After a quick Googling, I found this list of average gas prices state-by-state. The most expensive gas is, unsurprisingly, in Hawaii. California is second most expensive. The cheapest gas is in … New Jersey?
Crap. The link doesn’t work. Cut and paste the following link into your browser to see the list:
[QUOTE=Diceman’s CNN/Money link]
The average price for regular gasoline on Monday, March 7, was $1.98 a gallon, down from $1.90 per gallon a month earlier, according to AAA.
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Might not be quite up to date - Monday, March 7 was in 2005. (Best not to ask how $1.98 is down from $1.90.)
Thanks for that summary, NaturalBlondChap.
You are all most welcome, and I am glad people could actually read it.
Should clarifications or more detail be needed just ask away.
I would suggest getting the IEA medium term oil report (looking out to 2011) - free from the IEA website. It runs to 70 odd pages and also has a follow up section on biofuels. It goes into a lot of detail on the medium term factors driving supply and demand.
They also release a monthly update, which is free one month delayed. This gives some insights to the more transient supply and demand issues. The sumary on the website is good and the download is about 50 pages and, well I find it useful, but I work in this industry.
cheers
[QUOTE=kanicbird]
RE: the tax isses, if it’s that democrats are more likely to tax, or higher populations require more taxes, you will see that in general state taxes are lower in republican states then democratic states.
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Higher populations may require more revenue to support basic government functions, but that doesn’t translate into requiring a higher tax rate (for the obvious reason that revenue increases directly with the taxpayer population at a constant tax rate).
[QUOTE=Steve MB]
Higher populations may require more revenue to support basic government functions, but that doesn’t translate into requiring a higher tax rate (
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I understand what you are saying, but disagree with you. Though you should get some economys of scale with services that a low density and high density population need, they are just way more services that the government needs to provide to allow such population density, such as water, sewer, garbage collection which is usually the responsibility of the home owner in low population areas, in high population areas it would be impossible for everyone to have a well and septic system.
[QUOTE=Long Time First Time]
FWIW -
Out here in Redder than Red Indiana - currently the home of $2.10/gallon gas prices - there has been an editorial and several letters to the editor of my home town paper suggesting that the recent fall in prices is being manipulated by the oil companies to keep their pal in office. Nothing so far to dispute this claim.
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Well, nothing except a glut of economic data that explains the general trend without the need to make up a conspiracy.
[QUOTE=Xema]
Might not be quite up to date - Monday, March 7 was in 2005. (Best not to ask how $1.98 is down from $1.90.)
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Ah, oops :smack:
Still, the general rankings should be more-or-less the same. Gas in Hawaii is expensive because everything has to be shipped into that state by boat. States on the west coast (California, Oregon, Nevada, Washington) all have fairly high costs of living on pretty much everything, so why should gas be any different? (I’m kinda peeved to see that my state, Michigan, was ranked number five for most expensive gas). On the other end of the scale, a guy at work tells me that New Jersey has a lot of refineries. If that’s the case, then their distribution costs would be very low, so it’s not surprising that they had the cheapest gas. Other “big oil” states, like Texas and Louisiana, also had pretty cheap gas, again probably due to distribution being less of an expense.
[QUOTE=kanicbird]
… such as water, sewer, garbage collection which is usually the responsibility of the home owner in low population areas, in high population areas it would be impossible for everyone to have a well and septic system.
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Might not be the best choice for an example, as water and sewer are very commonly billed separately and counted as a utility rather than a tax.
[QUOTE=Xema]
Might not be the best choice for an example, as water and sewer are very commonly billed separately and counted as a utility rather than a tax.
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Actually it’s a great example, because it is billed separately AND billed again on your taxes (which most don’t even realize)- or at least is was that way where I have lived.
But you could easially add in many other costs like fire services (volenteer vs paid - which includes pensions), and even polititions - some places I have lives the politiions were part time, and most of them unpaid.
Besides added services that high density population expect, you have the corruption factor that develops in high density areas, and the expantion of government beyond the point that it can be effectivally managed.
Thing is, the conspiracy proposed by the OP doesn’t even make sense. OK, it might make sense for the Republicans to try to lower gas prices across the boards, since high gas prices mean more anger against the party in power.
But how do Republicans benefit from lowering gas prices in red states and raising gas prices in blue states? They’re already going to win the red states and already going to lose the blue states. So what good does it do to lower gas prices selectively? The target states should be swing states. But how exactly do you coordinate this?