Dude I work in an industry where minimum wage workers routinely oppose minimum wage increases because this would cause prices to rise. I have been in this industry for decades. I never heard this innumerate nonsense from the working class before Trump.
People literally “believe” that if their (supermarket cashier or stocker) wage went up from $12 to $15 it would cause grocery prices to go up by more than 25% and they’d be worse off.
You are vastly overestimating the ability and willingness of many people to do honest reckoning if it means they can’t align with hating certain other people.
According to oilprice.com, Brent crude is up $5.67/barrel to $78.54, a jump of nearly 8%
JPMorgan Chase warns that Brent crude oil prices could spile to $120 per barrel due to a sustained disruption of oil flows through the Strait of Hormuz following recent US and Israeli military action against Iran.
ETA: That site seems to be tracking oil prices in real time. Brent crude is very slightly down now from what I quoted.
According to oil company logic, it’s instantaneous! This is something I’ve long noticed and complained about. When oil prices go up, the price at the pump usually goes up immediately, thus charging more for the gas already in the tanks at the gas station! (What’s also interesting is that when oil prices fall, the reduction at the pump takes place at a much more leisurely pace!)
The common justification is that they’re estimating how much more expensive their next delivery would be and hedging against that with the current sales.
As already discussed, oil supply isn’t the issue for the US today, it’s that domestic oil prices track world oil prices, and the free market will miss no opportunity to factor any uncertainty into higher prices. Absent some type of regulation or decree, that will affect domestic prices, too.
Doing the reckoning is often manipulated by companies that don’t want to raise wages, and they have much more ability to influence the “debate.” I note parenthetically that Marx’s 1865 speech and pamphlet, “Value, Price, and Profit” set out precisely to debunk the notion that a rise in wages must mean an increase in prices. The “debate” has been whack for a long time.
But those people weren’t the deciding margin in Trump’s 2024 victory. That was 2020 Biden voters bent out of shape over the price of eggs. What do you think they will do over gas prices directly attributable to Trump stirring up shit in the Middle East?
I still think it won’t happen. As long as the majority of oil supplies are domestic, they can be strong-armed by Trump’s criminal regime because of their dependence on federal subsidies, licensing for drilling leases on federal lands and offshore drilling locations, and conformance to environmental protection regulations, among many other things.
Trump is too politically weak to strong-arm moneyed interests like the oil producers. Billionaire-owned media will start talking about high gas prices and other inflation and Trump will cave. Like he has before when his actions started impacting the big money.
Trump will get his grift receipts, but it’s the Republicans that will pay the price at the polls. No amount of election shenanigans will save the Republican Congressional majorities if the national average gas price reaches $5 per gallon.
I’m pretty sure it doesn’t work like that - gas prices are based on the worldwide commodity price of crude oil. If refiners were manipulating the price of gasoline, that discrepancy would be obvious. And someone would step in and sell gas at a lower price. That’s how commodities work.
Part of me really wants to get some Trump “I did that” stickers to put on gas pumps if gas prices shoot up. Seems like turnabout is fair play after all.
Just providing an anecdote, but I decided I’d top off my gas tank (it’s a PHEV, so it was running less than a quarter of a tank, because I don’t need it often). My local gas station (on the low end for Colorado Springs) saw a $0.24 increase per gallon from this time last week when I drove by it.
It was also very busy. So between the expectations of price increases and/or panic-worry buying, the volume was noticeably increased. But I didn’t see people filling extra containers or otherwise prepping for a panic.
If prices go up steadily, but without massive jumps, then I expect the shock will work against Republicans for the period of time that the increases last, and historically they don’t drop down quickly. But people have short memories, and it can easily be tied into propaganda and blame shifting: “It’s all Iran’s fault that prices went up, good that Trump punished them” is going to be an easy reach for most MAGA/Republican voters.
So any change is likely to be on those very few undecideds, which, well, SNAFU.
Nate McHale, 24, has voted for President Trump twice, a product of his conservative leanings. He supports the decision to strike Iran.
“I don’t believe we’re going to get into another Iraq-style engagement,” he said. “I don’t believe it’s going to be another 20-year-long war” like the U.S. involvement in Afghanistan.
Craig Wallace is not a fan of President Trump’s style, but he supports his policies on the economy and immigration and has voted consistently for him since 2016. He supports the strikes in Iran as well, he said, viewing them as necessary to prevent future conflicts in the region and beyond.
Tex Peterson has voted for President Trump in every presidential election. He supports the president’s policies generally, he said, and that goes for the strikes on Iran, too. Standing in his driveway with his child, laughing and chatting, he described himself as a “long term patriot.”
Mr. Peterson said he has long followed the issues surrounding Iran and felt that the U.S.-Israeli military action would prevent Iranians from deploying nuclear weapons. That, he said, would make the world more secure.
And so on.
There were a few yellow blinking lights, such as this further quote from Mr. Peterson:
Asked about his priorities as a voter, however, he said the economy, not foreign policy, was the most pressing issue.
“Just how we can provide for our family,” he said. “I mean, the middle class has been carrying the weight for way too long, and it’s time that we start getting a return.”
I’m sure he’ll have no difficulty attributing skyrocketing fuel and other costs to Biden or the Libs, though.
The full MAGA heads are pretty much irrecuperable in the short term, what matters is the effect on independents and soft and/or non fully MAGAized republicans.
