Fuel Prices...

[BPSCG]

Remember all those folks who were saying a year or two ago, "They should add fifty cents a gallon to the gas tax. That would make people start thinking about saving gas"?

I'll bet they're happy now, right?

 

[zenith-nadir]

Why do people have to move? They don't have to move, they just have to use less fuel to get between point "A" & "B". I remember the fuel/oil crisis in the 70s. Automobiles in America became smaller and more fuel effecient and then in the 90s they ballooned again into what we see today which is mommies driving Hummers, Escalades and Expeditions.

By increasing fuel economy you decrease gasoline consumption...hence you pay less at the pump, therefore less impact on personal spending. Hopefully people will move toward more fuel efficient vehicles.

Sales of full-size SUVs dropped 28% in March from the same month the year before, from 145,918 units to 105,745.

April 4, 2006

 

[brodski]

It should be noted that when I was in London and they were bombing the subway, I was informed that it was really terror against the poor and some tourists. REAL people took a car or car service to work. They did NOT ride the subway.

Whoever told you that was ill informed, yes the very wealthy will use cars, but I can assure you that both the Square Mile and places like Canary Wharf are very well served by public transport, and people from almost all socio-economic groups use them. there is absolutely no stigma attached to using the trains in London, although busses do have a certain amount of stigma attached.
however i would add that the effective and relatively cheep public transport system available in London, is not replicated in many other places in the UK, where car use is pretty much the only practical way of getting around.

 

[Manny]

Moving 'closer' to work wasn't a reasonable goal. I lived close to school, instead. At least it didn't jump around every few weeks.

There are two important things about your example.

First, it's not typical. Most people have a fixed workplace and can sometimes make the choice to live closer to their place of employ (in fact, dockworkers was exactly the wrong counterexample to that -- dockworkers make hella cash in the US and cities with halfway decent docks also generally have at least pretty decent affordable housing stock).

Second, it's becoming more typical as time passes. We're shifting from a manufacturing economy to a service one more quickly than Europe, so an increasing part of the workforce is in your situation -- they themselves are the "asset" of their employer, not a steel mill or assembly plant and they are expected to go to the customer, not the other way around. So that complicates the argument above. Mitigating that of course is telecommuting, but that's growing fairly slowly because bosses like to see the asses their paying either in a seat at the office or at a customer site, not in pajamas in the den. One possible positive outcome of higher gas prices may be an increasing number of people telling their bosses that something has to give -- either the company has to cough up a raise or it has to allow more telecommuting.

 

[Crossbow]

Remember all those folks who were saying a year or two ago, "They should add fifty cents a gallon to the gas tax. That would make people start thinking about saving gas"?

I'll bet they're happy now, right?

Er, I doubt it since that extra money is going to Exxon, Shell, BP, and the other petro companies. I am sure that they will report record, or at least near record, profits again this quater.

If the gas tax was raised and the extra money was being used to develop a good public transportation system, then I expect that they would be happy about that.

 

[Grammatron]

Er, I doubt it since that extra money is going to Exxon, Shell, BP, and the other petro companies. I am sure that they will report record, or at least near record, profits again this quater.

If the gas tax was raised and the extra money was being used to develop a good public transportation system, then I expect that they would be happy about that.

Bless your noble heart, if only the real world worked like that.

 

[roger]

Remember all those folks who were saying a year or two ago, "They should add fifty cents a gallon to the gas tax. That would make people start thinking about saving gas"?

I'll bet they're happy now, right?

What, you have information that there is a 50 cent tax hike on gasoline?

 

[Anti_Hypeman]

The poor people that are really affected by gas prices buy 10+ year old used cars and have little impact on the developement of new cars. High gas prices wont force the middle class into escorts.

 

[roger]

First, it's not typical. Most people have a fixed workplace and can sometimes make the choice to live closer to their place of employ (in fact, dockworkers was exactly the wrong counterexample to that -- dockworkers make hella cash in the US and cities with halfway decent docks also generally have at least pretty decent affordable housing stock).

Well, I made that example, I'm not a dockworker, perhaps it was a terrible choice. But you take the point, yes? Here in the DC area, for example, we have retail locations with high end stores in affluent neighborhoods. It's not really possible to live in these affluent neighborhoods based on the salarys being paid for these positions.

This is why I asked Grammatron if he meant anti_hypeman or the government wasn't planning properly. A side effect of unconstrained growth like this is that workers can't afford to live in the neighborhoods where they work. Now, I'm not arguing that is a bad thing, as you'd have to weigh costs of government planning, restrictions of trade, etc., to decide the net costs. But I can't imagine someone working retail in locations like Bethesda, Georgetown, Old Town, etc (local upper crust mixed retail/mansion home areas) and being able to afford buying a home there as well.

Bottom line, most of the people I know in this area, and ones with pretty good jobs (I write software, you do the math) end up commuting quite a bit in order to be able to afford to buy a house. The ones who don't generally bought before the real estate boom.

 

[Manny]

This is why I asked Grammatron if he meant anti_hypeman or the government wasn't planning properly. A side effect of unconstrained growth like this is that workers can't afford to live in the neighborhoods where they work. Now, I'm not arguing that is a bad thing, as you'd have to weigh costs of government planning, restrictions of trade, etc., to decide the net costs.

Also without arguing whether it's good or bad, that outcome has definitely occurred. But it is not from unconstrained growth; it is from constrained growth. Municipalities limit land use with minimum plot sizes, place restrictions on townhomes, enforce strict segregation of residential from commercial from industrial uses, etc. all to keep it nice for the kind of town they want to be and unaffordable for the kinds of people who clean their houses and operate their cash registers. In many parts of the country if you wanted to build affordable housing which backs up to the regional mall you literally couldn't do it by law -- that space is restricted by law to other commercial developments or there is an open-space buffer with 3 or 5-to-an-acre maximum density housing on the other side.

 

[headscratcher4]

As an interesting aside to this discussion, the president today proposed tapping the strategic petroleum reserve...funny how it was a horrible idea when Al Gore (you recall, the guy who won more votes back in 2000) proposed a similar idea for dealing with high fuel prices.

Well, one man's pander is, well, two man's pander.

http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0009/21/se.03.html

 

[roger]

In many parts of the country if you wanted to build affordable housing which backs up to the regional mall you literally couldn't do it by law -- that space is restricted by law to other commercial developments or there is an open-space buffer with 3 or 5-to-an-acre maximum density housing on the other side.

Good point.

 

[Grammatron]

As an interesting aside to this discussion, the president today proposed tapping the strategic petroleum reserve...funny how it was a horrible idea when Al Gore (you recall, the guy who won more votes back in 2000) proposed a similar idea for dealing with high fuel prices.

Well, one man's pander is, well, two man's pander.

http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0009/21/se.03.html

Do you have a link to that? All I heard is Bush stopped adding to the reserve nothing about opening it up.

 

[Manny]

Do you have a link to that? All I heard is Bush stopped adding to the reserve nothing about opening it up.

headscratcher4 is obviously a Congressman -- a lack of increase and a decrease are the same thing to him.

 

[Nyarlathotep]

I remember the good old days, when gas was only $2.00 a gallon.

**sigh**

 

[roger]

All I know is that my oil and energy stocks have been going through the roof. Yay gas hikes!

 

[headscratcher4]

Ok, it is possible I've overstated...won't be the first or last time, certainly, quick to type not always quick to explore. Anyway, the president proposed, according to the Washington Post:

"To help increase the supplies of fuel available to consumers, Bush said he was directing the Department of Energy to "stop making deposits to the Strategic Petroleum Reserve" until this fall, leaving a bit more crude oil on the market."

Gore proposed directly tapping the reserve. There is a difference, of course, as Bush is suggesting holding off making new deposits in the reserve. But, it seems to me, that if the reserve is for national emergencies, than any oil that is supposed to go into the reserve over a period of time (from now until fall) would mean that the reserve planning would be 4-5 months off where it was expected to be. It also seems to me that in a national emergency it would hurt.

I only raise the point because of Bush's castigation of Gore lo' these many years ago. I actually thought Gore's idea than was not very smart, and I don't think that Bush's is either. However, given his policies, the spike in Oil prices is pretty understandable, as is his lateness to the table in trying to find solutions.

Rmember Dick Cheney? Conservation is quaint? A reflection of personal preference and ethics, but not an energy policy. They would no from "not an energy policy..."


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/25/AR2006042500366.html
may need to register to enter...

 

[Rob Lister]

I thought this 3 y/o post was significant.

By the way.....if anyone wanted to know why, at a time when gas prices in the US are looking like a major election issue, the US is filling up its strategic petroleum reserve by diverting incoming oil away from the petrol refineries, they now have their answer. If the US believe the dollar will fall further and the dollar oil price will continue to rise then it is very important to the US to fill up the SPR to its maximum capacity now, rather than leaving it later, because it will cost them even more to fill it later. If the US believed the dollar oil price was going to fall significantly in the future, then it would make no sense to cause US gas prices to rise by filling the SPR now. Therefore the US must believe that the dollar is going to continue to fall and the dollar price of oil is going to continue to rise.

His predicted rational was wrong but he nailed it otherwise.

 

[Manny]

The SPR is 20% larger than it was in 2000 -- the Bush administration has been growing it pretty much nonstop from the day he got into office until its peak at 700 MM barrels last August. Since then there was been a 2% drawdown in the form of loans to refiners and retailers to counteract the effects of Katrina and Rita (which is the kind of thing it was designed for), followed by gradual calls on the loans since about the middle of January. By contrast, the Gore election effort involved a 5% drawdown of a smaller reserve. That was a mix of loans and outright sales.

With the reserve in such good shape it absolutely makes sense to slow the recall of those loans, at least during the gas switchover season, as a tiny mitigant to the (bad) policy the administration and the Congress made last fall on MTBE.

 

[Grammatron]

I only raise the point because of Bush's castigation of Gore lo' these many years ago. I actually thought Gore's idea than was not very smart, and I don't think that Bush's is either. However, given his policies, the spike in Oil prices is pretty understandable, as is his lateness to the table in trying to find solutions.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/4942846.stm

The price of oil fell by over $1, after US President George W Bush announced plans to help counter rising oil prices at the Renewable Fuels Association.

That said, I doubt Bush is to blame at all. If you want to blame anyone is people how use more and more gas. Suply, Demand and all.