California already has the most expensive gas in the nation. While the national average for a gallon of regular-grade was about $1.67, California regular gas was still over $2.00/gallon. It’s finally dropped under the two-dollar mark. Yesterday I got it for $1.939 in Orange, and I noticed it at $1.929 in L.A. (it’s usually five to ten cents more expensive here).
I’ve just heard on the morning news that state legislators are considering a bill to add another three cents in taxes per gallon to the price of gasoline.
As I’ve said elsewhere, my 1999 Jeep Cherokee gets 20+ mpg and my Yamaha gets 50+ mpg. I got lazy when gas was cheaper. It takes a while to warm up the bike, there’s no radio, blah blah blah; so I would drive the Jeep more often. But when gas prices rose I got the bike repaired and have been riding it. If gas gets more expensive I’ll ride it every day I possibly can. Net result? The state loses money, because I’m using less gas and therefor paying less tax on it. I’ve seen more SUVs with “For Sale” signs on them recently. I presume these people are looking for more efficient cars. Less money for the state.
Of course, using less gas is a good thing. The Cherokee is small, it fits my needs (towing, kayaking, camping – and when gas isn’t too expensive – going on off-road trails), but it’s not as efficient as I’d like it to be. Fortunately I have the bike, which fits my commuting needs. (Except that my co-workers end up driving us to lunch all the time. Heh.) But as good for the environment that using less gas is, I think California gas prices should be more in-line with the rest of the country.
I heard a report on the news a couple of months ago that oil companies set prices based on the prevailing prices in an area. Gas costs more in the L.A. area because the oil companies set their prices according to the average price of gas. The average price of gas is high because the oil companies set their prices on the average price of gas, which is higher in L.A. :rolleyes:
Gas here in Central PA was somewhere in the neighborhood of a buck-seventy a gallon. Now it’s about a buck-thirty-two, although if you get it near an interstate, it’s about a buck and a half to a buck-sixty.
Here in Kansas it’s been hovering amywhere from $1.55 to nearly $1.70. Last week my car was on empty and it cost me $24.50 to fill up! I’d say that is a little extreme. I don’t know, though, it really doesnt bother me that much. I don’t do a whole leck of a lot of driving. My tank of gas will potentially last me about 2 months.
I just saw gas for $1.30 at the local Kroger gas station, assuming you have one of the Kroger cards. (This is in Memphis, TN.)
I never got the whole thing about basing the prices on the area… when I was living up by San Francisco, there was usually a lot of grumbling as to what the #$*(# gas prices were so high there, when the refineries were just across the bay! Feh.
Yep, in SF they have refineries…Another odd thing is that California is on the ocean so tankers have easy access, yet we pay so much more for gas. Trying to get gas inland to the midwest would take so much more $$, but their gas is cheap.
I can not imagine what the gas prices are in places like Nebraska then. I remember when I went on my cross country motorcycle tour that the most expensive gas was in Nebraska. It was $2.10 when gas in California was around $1.50-1.70. I wish prices would drop around here. They keep telling us that it will but they’ve only come down a few cents.
It’s a Catch-22 situation. They set the price higher in an area because the price is higher in the area because they set the price higher. Of course people in some areas make more money than people in other areas, so they charge more. Too bad for the poor people in the city!
If I could work my will, I’d telecommute from a home office. There is no reason why I couldn’t – what I do is completely computer-based. Besides, I wouldn’t have people coming by my desk all the time. If they had a problem they could e-mail me to look at it. If they just wanted to chat, well… there are other people to chat with. With a remote office, I wouldn’t mind the price of fuel so much. But it gets expensive with the 85-mile r/t commute every day. (And no, I don’t want to live “Behind the Orange Curtain”.)
In any case, I can understand how our gas can be somewhat more expensive than average because of the special California formulations and the taxes, but I think 33% more is a bit outrageous. People complain, and when enough of them do the politicians call for an “investigation”. At the end of the “investigation” they come back and say that gas prices are higher and that something should be done about it. But nothing happens after that. They just get their face-time on the teevee so they can appear to be doing something so they can get re-elected.
VenusProbe’s chart shows state and federal tax, but you also have to add in local tax which can vary from county to county or even city to city. That can be as much as another 10 cents per gallon.
What I’ve always wanted to know is why prices shoot up overnight, but take three weeks to slowly drop back down. I can’t imagine that the actual material costs fluctuate that way, even if the futures market does.
Simple economics… they charge what people can/will afford. For a simple example, Californians make more than Georgians, by 10 percent or so; the median income in California for 2001 was $47,262 and in Georgia, it was $42,576. (cite)
There’s more to it than this (I’d hazard to guess that Californians probably use more gasoline per capita than the average Georgian does, hence upping the demand as well, and a myriad of other factors).
[well, hello there Jack!]
Hey Coldfire and any other European folk… I heard a rumor that gas prices are so high for you folks because the gov’t figures in the cost to clean up the environment that you’ve dirtied by using said gas. (longest. sentence. ever.) Any truth to this?
[See ya later, Jack]
In a way. A liter of regular gasoline costs about EUR 1.15 now in Holland. Out of that, at least EUR .75 are various taxes. A lot of them are purposefully reinvested in environmental projects, such as wind energy (yeah, windmills, in Holland. What are the odds!), solar energy, newly planted forests… that sort of thing.
Johnny LA, we have public transport aplenty, but does a city bus corner as nicely down a twisty country road, when compared to a Yamaha?
