Let's talk about suspending the federal gas tax!

I think it's a bad idea at least until the US deficit is gone, there's a balanced budget, and government spending has been curtailed/smartened/not sucked.

Let's pretend that went a bit over our heads, Matt. Is the gist of your post that the spirit of what I brought up is wrong (that one way or another the price will go down which will result in people buying more, which will lead to the price going up anyway) or that by using the word "demand" I was just technically incorrect, in terminology only?

To change "demand", you would need something like a report saying that putting gasoline on your lawn makes it grow better.

Not all of us make tons of money on the inter-web thing. I've never felt that way.

I agree, for some of us two bucks can literally mean dinner some days.

That's ridiculous. I think people lose their minds a little when it comes to gasoline.

So the gas station at Menomonie and Clairemont has their gas 10 cents cheaper than everywhere else in Eau Claire. People are backed up into the streets to fill their tanks at this gas station to save approximately $1.00 to $2.00.

When I worked at Copps back in the day they didn't change the price of gas one morning and decided to leave the gas 5 cents cheaper then other places. The station was out of gas by noon.

will go out of there way to save a few cents/gallon

Price gouging would be like if after 9/11 you were the only station in town with gas and you charged like $15 a gallon (though that would be an extreme example, it has to do with charging too much, not to little). I suspect they set a minimum price because in many areas having a loss leader is illegal. For example a grocery store isn't allowed to put their pop on sale for less than they paid for it. The store's reason would be to take a hit on the one item to get you in the store, assuming a certain percentage will buy other things. The reason it's illegal, as far as I know, is for competition reasons. The Walmarts of the world could risk this more often than the locally owned grocery store. Personally I don't have a problem with it, I think it's a pretty antiquated rule. Walmart can already undercut pretty much everyone on pretty much everything. Mom and pop places already can't compete. The only people being hurt by not allowing Walmart to have the EXTREME discount once in a while is us consumers.

It would probably be especially prevalent for gas stations to do this since they make so little on the gas anyway, they make their money by getting you into the store. So the bigger places with the bigger stores could put the "mom and pop" place, which might have a tiny, or no, convenience store, out of business pretty quickly if they were allowed to lose a few cents a gallon rather than make a few cents a gallon in an effort to get people into the store.

I think this is why lots of places are starting to have a card that saves you 2-3 cents a gallon, but you have to go into the store to use it. They are forgoing their few cent profit to get you into the store where you might pick up a $4+ gallon of milk.

Minnesota has some kind of law against price gouging. Not real sure how it works, but the state sets the minimum price. if you sell it for less, you get fined big time.

The fact that the Copps station ran out by noon that day shows why it's not always a bad thing when gas prices rise quickly when there is a sudden increase in demand (like after a national disaster, or any other time that people expect there to be an interruption in supply). Most of the times in these situations, the panic or supply interruption only lasts a few days or so and people overreact and "hoard" gas even though they may not really need to. This means that the next day no station will have gas for the customer who really needs it. The price increase helps to fight this by making it more likely that the gas station will keep enough of a supply to last until the next shipment, thus allowing the gas to remain for those who probably need it the most (and thus are willing to pay the higher price).

It's just systemic of our overall approach in our culture. Nothing is important 'til after something bad happens. What? Repairing and upgrading those levees would be expensive! Putting locks and stronger doors on cockpits would be expensive! Sometimes it ends up being a drop in the bucket compared to the resulting cost. Though to be fair I haven't read up much on the bridge. Was it really an imminent disaster they ignored or band-aided, or was it just an accident?

I think we're all missing the most obvious solution to all our gas problems: Banding together to not by gas on a certain day. My uncle's friend's neighbor is a high school economics teacher and he says that the big oil companies would be so effected by the one day that gas would be 40 cents a gallon the next day! Join me everyone! How goes next Wednesday sound?

You also have a distant relative in Uzbekestan who passed away and left much of his estate to you, you can collect it if you'll just cut a check for 5,600 rubles

Not a fan of that $38 million dollar compensation package?

and decided to leave the gas 5 cents cheaper then other places.

Yet the state can drop the ball on infrastructure maintenance and **** us for a few more cents per gallon... and THEN give reparations to its victims on our dime.

I don't know why you chose now to make an issue of other people's grammar, but I was behind on this thread and so I read a bunch of posts just now and the fact that I noticed the following quote


then saw you making an issue of a different homonym mistake a few posts later made it all the more classic.

laughing dog omitted for everyone's sake.

Again, please.

Yeah people, lighten up!

The 35W bridge collapse. They're giving all kinds of money to the people who were injured- even after their hospital bills are covered (with tax money). Then they want to raise our state gas tax by 25c over 5 years to pay for the repairs to the bridge. This is in addition to all the other taxes we've been paying.

Yeah people, lighten up!

I didn't need a summary, I was asking that you refrain from using certain verbs inappropriately.