Gasoline prices

I'd love it if people boycotted gas stations here, or at least cut their consumption. Cutting demand would lower prices, pronto.

But I'm skeptical it will ever happen in the U.S. It would require too much short-term sacrifice. We're not good at that...

What's the current high price there? Do you think this email campaign is workable?

Here in southern California we pay $ 2.65 per gallon for
plain unleaded gasoline. Outrageously high!!

I pay nothing.

I own a siphon.

2.45

Do you feel something like this email campaign can achieve anything? I've read of this before, and in my opinion, it's a great idea in principal, but never seems to amount to much.

It won't work even in theory, as the key to reduction in price (as long as supply is not changed) is a reduction in demand. A temporary reduction in demand would result in a temporary reduction in price only. The key to lower gas prices is either a drastic change in supply or in demand.

Supply is unlikely to change too much, as it's restricted with the sole purpose of maintaining prices and boycotts are not the solution to addressing demand, long-term behavior change is necessary.

we pay around $2.30 per gallon in mass. but back at home, well that's more like $5 or 6 per gallon. I'm not complaining. i think gas should be more expensive in the states to begin with. am sick of the gas-guzzling SUVs. I'll gladly pay more. and drive less.

Craven,

Basically, I agree with what you say, but do you feel if only certain gas stations were boycotted that they might lower their prices, at least temporarily, to win customers back? Perhaps this might trigger a price war?

How is it that Costco can sell it's gas about 10cents less that the other guy day in and day out? To much greed in this whole mess.

No, because oil is fungible and overall market defines price much more than demand to a particular station. If the station lowers prices they'd only eat their margins and threaten their viability as a business.

There can't really be a price war among stations, as the margins are slim. The real price for gas is at the cost of the barrel and everything up to the gas station, they probably have the least involvement in the gas price.

How can someone protest paying $3/gallon when that same person
is actually paying $5-15/gallon, and not feeling too bad about the rest of it?

Protesting such low prices at the pump seems awfully silly
when that's the smallest part of our out-of-pocket cost for gas.


Try The True Cost of Gasoline

Also... a 36-page report at http://www.ethanol.org/pdfs/gas.pdf
"International Center for Technology Assessment, December 1998. This
independent study Identifies and quantifies the many external costs of
gasoline and estimates the true cost of gasoline to be between $5.60 and
$15.14 per gallon."

Whether you drive a gas-guzzler or a hybrid or walk to work every day,
you are STILL paying $5-15 for other people's gas, so they can drive
what you're not. And you have no choice about it.



How can a boycott over mere pennies put a dent into an economic
stream that's actually so much larger?

If this was a free country, free of interference, subsidies, handouts,
and artificial support, then people would KNOW what they are actually
paying, up front. Because the price at the pump would be somewhere
around $10/gallon, right where I would like it to be -- for truth, justice,
honest awareness and . . . responsibility.

Different overhead, different margins. For more than the 10 cent differences market is the key more so than the vendor.

A 10 cent difference can be caused by something like whether or not the station operates 24-hours a day or not. But even if all stations shaved their margins to nothing gas will still increase in price if oil does.

This is an oil price issue, not really a gas price issue.

Man, that CodeBorg sure is a pompous a$s.

Sorry about that.




$2.65/gallon for me. According to
http://inflationdata.com/Inflation/Inflation_Rate/InflationCalculator.asp
inflation has gone up 145.12% in the last 25 years, so
that's like paying $1.08/gallon in 1980.

Wasn't gas just over a buck in 1980? Doesn't seem like it's going up much, if at all.

It is going up (on a recent scale), even if it hasn't (last I ran the numbers) reached the 1981 peak (adjusted).

Yeah, it's gettin there...

Hmm, still lower than I thought it was. I bet it'll get there in California by the end of summer.

Here in Canada, we have various federal, provincial, and municipal taxes that make up parts of the "at the pump price" of gas. Does this exist in the U.S. as well?