The highest gas prices in the state as of 3:15 Sunday afternoon are anywhere from $4.49 to $4.69 per gallon, and anywhere from Carbondale to Mattoon to Sycamore.
The State Police need to be ordered by the Governor to be pulled out of their speed traps and sent to these stations immediately and start questioning on-site managers as to who their superiors are, where they live, and then go to those residences and start arresting people. They are thieves. Criminals. Crooks. And they need to be locked up until they can appear before a judge.
I thought I’d never see myself type this, but this is NOT entirely the fault of oil companies. When the West side of the state is still able to sell gas for $3.75-$3.99 (which IS still a ripoff blameable on the oil companies) while the south, east, and Chicagoland areas jack up their prices as much as a dollar in the last 48 hours, those district managers, those small-time operators, need to be arrested for price gouging and price fixing.
Criminal. Absolutely criminal.
Like it or not, people, gas and diesel fuel are as NECESSARY right now, in this current society, for survival as food, water, and sleep. I can’t invent another type of fuel, or I would. I can’t walk to work, or ride a bike, or ride a horse, because work is 55 miles away. Groceries cannot be delivered, staples of survival, without gas or diesel being involved in SOME way as part of the transportation process.
So the price gougers and opportunists are nothing more than the common thieves who break into homes and businesses and steal goods. They are nothing more than the commo thieves who get us into a privatized, corporate war for profit, like the Bush/Cheney/Halliburton/PNAC bunch has us in. Lock them up too, while we’re at it, for not doing a damn thing about these gas prices for the last five years. Disgusting f’ing lowlife a’holes.
UPDATE, Monday Morning: Gas in Farmington is $3.83. Less than 10 miles south in Canton, it’s $4.09. All the excuses in the world CANNOT justify a difference that large.
UPDATE 2, Monday Morning: Oil prices are plummeting, $95 early this morning per barrel. We should see gas prices dropping accordingly, no?
UPDATE 3, Monday morning, Texas Governor Rick Perry reported on CNN this morning that the “oil industry dodged a bullet on this one” in reference to Hurricane Ike. He said since they generate their own electricity, all refineries were back up and running in SE Texas this morning. So there goes THAT excuse from the gougers.
9 responses so far ↓
1
rev
// Sep 14, 2008 at 3:29 pm
Following is a posting from Marginal Revolution addressing this issue………
Response to my Mother
Alex Tabarrok
My wonderful mother is upset, like pretty much everyone else, at the price of gas. “Well, the hurricane has knocked out a lot of production on the gulf coast,” I say. “Yes but there’s plenty of gas in the pipes that was produced before the hurricane – the suppliers are gouging.” she responds. Arrghhh….must resist, must resist, must be ….nice. “mmm,” I say. You and my Econ 101 students (103 actually), however, are not so lucky.
Many people think that price is determined by historical cost. Price is never, ever, determined by historical cost. Price is determined by supply and demand. If supply or demand change then the price changes regardless of historical cost. Last year’s fashions? The price falls regardless of cost. Chopped up dead sharks? If demand is high, the price is high regardless of historical cost. If the demand for gas were to suddenly fall, the price of gas would fall too, regardless of cost. In the present situation the supply of gas has been reduced and the price has gone up. Historical cost is always irrelevant.
Is the high price due to supplier gouging? Not at all. If you want to blame anyone for the high price blame your fellow buyers not the suppliers. A high price means that some other buyer is outbidding you to obtain the limited supply. It’s buyers who push up prices in a competitive market and it’s suppliers who push prices down!
It’s true that some suppliers are making big profits but people have the cause and effect backward. It’s not the high profits which are causing the high price. It’s the high price which is causing the high profits. If you were to tax the high profits, for example, you wouldn’t reduce the price. Indeed, quite the opposite because the high profits motivate suppliers to increase the quantity of gasoline as quickly as possible.
The last point brings us full circle because as the situation stabilizes suppliers increase the quantity supplied until price is pushed down towards long-run costs (which are also historical costs). Thus, in the usual situation it appears that price is determined by historical cost. It’s only in the brief time period when a shock shifts (short-run) supply away from historical cost that we can see the truth. Price is determined by supply and demand.
Addendum: Is it just me or did Ken Arrow ever feel the need to correct his Mom on economic matters? Did Adam Smith? “Look Mom, I know you’re upset about the price of mutton but let me tell you about this new theory I’ve been working on…”
September 14, 2008 at 06:50 AM
2
mortonmalaise
// Sep 14, 2008 at 5:43 pm
When I left Bettendorf, IA, on Saturday, gas was $3.55 a gallon. When I got home to Morton, it was over $4.00.
3
bjstone
// Sep 14, 2008 at 6:34 pm
Now that I’ve got my head to stop spinning from Rev’s comment
, I’m still not sure there was anything in those six paragraphs (that appear to be defending or somewhat justifying the high prices, near as I can tell) that remotely justifies how prices can be .75 cents apart only a few miles apart.
Supply and demand my arse, someone’s taking advantage to make a killing. And they should be taken to task, or at least I should be allowed to take them out behind my shed and kick the snot out of ‘em.
4
postsimian
// Sep 15, 2008 at 8:41 am
I remember after 9/11/01 people had raised gas prices to over $5 per gallon. One day. This is up from, what, a buck and forty? Gouging. No supply was shortened. There was no demand spike. These scumbags need to be in jail.
5
postsimian
// Sep 17, 2008 at 2:13 pm
I posted a worksheet over on peoriaspeaks.com’s forums comparing the price of gas at $147 per barrel (and subsequent $4.30/gallon pump prices) to our current $97 per barrel (and $3.95/gallon pump prices). That’s a 34% difference.
I was working based on the $4.30 per gallon price. First I took our $0.405 gas tax out of the picture, then took the 8% sales tax out of the remainder. I deducted 34% from the total of that price, then added 8% and $0.405 to that. I ended up at $3.23 per gallon. Prices today were at $3.95.
In a sort of double-blind study, my co-worker had run his own numbers based on our local tax information, but instead of using the peak prices and working backwards (what I did), he took the current wholesale price, added distribution costs and taxes and ended up at *drumrolllllllllllllll*
$3.21 per gallon. These fuckers are gouging. We just mathematically proved it.
6
postsimian
// Sep 17, 2008 at 2:32 pm
Oh, also, the math isn’t perfect, but it’s not chaos-theory different. For instance, when you take 8 percent from 100, then add 8 percent of 92 to 92, you won’t end up with 100, but it’s still pretty damn close. I’d say my margin of error is no more than 10 cents.
7
BJ Stone
// Sep 17, 2008 at 3:15 pm
That sounds about right. I read today that the last time oil was at $97 per barrel, Illinois prices were ranging from $2.95 – $3.20, but I can’t remember where I saw it. I’m searching for it. Either way, a bunch of crooks still need to be jailed.
8
postsimian
// Sep 17, 2008 at 3:57 pm
By all means, keep searching!! I just made a post on it, and that would be a stunning example of gouging.
9
BlargenBlog » Blog Archive » UPDATED: Maybe this is wrong, but…
// Sep 17, 2008 at 4:12 pm
[...] BJ Stone mentioned something that made me wonder: what were prices like the last time crude was selling for $97/barrel? I decided to look. [...]
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