Supply and Demand Lowering Gas Prices

[Raven C]

I was sent an email which made sense regarding buyers adjusting the prices of gasoline by essentially spurring competative pricing. This idea would actually work far better than the suggested don't buy gas for a day trick.

Anyway. This is what the email said.

I hear we are going to hit close to $3.00 a gallon by the summer. Want gasoline prices to come down? We need to take some intelligent, united action. Phillip Hollsworth offered this good idea: This makes MUCH MORE SENSE than the "don't buy gas on a certain day" campaign that was going
around last April or May! The oil companies just laughed at that because they knew we wouldn't continue to "hurt" ourselves by refusing to buy gas.
It was more of an inconvenience to us than it was a problem for them. BUT, whoever thought of this idea, has come up with a plan that can really work.
Please read it and join with us.
By now you're probably thinking gasoline priced at about $1.50 is super cheap. Me too! It is currently $1.97 for regular unleaded in my town Now that the oil companies and the OPEC nations have conditioned us to think that the cost of a gallon of gas is CHEAP at $1.50- $1.75, we need to take
aggressive action to teach them that BUYERS control the marketplace, not sellers. With the price of gasoline going up more each day, we consumers need to take action. The only way we are going to see the price of gas come
down is if we hit someone in the pocketbook by not purchasing their gas!

And we can do that WITHOUT hurting ourselves. How? Since we all rely on our cars, we can't just stop buying gas. But we CAN have an impact on gas prices if we all act together to force a price war. Here's the idea: For the rest of this year, DON'T purchase ANY gasoline from the two biggest companies
(which now are one), EXXON and MOBIL. If they are not selling any gas, they will be inclined to reduce their prices. If they reduce their prices, the other companies will have to follow suit. But to have an impact, we need to reach literally millions of Exxon and Mobil gas buyers. It's really simple
to do!! Now, don't wimp out on me at this point...keep reading and I'll explain how simple it is to reach millions of people I am sending this note to about thirty people. If each of you send it to at least ten more (30 x 10 = 300). and those 300 send it to at least ten more (300 x 10 = 3,000)...and so on, by the time the message reaches the sixth generation of people, we will have reached over THREE MILLION consumers! If those three million get excited and pass this on to ten friends each, then 30 million people will
have been contacted!

If it goes one level further, you guessed it....THREE HUNDRED MILLION PEOPLE!! Again, all you have to do is send this to 10 people. That's all. .

How long would all that take? If each of us sends this email out to ten more people within one day of receipt, all 300 MILLION people could conceivably be contacted within the next 8 days!!! I'll bet you I didn't think you and I had that much potential, did you!

Acting together we can make a difference. If this makes sense to you, please pass this message on. PLEASE HOLD OUT UNTIL THEY LOWER THEIR PRICES TO THE $1.30 RANGE AND KEEP THEM DOWN. THIS CAN REALLY WORK.

It really could work if the consumer sector as a whole participated. But will they??? Just a thought. R

 

[Cave Diver]

I was sent an email which made sense regarding buyers adjusting the prices of gasoline by essentially spurring competative pricing. This idea would actually work far better than the suggested don't buy gas for a day trick.

Anyway. This is what the email said.

It really could work if the consumer sector as a whole participated. Just a thought. R

I got that same email along with the following reply to it:

I have to reply to these preposterous schemes re: pricing and cost.

Let me start by saying GAS IS CHEAP! VERY CHEAP. Heres a number of reasons why

1. In 1964 gas cost 33 cents a gallon and the minimum wage was 55 cents. Do the math. therefore you had to work 33/55ths of an hour or 60% of an hour to buy a gallon of gas. Today using your numbers one pays $1.90 a gallon and is paid a min wage of about $5.35 ($8.00 in SF and some other big cities) or 190/535 = 35% of an hour

Get the picture?

2. figure out the cost of the bottled water you just bought. I note my teenage daughters regularly buy a pint for $1.00, let's see 8 pints to a gallon = $8 a gallon. So run the tap water through a 10 cent reverse osmosis filter and ya got $8 water., or,

dig a hole in the ground 10,000 miles away with millions of dollars worth of machinery, load raw crude on a ship and transport it to some refinery where 10's of millions of dollars worth of equipment refine it. Then load it on take trucks and send it to a gas station where its stored and sold and managed all at great cost. $1.90? why so cheap?

3. George Bush, the they in your story has somehow caused gasoline to cost $10 a gallon in Britain. $4.50 a gallon in Mexico, both BIG gas exporters.

I could go on and on but most of you who deal in common sense get the point. Every now and then THINK before ya blurt.

And no I do not work for an oil company

 

[Raven C]

Very good response.

 

[Cave Diver]

Very good response.

I wont take credit for it. As I stated, it was sent to me via email just like the one about gas prices.

What it does illustrate is how easily the average consumer can get bent out of shape over the price increase of a few dollars on their favorite product, but we don't seem to mind being a gazillion dollars in debt, both personally and as a nation...

My how times change!

 

[Raven C]

Funny thing the very person that sent the email I bet will not participate in the "attempt" to lower prices by boycotting.

Well, I am off to lunch and to fill my car with GAS. :0 R

 

[Ontario Diver]

As well:

A significant amount of the purchase price of gas is the tax burden that it holds. Not much that the gas station can do if the Government puts a .40 cents a liter tax on gas that is .75 cents a liter.

Secondly, your email mistakenly says that "we need to take
aggressive action to teach them that BUYERS control the marketplace, not sellers.". This is only true when the supply exceeds the demand. When there is more demand than supply, the price naturally rises.

Thirdly, very few retail outlest are directly owned by the oil company. The are mostly franchises. So the franchises and most of the smaller gas station buy thier gas from these guys anyway. So we really end up hurting the retailers instead of the big company. And the little place that you buy from is still supporting the big oil company anyway.

If you want to lower the cost of gas, support alternative fuel initiatives and reduce the demand.

 

[Former FLL Now MSP Diver]

The call for a boycott is an email hoax that has been circulating in various forms since 1999.

See http://urbanlegends.about.com/library/bl_gas_boycott_2004.htm.

However I do have it on good authority from an attorney that if you forward this email Microsoft will track it and send you money! :54:

Marc

 

[Jambi]

Out here in SoCal the average (in my area) price for a gallon of gas is $2.20. Out of that about $0.50 per gallon is for taxes, 18 Federal, 18 State and 7.75% local. So out of my average fill up of 23 gallons I pay about $11.50 to the government. On average I fill up about 2.5 times a month, which is not bad out here, for a average of $28.75. In a year that comes to $354 for the privilege of buying gas. I'm okay with that if they would just fix some roads.....afterall I don't want some thing for nothing.



Jambi

 

[Tiny Bubbles]

As an exxon-mobil stockholder, I hope you will understand why I'm not participating in your boycott.

................If you want to lower the cost of gas, support alternative fuel initiatives and reduce the demand.

That's right.

 

[simbrooks]

I search around for the cheap gas over here, but even though i try to find the cheapest by the $0.01/gallon here, i know that in the UK it used to cost about 80p/litre when i left, its probably gone up since then, 3 years ago. That works out to be about $6.50 with the current exchange rate per gallon. Most of that is due to taxes, about 60-70% from recollection. However using a good mid-size manual car over there (Ford) i could get at least 35mpg in town and 45+ on the highway, i am lucky if i break 30mpg over here in the same kind of car in automatic on the highway - I hate having something that inefficient!!! But beyond that, i am thankful for the low prices you have over here, even when they get hiked to around $2/gal from the usual lows of 1.50.