"Hey! Gas prices are high!"

[The_Long_Road]

I’d go for the simple bitching compared to a few recent choice diatribes I’ve heard about gas prices. Last week while driving home I stopped at some large gas/fast food place to fill up(on both) and got this pleasant earful from the nearby driver of a small car:

“$19 for half a tank of gas! What the fuck is going on?! We need to start a revolution! We should go shoot all these gas company motherfuckers!”

All the exclamation points are because he was screaming everything. He continued to scream about killing people as he drove away. I’m figuring if we get a few more of these guys and the oil companies will start having serious problems.

[catsix]

[Wendell Wagner** said:
Sorry, I mistyped. In any case, $200 a month is distinctly more than average. $9000 for a car is distinctly less than average. (Did you include the financing costs?)

I took my payment, multiplied it by the number of payments, then added the check I wrote the day I bought the car.

It was a used car, and a hell of a deal. Which is why I now pay more in a month for gas than the car payment was.

It’s not that big a deal, since I can afford the gas, but it is expensive. I don’t stand at the gas station complaining about it. I have increased the rates for on-site consulting because it now costs me more to get there. I have higher overhead, and like any other business, that’s passed on to the customer.

[jjimm]

@BMalion

Do we have any proof that the powers that be were salivating in anticipation over all the Iraqi oil we’d be drowning in? Memos? Off the record comments? Anything?

Biggirl’s post is my cite.

But in seriousness, this small sample of PNAC statements seems a trifle more optimistic than the eventual result:[

@Paul Wolfowitz

Establishing a safe protected zone in the South, where opposition to Saddam could rally and organize, would make it possible:
<snip>
• For that provisional government to control the largest oil field in Iraq and make available to it, under some kind of appropriate international supervision, enormous financial resources for political, humanitarian and eventually military purposes;

](http://www.newamericancentury.org/iraqsep1898.htm)[

@William Kristol

…removing Saddam Hussein’s regime from power in Baghdad will reduce the Saudis’ leverage even more – returning Iraqi oil fully to market can only reduce the Saudis’ ability to set oil prices, and make the U.S. bases there superfluous.

](http://www.newamericancentury.org/saudi-042502.htm)[

@William Kristol

The political, strategic and moral rewards [of Iraq being “next” in TWAT] would also be even greater. A friendly, free, and oil-producing Iraq would leave Iran isolated and Syria cowed

](http://www.newamericancentury.org/defense-20020207.htm)

[Kimstu]

@BMalion

Do we have any proof that the powers that be were salivating in anticipation over all the Iraqi oil we’d be drowning in? Memos? Off the record comments? Anything?

I dunno about “drowning in”, but they were quite explicit about their expectations that we’d be getting a whole lot more oil from Iraq than we actually are—enough oil, in fact, to finance Iraq’s entire reconstruction. As the New York Times reported on 5 October 2003,

The Bush administration’s optimistic statements earlier this year that Iraq’s oil wealth, not American taxpayers, would cover most of the cost of rebuilding Iraq were at odds with a bleaker assessment of a government task force secretly established last fall to study Iraq’s oil industry, according to public records and government officials. […]

Despite those findings, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz told Congress during the war that “we are dealing with a country that can really finance its own reconstruction, and relatively soon.”

Moreover, Vice President Dick Cheney said in April, on the day Baghdad fell, that Iraq’s oil production could hit 3 million barrels a day by the end of the year, even though the task force had determined that Iraq was generating less than 2.4 million barrels a day before the war. […]

Similarly, Bush administration officials announced earlier this year that Iraq’s oil revenues would be $20 billion to $30 billion a year, which added to the impression that the aftermath of the war would place a minimal burden on the United States. Mr. Bremer now estimates that Iraq’s total oil revenues from the last half of 2003 to 2005 will amount to $35 billion, running at a rate of about $14 billion a year.

The administration now plays down the report’s findings.

[Rick]

@iamthewalrus(:3=

An average car is driven around 12K miles a year. So, let’s say 1000 miles per month, at an average mpg of 25.

I can believe the 12K mileage figure, there are lots of cars in cities that drive less than 12K per year. What I am having trouble with is the 25MPG number. When you factor in the percentage of pickups and SUVs on the road, I have a hard time with a 25MPG figure.

[asterion]

@Rick

I can believe the 12K mileage figure, there are lots of cars in cities that drive less than 12K per year. What I am having trouble with is the 25MPG number. When you factor in the percentage of pickups and SUVs on the road, I have a hard time with a 25MPG figure.

Well, the CAFE number is like 27 MPG. Ignoring the fact that the milage tests are absurdly idealized, and that that’s a fleet number, not an individual car number, assuming 25 MPG is not a bad assumption.

[TJdude825]

@QuickSilver

:smack:

Stop the presses!

People are more sensitive to their own pain and discomfort to that of other people half a world away who they’ve never met and often couldn’t find on a map?!

:eek:

Well, sure. But maybe part of the reason for that is that people are simply unaware of things that happen far away. And I think QuickSilver’s point was just that the media could have a little more p–

@QuickSilver

Or are you suggesting that our news programs are lacking in perspective? 'Cuz I’d agree with you there.

Ah, right. Nevermind.

[Harborwolf]

Honestly, complaints about gas prices getting you down? I have to hear about the high gas prices from a guy who spends $10-20 a day on lottery tickets and a woman who has to run to the bank as soon as it opens on Monday because she doesn’t know how many checks she wrote over the weekend. :eek:

[Roland_Orzabal]

@Harborwolf

Honestly, complaints about gas prices getting you down? I have to hear about the high gas prices from a guy who spends $10-20 a day on lottery tickets and a woman who has to run to the bank as soon as it opens on Monday because she doesn’t know how many checks she wrote over the weekend. :eek:

…and then both of those people call me, and I get to hear about how their accounts are overdrawn and it’s not their fault, and how I’m getting rich off of their money, and I don’t give a damn that they have sixty-two children to feed, and how are they supposed to do that when we charged them $150 in fees when all they did was exercise their right as American citizens to write assloads of bad checks all weekend, which they HAD to do, goddamn it, because gas prices are so fucking high…

Now then, what were you saying?

[Harborwolf]

@Roland Orzabal

…and then both of those people call me, and I get to hear about how their accounts are overdrawn and it’s not their fault, and how I’m getting rich off of their money, and I don’t give a damn that they have sixty-two children to feed, and how are they supposed to do that when we charged them $150 in fees when all they did was exercise their right as American citizens to write assloads of bad checks all weekend, which they HAD to do, goddamn it, because gas prices are so fucking high…

Now then, what were you saying?

What you say doesn’t matter a bit. You work for the banking industry which is clearly in cahoots with the oil barons (they have to keep their money somewhere and all) to bankrupt us poor hard working americans. I surpised you can even speak with Satan’s dick in your mouth.

Sorry. I’m moody. Gas prices are high so I can’t afford my tinfoil hat.

[calm_kiwi]

@Roland Orzabal

…and then both of those people call me, and I get to hear about how their accounts are overdrawn and it’s not their fault, and how I’m getting rich off of their money, and I don’t give a damn that they have sixty-two children to feed, and how are they supposed to do that when we charged them $150 in fees when all they did was exercise their right as American citizens to write assloads of bad checks all weekend, which they HAD to do, goddamn it, because gas prices are so fucking high…

Now then, what were you saying?

Your examples sound less then fiscally aware. Running an account into the ground so that fees are incrued? By God The Cheek! Every normal human being would see that makes no sense.

By the same token every “scraping the bottom of the barrel” type thinks “Well the fees are down to me…I will pay them when I can…interest/fees be damned.”

There is in some humour in finacial institutions after all.

[Oy]

@Wendell Wagner

catsix writes:

> I’m not including the car payments in this because the car is nearly paid off.

You have to include the original cost of the car (spread out over the life of the car), including the cost of financing. If your car cost you $20,000 (including financing), and you expect it to last ten years, the original cost of the car is $2,000 per year for you, and you have to add that into your total costs. Furthermore, if you spend $200 a week for gas, you are spending quite a bit more than average. Apparently you both have a long commute to work and a car that doesn’t get very good mileage.

@Wendell Wagner

catsix writes:
Gas runs me $2400 a year. Even including the car payments for 12 months into what the car will cost me this year, the TCO will be approximately $5880. Of that, gas accounts for 40.8%.

‘Relatively small portion’?

Uh, Hello? She did the calculation with and without. And it was $200/month, not week, which for many folks is not out of line.

[Oy]

Oops, screwed that coding up. The second quote is from catsix.