Today news....gas prices going up to near $5 tomorrow

[cody]

I meant no disrespect towards any person, I only find fault with the concept of price manipulation based on an unfortunate chain of events. regardless of how it sounds I'm not in favor of extensive regulation however we do have the laws on the books right now to deal with the ones that gouge the public.  I don't claim to be any kind of an expert in the field but I had been at one time accused of being a professional student, my dad used to say that there I am with 3 degrees and where am I?,,,,in prison lol.

[Sojourner]

I meant no disrespect towards any person, I only find fault with the concept of price manipulation based on an unfortunate chain of events. regardless of how it sounds I'm not in favor of extensive regulation however we do have the laws on the books right now to deal with the ones that gouge the public.  I don't claim to be any kind of an expert in the field but I had been at one time accused of being a professional student

Ditto!

Sojourn for Christ, Gerald

[Lin]

The idea is to strive for balance.  To think that the government should always be involved in everything is ridiculous, but the opposite, that the market should be absolutely untouched is equally foolish.  The "laissez faire" system, as it was known has probably been long abandoned most everywhere in the world, except for China, due to the tremendous abuses.  It took an act of Congress to even standardize steel specs in the US.  Does anyone contend it was better with non-standard steel?  Is there anyone here that prefers a non-FDIC bank for their money.  If so, there are some in the Bahamas you could use.  You might want to look through Upton Sinclair's book The Jungle to get an idea of what the meat industry was like before regulation.  Teddy Roosevelt had to stop eating meat for a while after reading the book.  Wouldn't you just love a society that had no regulation on pharmaceuticals?  We all benefit from regulation because we can not trust our fellow citizens to due the right thing.  Can things be over-regulated?  Sure!  I remember once reading about a burlesque house that was forced to add wheelchair stage access in case they had a paraplegic stripper!  Come to think of it, I bet there are people that would go for that.  Balance is the key.

[ktmossman]

The problem with that theory being:  Once you let the camel put his nose in the tent, how do you control him?  Politicians being what they are (almost universally), they always seek to expand their power and prevent any loss of their power.

Two quotes to consider:

"When people fear the government, there is tyranny.  When the government fears the people, there is freedom"  -- Thomas Jefferson

"History has tried hard to teach us that we can't have good government under politicians. Now, to go and stick one at the very head of the government couldn't be wise." -- Mark Twain

[cody]

Another point to concider is that there are laws in place to control the price gouging that is being done by a select few. For an attorney general to have the courage to use the existing laws to correct a problem wouldn't involve anymore regulation than we already have.   One arguement that seems to keep coming up is the fear of additional regulation, no additional regulation would be needed in this situation, just the courage to enforce the laws that already sit on the books.

[JohnEd]

Cody,

Very much agree with you.

Belfert,

In WW2 we had price controls and rationing.  That all worked out well for the country.  Steele and auto and oil and all the rest were not destroyed by this practice.  On the contrary, they prospered.  In that time of national need patriots weren't such a rare breed.  If you had a commodity that was needed and you tripled the price because you might not have any in a few weeks the gen public would have lynched you.  A war profiteer was a very low form of life and had a min lifespan.  I think it would be in keeping with out history if the oil companies were told to "make fuel available at the current price plus shipping adjustment".  The people fleeing that hurry cane were in pretty bad shape and didn't need someone picking over their bones because of some missplaced concern for bidness profits.  That comes out harsh but I wouldn't take a tone with you.  Chalk it up to poor lit abilities on my part.   There is little we can't do if we put our collective shoulder into it.  It is the liberals that want the system altered that are always carping about the gummint not being able to achieve a single thing.  Today's world would look nothing like it does if we had listened to Jefferson on his point "when the gummint fears the people we have freedom".  The French politicians FEAR the general voting French public and a lot of the power brokers fear the French model catching on over here.  They are so desperately in need of that that bashing the French has become a national passtime here.  I agree that there is a lot wrong with our Gummint but that is because of who has been selected to run the nation and by whom.  That is why so many educated people have said that the root of our problems could be resolved with campaign finance reform.  I think a whole pile of prosecutions would set the record straighter and give many of us a faith in the "system' that the Abramhof scandal has started.  Watch for the pardons, now.

Recent news comes from Oregon Sen Ron Wyden.  He has been holding news conferences on the gov dept that monitors and charges oil companies for oil removed from public lands.  The creeps were partying with the BIG oil types and taking gifts and you know the drill.  Sen Wyden says that prelim reports indicate that the BIG oil folks are in arrears to the tune of billions upon billions.  I don't know how long that has been going on but someone should face a firing squad after turning states evidence and being Lucky enuf to get an understanding prosecuter that let his wife and kids off without being shot but still doing a bunch of hard time.  After the "fair and balanced" trial.  None of that Ken Lay crap where all the investigation stops when the perp with the bad heart gets on a treadmill and races himself to a heart attack at 6000 feet.  His wife kept the 600 million and that was that.  Justice? Storm the Bastille.

Great news about you career in education as a student.  I took my last class when I was 44.  I didn't go full time but I took a few classes a year when bidness workload permitted.  It was my great pleasure and I am sure yours as well.  Gerald is also a member of this club, I take it.  A while back he was begging off because he was only semiliterate...in his words.  He reminds me of those engineers that would say " Gee, four years ago I couldn't even spell engineer and now I are one".  He keeps slipping his facade, though.  Like the southern engineers i knew that reveled in putting on airs of corn pone with words like "ruin't" and such.

I still luv ya,

John

[Dreamscape]

Sherman Texas, WalMart $3.77 on September 11th.

Same place on September 14th, $3.89.

Ike hit the area on September 13th.

I did expect to pay much more after Ike, I was pleasantly surprised. Not cheap mind you, just thankful.



FWIW,

Paul

[ktmossman]

I guess my point on "greed" and "price gouging" is that they inherently depend on personal OPINION.  And personal opinion has no place in our criminal justice system.

If Joe's Gas Station wants to raise his price on gas to $10/gal. tomorrow, it is up to the owner of that station.  If you don't like it because you think he is a greedy SOB, don't buy from him now or in the future.  If your opinion is shared by enough people, Joe goes out of business.  Very simple law of action/consequences.  If enough people are willing to pay $10/gal. for Joe's business to survive, then Joe's price must not be too high.

But to make it a criminal matter is another thing altogether.  If you start letting the law be subject to personal opinion, where does it stop?  Have you read some of the nutty opinions Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid have about what should and shouldn't be allowed in this country?

In the case of rationing, etc. during WW2, it was a time of war.  Under a declaration of war, there are many points of the law which can be set aside, because the needs of the country supersede.  There are solutions that can have a good impact in the short term which wouldn't work over a longer period of time.  In the case of WW2 (and WW1), complete socialism was practiced in many sectors of the economy.  And the business owners agreed (more or less) because they understood the importance and were willing to lose some of their profits to help the country in a time of crisis.  And unfortunately, many of them ended up bankrupt after the war.  Many industries were spared long term consequences because we happened to move from the war into the Industrial Revolution.  In fact, had those restrictions remained in place, the Industrial Revolution would have looked far different.  It was driven by those "greedy" industrialists, who, in some cases, crossed the line into criminal behavior.

In my opinion, the price jump on fuel last week was largely premature, and, in some cases, excessive.  So, there are some fuel stations that will not see my business in the future, most of which I didn't frequent anyway.  We also temporarily limited the use of my wife's car because it is nearly out of gas and I didn't want to fill it at those prices.  But to translate my personal dislike of a price change into criminal behavior is another thing altogether.

[Len Silva]

If Joe happens to own the last gas station before the bridge out of town and raises his price to $10.00 after an evacuation order, then he should simply be shot.

[cody]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_gouging    here is your definition of price gouging and it is not only illegal in most states, there are also federal statutes that define it and make it illegal.  So it would not require additional regulations only enforcement of existing ones.  To put it simply it is a felony to increase the price of a neccessary commodity by more than 10% during a civil emergency over what it was before the emergency, a civil emergency can be described but not limited to a natural disaster. It would be pointless for me to advance a side of a discussion without having the documentation to support it tho many seem to do just that.  At this point 29 states have price gouging law, and have  been a criminal offense for many years, other states fall back on the federal statutes in this regard.  As you can see, there is no need to make it illegal, it already is.

[Lin]

I understand wanting to keep the camel's nose out of the tent, but is it alright to let the camel toe in the tent?

[ktmossman]

So there you have it, it's already the law.  And as we know from our country's history, the law can't ever be wrong.

So what happens if the cost of the commodity goes up at the wholesale level?  Is the owner just screwed because he can't raise his price?  Or what if, because some of his employees can't get to work because of the disaster, the owner now has to pay employees overtime wages, or he has to go out and buy a generator to provide power, or he has to hire security guards for his facility, or any number of legitimate business expenses that might arise from said disaster?  His costs of operation have now gone up, but he is screwed because he can't raise his prices to cover those expenses.  The profit margin on a gallon of fuel is usually pennies, so a 10% bump isn't squat. 

I have been there, the only employee at a fuel station during a major storm.  I ended up working 48 hours straight (with all of the accompanying overtime) because there was no one available to replace me.  We ended up running generators because the power was out.  We had to hire a security guard (at a significant cost on the spur of the moment) because, without a phone line, the store security system didn't work and, because the roads were iffy, the armored trucks didn't run to pick up the cash.  Because we were a corporate owned store, the corporate headquarters limited, by policy, how much we could bump the price.  So we lost money even though we emptied our fuel tanks before we could get a refill.

For that company, because they had thousands of stores across the country, they could absorb the temporary financial hit on a few stores.  But what about the "mom and pop" station down the road?  And did our customers remember that we took the hit for them during the storm?  Nope...  The company shut the store a couple years later due to "lack of community support."

[cody]

I would think that wholesalers are subject to the law as well as retailers, thats why there are not only laws in place at the state level but also at the federal level.   There are many sides to the benefits of price controls as well as disadvantages to it, the common idea is that in a natural disaster, nobody wins, however, in many cases a select few enterprising firms do try to win and win big. To me, it's a shame that we have to legislate what should be concidered as being right and wrong, to further compound the problem with national perception, we, without a moments hesitation, will load ships and send them to the other side of the world to help out in any disaster that should strike, but can't seem to figure out what to do when an area gets leveled here in our own country.

[JohnEd]

Cody,

Thank you for everything you said.

John

[JohnEd]

Dreamscape,

I read in here that Texas has a way of writing laws to asuage public outrage at corp actions and has passed laws regulating prices of fuel in an emergency.  I don't know anything about this but I do know that when faced with fines and prosecution a corp acts differently than when it is "rfree" of those consequences.  Lots of  Liberatarians down there. too.  Go figure.  They sure pride themselves on their highways and none of them spouted up outside "gummint interference".  Seems conflicted.

"Don't mess with TEXAS"  hmmmmm!

John