Why is Gasoline so Cheap?

When you say that you are riding do you mean carpooling with others or riding the bus or train?

I mean good old fashioned two wheeled push-bike riding. Takes about the same time too - an hour each way.

I am fairly lucky. I live about 6 miles (each way) from work. I could ride a bike to work but I don't trust the drivers enough to chance it.

No, it's priced right, although I would like to see more gas-taxes, to pay for more roads. (Most people are too stupid to understand that their time wasted in traffic-jams actually has value above what increased road-usage taxes would be.)

I don't mind the high prices. Punishment for the stupid BARGE drivers.

Merritt,

Sorry I got the Suburban wrong, but I don't believe there ever was or ever will be in the near future a shortage of gas-----unless you call a 'shortage' because they slacked up on pumping it out just to drive prices up for the wealthy to get rich---then I believe that. I sort of look at it like this---we are getting paid back for what we're doing in the mid-east, it's sorta called 'legal' terrorism on the US economy. SOMETHINGS GOTTA GIVE SOON !!

Merritt Mullen wrote:

However, oil companies and the US federal government wield plenty of influence, in all manner of way and circumstance, which easily enough equates to opportunistic profiteering.

I was asking where you got your figures. OK. However, you assume the price of oil production has remained fixed. I don't believe that's true. Equipment and exploration costs have both plummeted due to technological improvements for each. For example, computers no longer fill a barge nor cost 500K a pop.

I have no way to calculate or check this other than to agree with your gold/US dollar assessment.

OK, let's let oil off the hook for a moment. Microsoft rapes consumers from the AOL user to the federal government. Been doing it sice the 70s. As a US corporation they skirt the law and just plain break it whenever and however they please. Hard as it is to believe, apparently the US federal government contains no lawyers with enough intestinal fortitude to take them on and win. Or, is it, there's no un-beholden "leadership" left? You tell me.

"FanJet" wrote in news:NiaNe.195$ snipped-for-privacy@monger.newsread.com:

It's gone down. Way, WAY down.

Thank the government's copyright law. It's the thing that keeps Steamboat Willie a cash cow for Disney, and keeps me from offering Windows 1.1 to you on my Web site.

I'd like to see copyright law revert to its original 5 years, myself. But then I derive no income from my public bon mots and pensées, which are freely available for your personal worship or derision via Google.

Um, you're quite, quite mistaken. The very gaudy and public politically- ambitious travails of Eliot Spitzer should inform you of that.

But it's BECAUSE of the Barge drivers, in a fair amount...

Go away...that makes NO SENSE at all...and I am NOT a W fan.

There's a bunch more to it than that. MS says you must purchase a copy of Steamboat Willie's best for use on your VCR/CD, etc. If you move and don't take *that* machine with you, you've got to purchase another copy for you new playback equipment. If the machine dies, that copy of Steamboat Willie's best dies with it. If you purchase a new machine, you've got to purchase another copy. Certainly, the only entity big enough to reign MS in is the federal government. That's what we pay them for but they're not doing the job. Hell, they mostly don't act like they should be doing *any* job.

Maybe you should make a CD, pay a good agency some big $$ to irresistibly silk-screen them and charge $400 a piece - once a year, every year. Quite off topic (what isn't), but does the RSX-S 6-speed really have some longstanding, mysterious 1-2, 2-3 shifting issue?

Lots of the 20 something crowd is getting pissed too.

Who cares about the twenty somthings. All they care about is the $100 tickets to the next rock concert.

Maybe the ones you know. Wait... do you really know any?

"FanJet" wrote in news:%kuNe.371$ snipped-for-privacy@monger.newsread.com:

That's my point. It's the federal government that expanded its own original

The government is the PROBLEM, not the SOLUTION.

The problem is that they did TOO MUCH of a job. They kept expanding copyright law far beyond what it was originally. They did this at copyright holder behest, to be sure, but that again is my point. ONLY the government can cause such problems. NOBODY else has such powers.

Doesnt make the blindest bit of difference, we have 80% tax on fuel and still have roads that regularly mean a) my alloys need straightening and b)I average 17 miles per hour down a road that is a 60mph limit. The Government dont use it for the roads, they channel it off elsewhere meaning motorists pay for other things and not for what they use.

Well, to be more clear, I'd support higher gas-taxes IF they are used to increase road capacity and quality.

In the US, the federal gasoline tax is 18.4 cents/gallon and the state taxes average about 20 cents/gallon for 38 cents total. On gasoline costing $2.50 a gallon, that is about 15% tax. And the federal tax (18.4 cents) goes into the Highway Trust Fund and is paid back out to support highway maintenance and construction (except for 15%, or about 3 cents, that is reserved for urban transit use).

Each penny of federal fuel tax raises over $1 billion in revenues.

Merritt

This is part of the EULA - end user license agreement. It's included with the copyright but I don't think it's part of it. MS does things like this because they can and, since they have more money than God, the government needs to reign them in. There are some things only the Feds can do and this is one of them.

And, the patent office & FCC are totally out of control - have been for years but here again, only the Feds can correct the problem.

I was being pedantic, i knew what ya meant ;) Dont take me too seriously lol.