Originally posted by RT and his SE:
Quote:

You'd have a point if the margins were significant enough to impact the economy. Simple fact of the matter is that if all the profit was taken out of gas it would still be expensive; few people would even notice the impact on their pocketbook. By your own math, even at exhorbitant pumping (20 gallons/ dollars not gallons ever 3 days) you only paid $597 over three years. Average consumption is probably half that at best, so the average person is only paying about $100/year, less than $10/month, in direct profits to Big Oil.




What things are affected by fuel costs? Almost everything you say? And in the end who pays all those affected costs? The consumer you say? And when consumers stop spending on anything but the basics or even down size their life style because money's getting tight then what?





Talk about someone not getting it.

Once more from the top:

You'd have a point if the margins were significant enough to impact the economy.

You're really bitching, and rightfully so, about the impact that $70 oil has on the economy not the 24 cents profit. As I thoroughly explained in about as laymen's terms as possible, your argument doesn't make sense when applied to the profit itself. In the grand scheme of your spending it's just way too small. Over the past 5 years the profits you pay to Big Oil have only increased by about $6/month (from ~$4 to ~$10). 6 bucks. It's nothing. The individual impact doesn't even register on an economic scale.

As gas prices have doubled from $1.50 to $3.00, the profit on that has only gone up about 12 cents. $1.50/gallon can have a pretty sizeable impact on the economy. $0.12/gallon does not.

While you're paying $6/month more now to line Exxon's pockets, you're paying $84/month more now to line the pockets of some Sheik and some Speculators somewhere. Now think real hard about where the problem lies.

You wanna [censored] about something, [censored] about the other 92% that's tripled in the past 3 years. You know, the bulk of the cost. Not the 8%. It's downright stupid to target the 8%. Even if you could totally remove every bit of it, you wouldn't even notice it was gone. It's just too small.

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