Gas Prices Cartoon

Gas Prices Outrageous Cartoon

I made the point less visually a few weeks back.

via Andrew Samwick

FILED UNDER: Blogosphere, Economics and Business, Humor, , , ,
James Joyner
About James Joyner
James Joyner is Professor and Department Head of Security Studies at Marine Corps University's Command and Staff College. He's a former Army officer and Desert Storm veteran. Views expressed here are his own. Follow James on Twitter @DrJJoyner.

Comments

  1. Maggie says:

    Water in a bottle $1.50? ? ?

    Heavens, what dumps have you been hanging out at? I was at the Dolphin Hotel, Disney World, Orlando, for six nights last week…..and….

    The bottle of water sitting on the “mini-bar” in my room was marked $3.50 a bottle!!!

    No way, fools, I made my coffee in the morning with the damn tap water, of course.

  2. Jon Hendry says:

    Gas is different, because we need to use it in much larger volumes than most anything else.

    How many gallons of ‘stadium beer’ do you have to buy every single week? How many gallons of bottled water are you utterly dependent on in order to get to work every day?

    Sure, there are many substances which are more expensive, but you don’t have to use 20 gallons of them a week. With some, like perfume, a tiny volume may last years.

    Furthermore, gas is different because it is not easily replaced. If orange juice goes up, you can buy water instead. If gas goes up, you can’t fill your tank with something else. Some people can use other transportation, but that is rarely as easy as picking up something different at the grocery store.

    This “gas isn’t really that expensive if you compare it to other things” thing is really quite weak.

  3. anjin-san says:

    Boy, you guys are becoming real shills for the oil companies. One wonders if OTB has some sort of vested interest…

  4. Herb says:

    Anjin:

    Please be seated and try not to fall off your chair, But, I agree with you.

    I am really sick of those who continue to make every excuse in the book in an attempt to justify the oil companies rip off of the consumer.

    Somewhere or somehow, there has got to be some “vested int rest” by those who do not have the capacity to understand that the oil companies control the refining capacity of gasoline and therefore control the price.

    Anyone who remembers the 70,s can recall the “sugar shortage, the “coffee shortage” as well as other contrived “shortages” in order to justify increased prices of these commodities that we still have to this day. When the prices of these items were increased due to “shortages” and suddenly the supply was back to normal, no one seen a decrease in prices.

    On OTB, we see charts, graphs, and economic theory, expressed like they are the absolute truth without exception while we, the consumer continue to see the oil companies getting richer by the millions each day while the average consumer continues to find it more and more difficult to make ends meet.

    Isn’t it strange that the price of crude starts falling as the stock market starts declining affecting the big Wall Street money as well as consumer spending.