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Gas prices. Are they too high?
Here’s a topic I think we can all agree upon, and yet no one really understands. Yes, they are too high. $2.60+ a gallon is definitely a lot to pay for filling up at the pump.
But before you go off and say “they’ve gone up since Biden took office” you do have to keep a few things in mind.
One, gas prices are not dictated by whether a Republican or Democrat is in office. They are largely controlled by the price per barrel of crude oil, set by a cartel of nations know as the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, who determine how much oil companies are paying for the oil they then process into gas.
Gas, during the winter months and transitioning to spring, usually goes up as production includes ethanol and compounds used to help lessen smog. The companies in turn pass that onto the wholesalers, who pass that cost onto gas stations, and in turn the consumer.
Watch in May sometime, the price will come down a little, fluctuate based on demand during the summer, and maybe settle somewhere around $2.30 to $2.40 a gallon by October, then be up again around $2.50 in time for Christmas as refineries switch back from summer to winter blends.
The cost also goes up and down as natural disasters occur and mess up the supply chain. Refineries are designed to make gas, but getting them running like they should is a delicate balancing act of chemical and mechanical engineering. If you’re not careful, things go boom and ruin your day.
When I was at Auburn when Hurricane Katrina struck, then the one not long after in Houston, gas stayed expensive at the time for a while. That was during the Bush years.
Largely because the refineries were off, and so the supply couldn’t keep up with the regular demand. You ended up in a situation where gas cost more and some stations got in trouble for price gouging.
In fairness, it’s not all one-sided. Gas station employees aren’t forcing anyone to fill up at the pump and fork over their hard earned dollars. Market forces are at play here. The world we have created is based entirely today on where consumers spend their dollars.
It’s not even all that bad, considering.
Gas in today’s money was cheapest in 1998, when adjusted for inflation would have cost $1.61 a gallon. Thats also on average.
Want to know where gas is expensive? Try and pay by the liter in Europe. It’s the worst in Hong Kong, where it is 2.40 a liter there. For a gallon? Try $9…
What I think drives this idea too of why isn’t gas cheaper, or milk, or eggs boils down to the notion the value of a dollar isn’t supposed to change. Face value, yes that is true. But in buying power, the metric that matters? That’s a different story.
Inflation is the cause of this all, and not understanding that the buying power of the dollar is ultimately all in what the market will bear.
At least a few of my readers will likely remember when you could buy a good car for $500, and it didn’t cost an arm and a leg at the doctor to fix your arm or your leg.
Since, oh, let’s say the dot com era of the late 1990s, the dollar’s buying power has weakened. You could buy a Coca-Cola from a vending machine back then for around a buck in a 20-oz plastic bottle. Now you spend $1.75.
What made that bottle more expensive? Lots of things, but mainly that the buying power of the dollar weakened because of massive borrowing over a prolonged period of time on all fronts.
Also, the cost to make anything continues to increase. People value their services higher by the year. Raw materials continue a general slow uptick, then saw a big increase due to demand during the pandemic being completely outpaced by anyone’s capabilty to produce.
Taxes go up, then down. Times change and so does what people want to invest their coins in every day.
So a bottle of soda that used to be a buck? Now it costs more across the board to produce – again due to a lot of factors but one important one: even though the buying power of the consumer is being constantly weakened by no significant change in wages over the past decades, the cost of what they want to buy is going up.
That’s driven by companies passing along those costs to consumers, and also being publicly traded they have to show a profit and pay out to investors. They do so by increasing prices and cutting costs. Workers are forced to do more while watching their colleagues being laid off. Ingredients are changed. Marketing and advertising budgets go away. One group makes a mint, others starve.
Yet this is how our system works, and where we spend our dollars drives decision making at oil companies, which soda you buy, and whether you might have a job by Christmas-time.
Want the price of gas to go down? Make a conscious choice and don’t drive so much. Enough folks do that, and watch the price go down to drive demand again.
– Kevin the Editor
Last note: Today’s “Morning Message” was intended for Wednesday, but for the purposes of the “abridged” version of Good Morning Polk was posted here today. Those receiving the newsletter have a completely different “Morning Message than this one.”
An eye toward the sky today…
Make sure to watch the weather today… It might get pretty dicey before everything is said and done. I’ll be updating the forecast regularly as it changes throughout the day. Please keep up with what’s going on and be safe about your travels. 25 mph wind gusts are nothing to fool around with, I know from experience.
Tech Corner Thursday
This has always been more of an indulgence for me than it has been for readers more than likely, but this is an item I think you should pay attention to and understand what’s happening.
A while back, I wrote about the interesting news about Apple’s new line of their own microprocessors inside of new computers – named the MacBook and MacBook Pro, and a Mac Mini as well.
The reviews for this machine are good from the tech community I follow for the most part, and speculation rages over what’s coming next from the company. The next generation promises to improve upon the last.
Now this is where the story gets a lot of fun in my view of things: they went and hired Justin Long, previously in Apple commercials as I’m a Mac guy, to now “play a regular guy” who just so happens to be now putting on a show for how great Intel laptops are. Look, this one flips around to a tablet! (Big whoop. I’ve had one since 2018…)
It feels a lot like the boyfriend who gets mad about being dumped and goes around the school putting up flyers of his ex in kindergarten, trying to rub their victimization in the face of everyone.
Don’t be fooled by marketing on either side of this debate. The new chips from Apple are capable of amazing things. Intel is behind two companies now and their previous strategy of raising prices for each small upgrade is no longer working.
One doesn’t need a crystal ball to see where things are going next.
If you want everything to work seamlessly around your iphone and ipad, then the Mac is the computer choice for you. If you want the windows you’ve had since nigh on forever, AMD is the better way to go in recent times.
Which leaves a longtime chipmaker like Intel needing a win. If they hoped these commercials would get them that, think again. The only people who care about Justin Long in these ads are tech journalists.
We all want something cheap, reliable and with long battery life in 2021 laptops. There are a plethora of choices to be sure, but previous years of watching Intel not do much with their high perch atop tech mountain means now they have some real catching up to do.
In the meantime, if you want a laptop (and can find one) I’d personally start looking at a chromebook. Most of what we do is online now anyhow. I’d think something affordable with free updates and connected with google accounts is the real winner. At least for now.
When it comes to tech, I’m always waiting for the next thing to come out and disrupt previous thinking about computing. It’s a lot of fun to watch.
Something to Watch this Morning
Enjoy some chill music on a rainy day. Sure does make me feel more motivated than I usually do when its this dreary outside…
Something to Read this Morning
I was watching a documentary when I first got up this morning and was making coffee called The Last Blockbuster on Netflix. (Which seems like a pretty harsh dig for the company to be hosting a documentary about a former competitor that presents it in a nostalgic way…) Anyway, got me going down a rabbit hole. Here’s why you can’t own your own Blockbuster today…
A man named Rico Marley apparently took several firearms and wore body armor when he walked into a Publix in Atlantic Station in Atlanta. The AJC reports he is in jail on multiple felony charges.
This guy? I’m glad he doesn’t live in the ocean now.
From several days back, but still a good read: some info on Orion’s two brightest starts, Betelgeuse and Rigel. Orion, for trivia followers of Kevin the Editor out there, is my favorite of all the constellations.
A good reason to support the environment and help figure out climate change and pollution, gentleman.
Oh, it’s going to take some time to get this cargo ship out. Wonder how that will impact global trade routes…
NY Times: State of New York has reached a deal to make recreational marijuana legal.
Fewest new national jobless claims since the start of the pandemic were posted. Good news!
