Here is CT the gas companies do "zone pricing" and charge different prices in different areas. Why? Because they can get away with it. Has nothing to do with supply and demand or transportation cost. Affluent areas and inner cities are the highest because those people are lesss likely to travel just to buy cheaper gas. Ed
Perfect. Soak the "rich" folks. Time they paid their fair share.
Another explanation for the higher prices in metro areas is the different blends/formulations of oxygenated fuel for EPA requirements. You can usually tell if yoou are in one of these areas if you are required to have your vehicle(s) tested every year or two before you can re-lisence it/them.
-Doug
How about rent / property costs, taxes, and employee costs?
All are higher in metro vs. rural areas.
Barry
Which is, of course the reason for the high California prices. That and their requirement, I believe, that gas sold in the state be refined there. And their fight against new refineries. Sort of disingenuous to do all that and then complain that they are being gouged.
Glad I'm in Maine, I guess, where we only pay the third highest state taxes in the nation.
John Martin
Another is the drop in the value of the dollar. . .As a matter of fact, get ready for higher everything due to the dollar devaluation, because it's only going to get worse. As soon as the election is over, the interest rates will start to rise: Greenspan is simply doing a political hold now.
Kim
A devalued dollar does make foreign goods/travel more expensive for us, and conversely makes our stuff chaeper for foreigners. Since interest rates are at an all time low, a rise of 400% would get them back to a reasonable rate, slowing down such things as housing starts and big ticket purchases, but making investments from overseas pick up. I'm curious what you your take on any changes in these factors will be depending on who wins the election. I suspect that what you consider bad now will turn to good if the opposition wins.
-Doug
The difficulty is the U.S. has been the #1 consumer, albeit mostly on debt-based finance. By making such goods more costly, it will reduce the sales of those countries who finance the deficit by buying U.S. T-bills. Also, the falling dollar has seriously whacked the accounts of those who hold dollars, thus giving them reason to look elsewhere. . .
It doesn't really matter who wins the election in absolute energy terms, as neither of the parties have a clue to the fundamentals of energy. Oil is depleted and is going to become more expensive, and they do nothing but say "drill more holes." The oil majors quit drilling more holes because most of them are coming up dry. No serious conservation is occuring, no alternative energy plans, no population conversations.
Kim
Calif. doesn't _require_ refining 'in state'. They *do*, however, have a set of requirements for any fuel _sold_ in that state -- for pollution-control reasons -- that necessitates a different 'blend' of fuel and additives. To meet those requirements, refiners are forced to use more expensive components, and 'California gasoline' is produced in smaller quantities than the products for the rest of the country. Both factors contribute to the higher prices, _over_and_above_ the regional 'overhead costs' differential.
I don't know who you're listening to on the oil stuff, but all that aside, what the H are "population conversations"?
-Doug
This is standard radical envirowacko stuff. They favor everything from forced sterilization to mass murder. To many people on the planet, you know. I have suggested to these people that they should lead by example and kill themselves but they seem to not like that idea. They just want everybody else to get off their planet.
Do a google on "Colin Campbell," among others, or "peak oil"; geez, Doug, you didn't make the connection to overpopulation? ;~)
Campbell is a petro geologist who has spent the last 30 years working for most of the majors. . .I first "saw" him when he gave a lecture at a German technical college that was transferred to the web.
Kim
Then there's taxation, which is generally crazy but especially so with gas and movie tickets.
Locally the state wanted to raise the gas tax and the owners of gas stations within 20 miles or so of the border (which in this state subsumes about a third of the state) were up in arms because they knew that they'd lose all their business to the neighboring states with lower gas taxes. The politicians raised the taxes anyway, and you know what? A bunch of gas stations _did_ end up closing, mostly the "service" stations that did crazy things like fixing cars instead of sensible things like selling Twinkies. Only place you can get a car fixed around here now is one of the dealers or take across the border to a service station that wasn't taxed out of existence.
George, George, George, That is only valid if it's the government soaking the rich. If it's and eevil oil company, then it is pure rapacious capitalism that must be stopped. :-)
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