Gas station mutterings.
By Paul J Cella Posted in Miscellanea — Comments (15) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
I spent $50 to fill the gas tank of my minivan the other day; and will spend about the same, all over again, this week. A mere two years ago (as I discovered recently when I happened to flip through one of my daughter’s baby books), this would have been close to half that sum. Yet the “shock” of a rise in the price of strawberries and fast food, occasioned by the enforcement of immigration law and the concomitant tightening of the labor market, would, we are regularly admonished, cripple the economy. The same sort of men who call us to discipline and perseverance in supporting a grueling foreign war — by coincidence, perhaps, in the very region from whence comes the raw material for gasoline — quake with trepidation for what might happen to American enterprise if order were restored on the border. We can remake the world but we cannot restore our own border? It’s the sort of thing that leaves you muttering at the gas station.
Refusing to restore the border is a means of remaking the world. That's why they persist in that refusal.
My harp is turned to mourning, and my organ shall speak with the voice of them that weep. Spare me, O Lord, for my days are truly as nothing.
I still lean toward rank stupidity, though, because of attempts to remake the world elsewhere. A solid argument can be made, as you just did, that it is all part and parcel of the same utopian endeavor. Then I look at those expected to shepherd through this nonsense, apply the razor, and come full circle to my natural inclination.
subscription to utopian nonsense is prima facie evidence of some form of stupidity, so....
My harp is turned to mourning, and my organ shall speak with the voice of them that weep. Spare me, O Lord, for my days are truly as nothing.
It needs to be done again.
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"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it."
-Thomas Paine: The American Crisis, No. 4, 1777
The fundamental right of a nation -- to decide who comes and goes -- is denied us because it would mean self-discipline.
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Gone 2500 years, still not PC.
wholesale prices in my business are jumping with every delivery. I was forced to raise my prices this week, I just can't absorb any more increases.
Managing Editor
If you checked with the Federal Reserve, you would see that the dollar has declined in buying power by a factor of 5 in roughly 30 years. A weaker dollar means it takes more dollars to buy the same amount of gas.
Any routine weekly-daily reading of futures markets reports, ie www.investors.com/editorial will show refinery maintenance, conflicts in Nigeria which contains the highly desirable Nigerian crude, more gas for the barrel of crude, lack of new refineries since the 1970s and rules for various refinery regions have led to tight supply in the US market, in spite of pretty good supply on the global crude market.
The week dollar is usually a result of strong commodities prices, though the week dollar can lead to a strong showing in the large cap companies ie the Dow average. Interest rate differentials or speculation about interest rates is also contributing to a week dollar. Though be careful with speculating that the $$ will continue to weeken, watch the FOMC statement to see if they are hawkish for the direction of the $$ over the next month.
I cannot see how you can deny that it takes more dollars to buy the same amount of gas. Remember that it took $4.50 in 2006 to buy what $1.00 paid for in 1976. That's a 15 percent per year average loss in buying power over 30 years. The question is whether or not the price of gas has gone up faster than the dollar has declined. You can make a case either way depending on what range of years you want to use.
And it also takes a lot more dollars to buy the same amount of work. That's why gas is still cheaper than it was back in 1981. We haven't even touched the high yet.
Of course the reason for the recent spike has mostly been unplanned refinery outages, lack of spare capacity, and low inventories. We are in dire need of more refineries.
Back to the subject at hand... it seems to me if we cared half as much about enforcing our immigration laws as we did about preventing a caribou from ever catching a glimpse of a well head anywhere, we wouldn't have an illegal immigration problem.
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Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself. - Milton Friedman
but this year has seen refinery fires in Whiting Indiana at the old Amoco refinery plus a lot of tech glitches. Like our electrical grids, our refineries have been hobbled by postponed upgrading, massive EPA tinkering with special fuel mandates legislated by Congressional nimrods, and NIMBY constrictions on new refinery construction. Yet the big govt nanny-squads tut-tut when gas prices rise and want to know the reasons.
About twenty years ago, Amoco was allowed to run its Yorktown refinery free of EPA-mandated Congressional tinkering. The WSJ had at least one article on the front page above the fold on how Amoco was able to refine high-grade test at about 60% of the EPA-gold plated product cost. The DOE then revoked the exemption, since Congressmen with refineries in their districts were losing a lot of business for their make-work projects that mandated refinery upgrades require. In big-oil states, that meant some campaign contributors were unhappy.
Next time you blame Big Oil for high prices, remember OPEC and its US ally, the Senate and House of Representatives. And then think of the old Yorktown refinery, shut down I believe for economic reasons after the DOE exemptions were lifted.
And that's the sole reason for no more refineries.
Why build things that won't make back their cost before you're out of oil?
The EPA has solved basically nothing. Sure -your- air is better -- unless you live in Cali, where you get Chinese dust from the desert. It hasn't solved any real pollution -- that just went overseas.
We aren't anywhere close to running out of oil and won't be for many years. There is more than enough time for several generations of refineries to make money.
If you always find yourself arguing the exceptions rather than the rule you just might be rapidly sliding down your own slippery slope to irrelevance. -CommonCents
But we can restore our border. Hence, the slack-jawed political class tries to do the former and refuses to do the latter.