that ExxonMobil, in 2009, after a handful of deferrals, recorded a total U.S. income tax benefit (i.e., a refund) of $46 million. Next to this, it shows total non-U.S. income taxes of $15.165 billion.


My mistake was in thinking that these figures somehow reflected actual tax benefits and liabilities. So what we should have written was that ExxonMobil “recorded” no U.S. income taxes for 2009 instead of “paid.” All you re-bloggers out there, please note the clarification. Mea culpa.


And for all you commenters outraged that Exxon isn’t paying taxes in the U.S., don’t worry, it is. Our article only focused on income taxes, but it’s worth noting that the 10-k also records $7.7 billion in other taxes in the U.S. (like sales taxes) and more than $50 billion of other taxes and duties paid (I mean recorded) overseas.

 

Is Exxon paying taxes or are its licensed independent retailers paying the tax? because if that is the case, then i know where the money is coming from

 

The industry doesn't talk only about income tax, because governments are very creative about how they take money from the energy companies. Corporate income tax is only one of a myriad of ways.

They use the term "Government Take".

There's income tax, inventory tax, lease fees, permit fees, royalties, mandated partners, lease bonuses, etc. A million names besides tax, but they all involve money from oil sales revenue being paid to the government. If you look just at income tax, you'll miss most of the total government take.

For the US Gulf Coast, it's about 40% of (oil value-production cost). For Gulf of Mexico it's about 55%. For Alaska, it's about 70%.

The lowest 3 (at about 25%) are Portugal, Ireland and Spain...the three countries with financial problems now, maybe they should take more like their neighbors.

No matter where the oil is produced, including the US, lots of money flows to the local government under various forms of "take".