$4 dollar gas and its effects on metalworking

Wow, $4 a gallon! - thats a really good price, where can I get some? - here in OZ its $5.30 a gallon, and climbing. Predicted to be $5.67 by end of next week - something to do with the price of crude in Singapore going up.) Must be those pesky liberals again, making life difficult for you guys...

(Gunner will respond with "proof" that this is so....)

Andrew VK3BFA.

...and our gallon is bigger.

-- Jeff R. (but we don't like to brag)

messagenews:YqgMj.19936$% snipped-for-privacy@nlpi064.nbdc.sbc.com...

Dunno - I know the American Gallon is "different" - I used 3.78 litres as an equivalent. Our dollar is worth 90c American - its not getting worth more, yours is going down against the rest of the world. This is good for me, I can afford to buy Chinese tools cheaper from the states than I can here...(go figure THAT one!) - now, if your postage prices were not so outrageous....(bloody liberals again...)

Andrew VK3BFA.

Sorry Andrew - I should have clarified. I'm posting from VK2.

:-)

-- Jeff R.

On Fri, 11 Apr 2008 21:49:13 -0400, with neither quill nor qualm, clare at snyder dot ontario dot canada quickly quoth:

How is that working out for y'all?

-- Save the whales! Trade them for valuable prizes.

messagenews:YqgMj.19936$% snipped-for-privacy@nlpi064.nbdc.sbc.com...

The yankee gallon is a pipsqueak

** Posted from **

Well, that was an "oops" moment!. .....petrol here is hovering about $1.44, will be interesting to see what it gets to on Tuesday, thats the traditional bottom of the discount cycle. Papers reckon it will hit $1.50 by the end of next week. (Bugger!) I am relatively lucky, only do 1 long trip a week to TAFE, (metalworking course) - the rest of the time, its local short distance stuff. And I can choose when I go out, so don't waste fuel sitting in traffic jams.....ever had the thought, crawling down the "freeway" that this is bloody ridiculous - have the urge to pull into the centre median, get out the portable gas stove, brew up a cup of tea. Stick a sign out, saying "why are you doing this - stop for a cuppa - stop being a lab rat. " - if enough people did it, then, maybe, it would be recognised as a bloody silly way of moving people about - all at the same time - endless oceans of cars, usually with one person in them, stretching into the distance, moving at less than walking pace.....

Andrew VK3BFA.

All the private sector competition is resulting in higher prices, more user fees, and taxes only increasing slowly ('till they have spent all the proceeds from selling off publically owned assets, of course)

Best regards, Spehro Pefhany

nick hull wrote in news:nhull-D1F580.16114012042008 @dialupusa.usenetserver.com:

Would an acronym do?

An old friend has invented a new one for describing the impact of new/revised government regulations: BOHICA.

BOHICA stands for Bend Over - Here It Comes Again!

Not well. Deregulated electricity and gas gets all the swindlers into high gear. The privatized highways (electronic toll) are billing vehicles that have never been on them, and if your tolls are unpaid you can't get your tags renewed. If you have a transponder the rates are reasonable. If you don't you get hit with a no-transponder fee that makes occaisional use expensive. The government isn't putting enough of our fuel taxes back into road infrastructure maintenance and repairs.

At least they had enough brains not to allow our aerospace expertise (developed at taxpayers expense) to be given away to the americans. Second time in 50 years we stood to loose it all under a conservative government - this time they had the balls to say NO to the USA. Canada and the world lost the AVRO ARROW in 1958, and with that loss , the vast majority of Canada's not inconsequential aerospace expertise.

All because the USA could not allow Canada to be or be seen as having something better than the US.

Now the USA wanted RadarSat and full controll over the CanadArm and it's new little brother space manipulator. We will not be held to the role of "Hewers of wood and haulers of water"

Not this time, anyway.

** Posted from **

Too_Many_Tools wrote in news:1527e5cd-f350-40f7- snipped-for-privacy@f63g2000hsf.googlegroups.com:

You can thank the various governments (state & federal) for keeping it as low as it has been for the past half-century. After all, they COULD have imposed the high taxes that are common in Europe.

Closer to the early '80s when the question "How do the folks in Detroit get

15 adults into a VW Beetle?" was answered by "Easy - tell them it's headed to Texas!"

Wages in many fields/areas were already hyperinflated.

This is/was the cause of much of the "Outsourcing" and the "Offshore Relocation" mania of the last 2 decades that saw Union jobs replaced by non-Union jobs.

When burger-flippers expect $10+ /hr. to ask "Do you want fries with that?" you should already know that the economy is in a World of Hurt.

When Illegal Immigrants earn enough money to buy mid-range homes you should already know that the economy is in a World of Hurt.

When Welfare pays better than working you should already know that the economy is in a World of Hurt.

When the Democrat Party was bought by the Peoples' Republic of China over a decade ago you should expected that the economy would be in a World of Hurt as the US Standard of Living was brought down to PRC levels.

It's easy to misinterpret the airline situation. The simple fact is that there were too many airlines to begin with. The credit-card situation they face actually is the result of a consumer *protection*, not a vulnerability.

-- Ed Huntress

messagenews:YqgMj.19936$% snipped-for-privacy@nlpi064.nbdc.sbc.com...

======== Problem is that you are comparing pump price to pump price. I don't know the situation "down under," but the actual price of gasoline and diesel is now around 10$US per gallon when the oil company tax credits, tax exemptions, tax increment financing districts, free oil from under federal land, stolen oil [pumped but not paid for] from Indian reservations, etc.. One particularly glaring example of this was when Saudi Arabia decided to impose higher royalties on exported oil. The oil companies got the Saudis to call it a tax, which by US/SAUDI treaty could be deducted from the oil company US taxes.

It goes even higher when the lost tax revenues from transfer pricing are included, which must be made up by either borrowing or increased individual taxes.

The price climbs even more when the war costs are included, not only for combat but the damage done to the trust and cooperation of the people of the mid-east for the United States.

If we expect the "free market" to work, accurate and timely information must be available to the consumers. Charging the actual 10 or 12 $US per gallon at the pump while eliminating the oil company tax dodges and "cost externalization", would indeed cause massive economic dislocation in the short run, but would result in rational lifestyle decisions about alternative energy, high mileage vehicles [i.e. no more Hummers], no more urban sprawl w/2 to 3 hour commutes, far few giant box stores, etc.

This has no chance of occurring until total "melt down" occurs. The Romans got "bread and circuses," the US gets gasoline and professional sports.

Unka' George [George McDuffee]

------------------------------------------- He that will not apply new remedies, must expect new evils: for Time is the greatest innovator: and if Time, of course, alter things to the worse, and wisdom and counsel shall not alter them to the better, what shall be the end?

Francis Bacon (1561-1626), English philosopher, essayist, statesman. Essays, "Of Innovations" (1597-1625).

And when CEOs make billions for loosing 10s of billions of dollars you KNOW the economy is in a HUGE world of hope. When CEOs start to settle for a reasonable level of pay companies can afford to manufacture things here again, and workers can work for an "honest" wage, and not see the extreme difference between what they earn PRODUCING and what CEOs earn screwing things up.

** Posted from **

That would be far too simplistic Gunner - comforting, yes, but accurate - no. He is just one silly person , the nominal head of a whole system that has the planet drowning in its own garbage. Replacing Mr Bush with "someone else" would make no difference.

But if you feel comfortable blaming left or right, thats fine - nothing said here can change your mind in any way beyond reinforcing lifelong beliefs.

Interestingly enough, the younger people are increasingly blaming our generation for the mess the world is in. They don't get bogged down in dinosaur politics - its irrelevant to them - they just damn us all! - as long as we can find a convenient left/right scapegoat to absolve us from actually taking any real responsibility at a personal level, they may well be right.

Andrew VK3bFA.

On Sun, 13 Apr 2008 10:32:38 -0400, with neither quill nor qualm, Spehro Pefhany quickly quoth:

Since when does competition increase prices?!?

-- Save the whales! Trade them for valuable prizes.

On Sun, 13 Apr 2008 11:56:54 -0400, with neither quill nor qualm, clare at snyder dot ontario dot canada quickly quoth:

That sucks, bigtime.

Ditto here. I was on Pennsyltucky's tollways in '98 and they're even worse, with much higher tolls.

Well, good for them.

Bbbbut, you're all lumberjacks (and you're OK), aren't you? ;)

-- Save the whales! Trade them for valuable prizes.

When a sort of monopoly (a bridge, an expressway, a concession at an airport, space in the RF spectrum) is sold to the highest bidder... IOW when the competition is in gaining control over the captive customers rather than serving the customers.

Best regards, Spehro Pefhany