What does “deserve” have to do with anything? Do you think there is some kind of cosmic fairness meter that hands out good things to good people and bad things to bad people?
At the risk of continuing a massive hijack, here’s some advice from somebody who was in a position not too dissimilar from your own, not too long ago.
When I was in school, the cheapest apartments were within biking distance, is your current rent really so low that it offets commuting costs?
Why aren’t you getting financial aid? It exists for people in exactly your situation. At the very least, you qualify for loans, probably subsidized Stafford loans. I got something like $11,000 per semester, at a state school. Now that I’m out I pay a very manageble monthly bill at less than 2% interest.
Your school almost certainly has a subsidized doctor if you get sick, I think we paid about $5. If you feel really sick, you are much better off getting it looked at early, when a treatment will be cheap. I found that out the hard way.
If you are not working, then where is your money coming from? Not an accusation, I just don’t get it.
Have you tried walking in and asking for a job at every gas station, store, restaurant, etc. in your area? I took a month, but that’s how I got my best college job, no classified ads or help wanted signs involved. What about work-study.
Is their someone you could give your cat to? If you can’t afford to take care of all your basic needs, your not doing either of you any favors.
The final option: Enroll in a school in another part of Michigan that’s easier to live in. Look up online classified ads to see where the jobs are. You would still pay in-state tuition and the cost of the bus ticket or U-Haul rental would be taken care of in your first paycheck. I worked with a guy who did this, he had to save up for 2 months before and he still had to eat mac and cheese for a month afterward, but after that, he was set.
EDIT: Looks like I was beaten to the puch on some of these.
I’m almost incrdulous at the though that any modern undergraduate could have avoided being bombarded by 5,000 messages about student loans by this point already, but I’ll take your statement at face value.
Yes, for people at legitimate higher educational institutions, student loans of some amount are incredibly easy to get regardless of your credit. Perhaps even too easy in some circumstances.
I advise you to take on debt very cautiously and with serious consideration, but if you haven’t spoken with a financial aid counselor at your school, do so immediately.
The Dope is a great resource of people that genuinely want to help you out and give you good information and suggestions like Furious Marmot has done, but I think that having a flexible attitude and not focusing on those, “bastard oil companies,” can be helpful.
Oil is a global market, and we really can’t force anyone to keep importing it to us. We’ve got to pay for our oil on the open market.
The only qualifications I can remember for federal loans were no drug conviction (which may have changed recently) and men had to be registered with selective service. The only problem I see is that you are in community college, which will result in lower loan amounts, but still a good chunk of money. Don’t go through anybody except the financial aid office, unless you really know what you are doing.
I don’t know what you are studying, but can you qualify for a 4 year state university? Credits from community college classes can count in your favor and may help you get in if you were not accepted out of high school. Yes, it costs more, but the bigger loans and proximity to work more than make up for it.
Also, for the record:
Oil producers are price takers, commodities traders are price makers.
A big part of the cost of gasoline is crude oil.
The lack of refinery capacity is mostly attributable to severe risk aversion and lack of forward thinking on the part of the refiners, not greed. Most executives would rather close their eyes and do the safe thing (buy back stock, etc.) than take a risk that might end in a big, personally embarassing loss.
Nobody deserves to suffer. Unfortunately, that’s not how the world works. Your lifestyle, poor as it is, is light years ahead of that of the average human, past and present.
No, but so what?
Listen, people have been predicting that gasoline prices were going to rise for decades now. Even if the problem with supply right now is refinery capacity, the problem in the future will be that the fact that oil is a finite resource. Until now, we’ve collectively ignored these predictions. We built large gas-guzzling vehicles and houses miles from where we work. We did these things because they made good economic sense at the time. Only the market can change people’s behavior, and that’s exactly what the market is now doing.
Also realize that even if the oil companies were to embark on a multi-billion dollar expansion in refinery capacity, by the time these new refineries come on line, the available supply of oil to refine may have decreased to the point that the new refineries are never needed.
Sorry to be blunt, but again, so what? It’s an animal. You have made the choice to support the animal, nobody else. There are few times in human history where anybody could afford to support an animal for no reason other than the fact that they love them.
You should be thankful that you’re not having to make the same choice about one of your children. I’m sure you’ve heard stories about people in the Depression putting their children in orphanages because they couldn’t afford to feed them.
All we can do is to judge you on the basis of how you present yourself here.
I thought you said earlier that you’d take any work. Now it has to be professional work?
For crying out loud, it’s RAMEN noodles! :rolleyes:
So in other words, your state has 91-92% employment, and you still can’t find a job? If not, then move!
You have opportunities that other people in the world can only dream of. You live in a nation that others are literally risking their lives to get into. You have a continent-wide nation of opportunities open to you.
If you want to stay where you are, it is your choice. Don’t say you don’t have the money. Your next month’s rent can buy you enough gas to get anywhere in the country.
If you take anything away from all of this, realize this: nobody owes you anything, least of all an apology for hurting your feelings.
Double post
I find it ironic that many of the same people who oppose family planning, despite its obvious economic benefits, because “we wouldn’t want to appear to be condoning something immoral”, take a ruthless, hard-nosed approach to economic issues like taxes and oil company profits.
If you’re as broke as you say, you’ll probably qualify for some kinds of grants and student assistance programs- when I was in graduate school, I got something like 5000 per year tuition assistance grants, on top of the stafford loans
(which, in case you’re not aware, are really low interest rate loans with long payoff times; in my case, about 7 grand/semester for a total of 20 grand, for 25 years at 1.5% interest, for roughly a $150 per month payment)
Why? Are the resulting profits obtained from a willing economic transaction immoral? And, if you think they are, do you think that the people who are opposed to family planning on moral grounds think the same way as you do?
But that doesn’t make sense. Let’s stipulate that oil industry executives are greedy bastards who’d do anything to increase profits as long as it doesn’t land them in jail. And this isn’t hard to imagine because it’s pretty much true.
So how would refusing to upgrade refining capacity bring them more money?
Oil companies exist to sell gasoline to customers. If they sell more gas, they make more money. Gasoline shortages aren’t good for oil companies, they are bad, because if an oil company had more gas they could sell it and make more money. An oil executive might be happy that their competitor’s refinery is shut down, because that decreases their competition, but an oil executive is never going to be happy that their OWN refinery isn’t working, because that means that their competitors are selling oil at jacked-up rates, and not them.
If there are 10 grocery stores in a town, it’s going to raise grocery prices if 5 of them get shut down. But no grocery store owner has an incentive to shut down his own grocery store in the hopes of raising prices, because he can’t sell at high prices unless his store is open. His competitors benefit if his store is shut down, not him.
If you’re a younger person, it might seem to you that gasoline prices are insanely high. But your historical memory of gasoline prices is too short. You grew up during the oil glut and think historically record low inflation-adjusted gasoline prices are normal. But we’ve known since forever that the supply of oil isn’t infinite. Back during the 70s if you told people that inflation-adjusted gasoline prices would be flat or declining for the next two decades, they wouldn’t have believed you. We’ve lived through a few decades of unsustainably low gas prices, and it convinced people to live and invest as though those low gas prices would last forever, when anyone could see that couldn’t happen.
And of course, the price collapses of the 90s paved the way for today’s oil crunch. Who’s going to invest in expensive oil exploration, or alternative energy, or fuel efficient cars, when gas is $1.50/gallon? And so supply has remained flat, and now China and India are clawing their way out of dirt poverty, and demand for gasoline increases. And, econ 101, fixed supply and increased demand results in what? Prices increase.
Of course, econ 101, higher prices for gasoline mean what? Reduced demand, and a search for alternatives. Because there are substitutes for gasoline. Yes, in the short term–weeks or months–it is very difficlut to reduce gasoline consumption. But in the long term–two or three years–it can be done. Suppose you changed your lifestyle a bit. You figure out a way to work one day a week from home, a 20% reduction. You carpool every day with another worker. 50% reduction. You trade in the gas guzzler for a gas sipper. 50% reduction. You move from a location 60 miles from your work to a location 30 miles from work. 50% reduction. These changes have now reduced your gasoline consumption for commuting by 90% (.8*.5*.5*.5=.1). You’re using one tenth the gasoline you used to use.
Of course, if you chose to keep that house 60 miles from work, that’s acceptable too…but then you’re chosing to spend a good fraction of your paycheck on gasoline to maintain a particular lifestyle that you find pleasing.
Could you amplify? Why do you find it ironic, especially if the folks in question actually have your strawman position? Do THEY think it’s also ‘immoral’ for companies to make a profit…or is it YOU who thinks it’s somehow ‘immoral’?
Seems to me that there isn’t much irony involved…just the fact that you see things differently than they (in theory) do.
Further, could you amplify on this lack of morals in taxes and oil company profits…or really why morals come into it at all? Could you amplify on this point? I am really curious about this.
As for the OP (sorry if this has all been addressed…I haven’t been able to slog through the whole thread. On thing though…they are RAMEN noodles, not ‘romane’ or ‘roman’ noodles. For someone supposedly living on the things AND in college that poster is remarkably unobservant…to say the least):
First off, looking at the title: ‘Is it morally ok to charge more at the exenses of poor people?’
A couple of things. First of all…morals don’t have anything to do with it. Companies charge what the market can bear while still making a profit. If the market will bear more, companies will charge more. Of course, if they charge to much then other companies will under cut them and steal away their customers and their market share. This is collectively called ‘business’.
So, leaving aside morals, which don’t come into it, you could ask the question…is it acceptable for companies to charge what the market can bear, despite the impact this may have on the poor?
The answer of course is…yes. Of course it is. Why shouldn’t companies charge what the market can bear? Why shouldn’t companies make a profit?
You seem to be saying two different things here. First off, you acknowledge that companies need to make a profit…that companies aren’t ‘charity organisation’. Then you go on to say that you find it selfish that people (by which I assume you mean Big Businessmen™) ‘enrich at the expense of others’. Well…how exactly do you think business works? Of COURSE people enrich themselves by making a profit…which comes from people buying their products.
Then you go on to say that it’s one thing to have a new idea and presumably develop and market that idea for trade and profit…but another if you happen to be trying to sell a product that people need. That somehow the one is ok, while the other is exploitation. Why? Well, presumably because of that need thingy…if people NEED something then, I presume in your world view, they should get it at or below cost because anything else would be exploitation. No? So…people ‘need’ clothes and food…so, they should get them at cost (by the magic food and clothes fairies I guess). They ‘need’ cheap gas…so they should get it, regardless of any other factors (I assume you have no problem with the taxes on gas, which frankly make up a large chunk of what you pay at the pump…especially since you say you aren’t from the US).
So…what do you propose? Having the government (or I suppose the UN since this is a global issue, and no one company controls either the oil, logistics or refinery of product) seize all of the oil and refineries, the entire logistics system, and then…what? Ensure you and everyone else gets their fair share of the cheap gas? Because people NEED cheap fuel to get to their jobs or whatever, and because supposedly high gas prices lower their ‘style of life’…well, what do you think should be done about it exactly?
My view is that a lot of people (a surprisingly large percentage seemingly) are completely ignorant of how the oil business works, how and why companies profit (and exactly how large those profits are by percentage), or what the real ramifications are of what they are asking for (i.e. for the gubbermint to step in and ‘fix’ things so that everyone gets cheap gas at the pump…and a Pony™ added in!). I think that after decades of anti-Business propaganda by the left (especially anti-Big Oil™) that the meme is now so firmly entrenched in our collective consciousness that we all ‘know’ that the reason oil prices are so high is because of those greedy bastards controlling Big Oil™, and that if only someone (presumably the government) would Do Something™ we’d all have all the cheap gas we could ever want…hell, we’d be swimming in the stuff or using it to start our grills with on weekends (to paraphrase Eddy Murphy “Now THAT’S a fiaahh!”)
This meme is now entrenched not only in the US psyche but seemingly in the that of the world…and is now along side the meme of the dangers (and evils) of nuclear power and how the big car companies could REALLY make 200mph Hummers but holding back because Big Oil™ doesn’t want them (or something like that…maybe some mumbling about carburetors and fuel re-heaters and the like).
That’s what I think anyway…YMMV. Personally I think people want a pony…and eat it too!
-XT
To my mind, the real issue is not whether companies ought to take the plight of the poor into account when profit-seeking, but whether any system designed to force them to do so will end up with the poor actually being better off thereby.
I certainly had it better than you in college because I had parents to fall back on. My first year I lived at home and they paid 1/2 of my tuition. School was a 15 minute drive away. But I had depression era parents as did my friends so we were naturally frugal. We grew up on “you pick” junkyards and learned to fix stuff ourselves. I learned a lot of stuff by helping others. Example: I learned to lay shingles by helping a buddy roof his house. He in turn helped me build my garage. The airplane I fly is the same one I helped build. The owner (a friend of mine) taught me to fly and I eventually bought a share in it. I couldn’t begin to afford to buy a garage or an airplane.
I’m not lecturing, the above was posted to show what you can do. I’m telling you this because what you’re going through now (and how you handle it) will mirror your life in the future. People have given you some good ideas and I hope you listen to the thought process behind them. Your car light can sometimes be “fixed” by whacking it. It works very well with the older lights where the light and lens are one in the same. When you whack it you’re jiggling the filament and when it comes in contact with the electrode it re-welds itself. You can often do this a number of times so it can come in handy when you’re pulled over. (I got out of a ticket doing this once). But you can probably go to a u-pick junkyard and get a replacement bulb for next to nothing. Start looking around for one of these yards. They’re a great place to get stuff cheap.
Jobs - It sounds like you could use any bit of money that comes your way so you might want to make your own job. When I was a kid we would go to shopping centers that had fields next to them and offer to pick up all the trash for $20. It required no tools (gloves if you got them) and the store supplies the trash bags. Today I’d ask for $50 per acre. You can mow lawns using the owner’s equipment. Lots of elderly people need a cheap lawn mowing service and you can undercut the normal price if you really need money. Donate plasma, walk pets, wash windows. You can make $200 washing an airplane. You need to know what you’re doing and provide the necessary cleaning/waxing chemicals. It’s a lot of work to wash something like a king Air. But once you get established it’s a good way pick up money on the weekend. Since you’re in college you could look into tutoring school kids. That’s a $45/hr job. I knew an accountant who got his CDL license and drove trucks on weekends. While you can’t afford the license you could pick up jobs driving vans on the weekend for companies that do door to door delivery. I did that to see what it was like. Some companies that do this will charge you for every little thing (phones, uniforms etc…) so you have to be careful. The advantage is that you can pick and choose what is offered you so it works well with school schedules. The better companies provide the van and you pay them a portion of the profits. It’s an effective way to get a job outside of Michigan while you still live there.
Part of the whole college experience is learning to think. Making money should be your #1 hobby right now. be creative. And yah, I know it sucks. I’m in a funk about losing the best job I ever had and I’m almost 50. I really loved that job. I’m pissing away my savings when I should be investing it. That’s life. I got my own hobby to work on.
One nitpick in an otherwise nice post…
At the risk of pedantry, not exactly.
Independent exploration & production companies, and the upstream divisions of integrated (major) energy companies exist to do 2 things.
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Extract as great a volume of hydrocarbons as possible, as quickly and economically as possible, and then sell them on global commodities markets.
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Prove up new reserves. This is done, generally, by drilling a successful well or finding a new way to drill or complete a well. The data gained from this allows the geologists and engineers to make reasonable assumptions about the presence or accessibility of additional hydrocarbons in areas where the company has a right to drill/produce. These new untapped reserves are carried on the financial books as assets, increasing the value of the company.
Refiners and the downstream divisions of integrated (major) energy companies convert crude oil into a dizzying array of products, of which motor fuels are a significant part. These products are sold to the consumer, who more often than not, is another company.
Well for starters, can you think of any dots that connect the saying that, “It’s easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of Heaven” and the idea that it’s immoral to use artificial contraception?
You’re being obtuse when you ask, “companies make a profit?” as a yes/no question in the abstract. It depends on how much profit you’re making, how poor your neighbors are by comparison, and what your profitmaking has to do with their level of poverty.
In the case of oil companies, a lot. Not only are individuals including the working poor and students very dependent on regular fuel purchases to maintain their standard of living, the whole US economy is as well, which also affects poverty levels. How is doubling everyone’s fuel costs not just as bad as doubling everyone’s taxes? Sure, unlike taxes, no one is forced to buy fuel, they’re just almost forced to buy it. Then again, taxes go to pay for Good Things, not just line businessmens’ pockets.
Most other companies–who cares about people, right?–are making less profit during this crisis, why can’t the oil companies share the pain, other than that they don’t have to?
Where morals come into it is that they have a choice. They can charge what the market will bear, or they can charge just enough to make the kind of profits that will enable them to maintain a comfortable living.
Only if you leave morals aside.
I don’t think gas tax revenues are up, so why are oil company profits up?
Well there you have me, because I’m not understanding why it’s impossible for oil companies to lower the price at stations they own, not even by a dime a gallon, no matter how much less profit they’re willing to take.
But then again if the reason US oil companies are making much higher profits is not due to a markup on gallons of gas sold in the US but to more gallons being sold to people in China and India, then that counts for something. After all, morality and patriotism are not the same thing. No irony there.
I think the less said about this the better…
I’m being obtuse ehe? Well, them I’m being obtuse…because I still don’t get it. Is there some function or level of profit that makes it acceptable? By who’s standards? How much is to much…and who decides if not the market? You? Me? The government? The group that shouts loudest? On what basis to they determine when profit is too much? Does need factor in?
Well…I pay more in taxes a year than I do in fuel costs, so doubling one would cost me more (for less benefit IMHO) than the other. And as you pointed out no one forces you to buy fuel…while they most certainly do force us all to pay taxes.
Do you have a cite that most other companies make less profit (by percentage) than oil companies do? Do you have a cite that oil companies are making inordinate profits from the ‘crisis’?
Leaving that aside though…so what? Again, exactly what is the correct profit for a commodity like oil…and who decides what that profit should be? Is it based on need?
How do morals have anything to do with business…or the choice of what is or is not the correct margin of profit? Why exactly should companies charge less for a product than they can get on the market? Does your feel good moralistic view point of business take into account risk or other factors? What happens when there is a glut of oil on the market and profits are down? What happens if your moralistic company invests heavily in production and then there is such a glut on the market? Does the door swing both ways? When profits are down (or non-existent) should society give back to the oil companies if they agree to curtail profits when the market is up? Who decides?
As they should be. Morals are for Sunday school or going to church. They have no place in business. From a practical perspective because do-gooders attempting to guild by morals usually end up causing more harm than doing good to those they are purportedly trying to help.
Raw profits are up because more oil is being sold at a higher price…but the percentage of that profit margin are, afaik, pretty constant. If I have a 10% profit margin on a product that costs a dollar and I sell 100 of them I make less than if I sell them for $10 and sell 10,000 of them…though my margin stays exactly the same. Oil is a lot like that…the price of oil is set by speculation in the market. There is no Big Oil company setting the price of oil per barrel…it doesn’t work that way. Oil companies have essentially one lever…they can increase production (to a certain degree…usually by the capital costs of putting in more wells) or they can decrease production (something they usually do when there is a glut of oil on the market). That’s it. The price is set by people speculating on what they THINK the price of oil will be in the future both the raw costs and the delivery.
This doesn’t even get into the refinery aspects btw, or the transport costs.
Well, let me put this another way. Unless you think that Big Oil™ is collaborating to fix the price on a gallon of gas (and if you DO think that do you have a cite to back it up? Despite numerous knee jerk investigations afaik there is no evidence this is the case) then why don’t you think someone out there has done it? I mean think about it…if I’m a company and can simply set the price at a dime less a gallon what effect will this have? Will it drive the customers to my competetors…or will they come to my gas stations instead? Will it increase or decrease my market share?
Now, assuming you chose an increase in market share…why exactly wouldn’t I do this? Do I not want more customers? Am I content with just the customers I have and no others? If I’m a foreign Big Oil™ company and presumably not open to influence by evil US corporations, why wouldn’t I lower the price as you say and steal all of the customers?
No cite either I presume? Do you have anything to back this incredible statement up with?
-XT
Of course he doesn’t. While most people think that oil execs are like Scrooge McDuck and flop around in piles of money, they don’t realize that the vast majority of profit is returned back to the company so that it can find and produce more oil. Every penny taken from a company is pretty much one less that could be used for this. So, if a company decides to be ‘moral’ and charge less for its product then it is pretty much cutting its own throat because it can’t find the oil it needs to replenish its reserves.
Which leads to another thing people don’t understand. Oil runs out. Think of oil like beer. Eventually you have to get off the couch to get another can. Yesterday you had a fridge full. Today you have to walk down to the local liquor store for a six pack. Tomorrow you’ll have to drive across town for a single can.
You need to explore to find more oil. The oil that is left in the world is expensive to find and produce. There is a fair amount of luck in finding oil, too. Lots of risk involved. The simple solution is to tax and penalize the oil companies more than comparable companies. All this does is to reduce the amount of money that can be used for exploration. Which means less oil. Any guess as to what happens to the price of oil then?