US Gasoline Prices Spur Telework

coondoggie writes "The price of gasoline may finally be changing the way many people commute and communicate. Anecdotal evidence says teleworkers are growing rapidly as a direct result of the cost of driving. The article links a survey indicating that in Q1 2007 the 19 largest US cable and telephone providers (representing about 94% of the market) acquired over 2.9 million net additional high-speed Internet subscribers, to a total of about 56.2 million. That can be attributed in part to more employees taking advantage of telework programs, experts say. Just this week the House Judiciary Committee's antitrust task force opened the first of a series of hearings on the oil industry. Its chairman noted that gasoline prices have soared well above $3 a gallon and asked, 'How did we get into this mess?'"

Comments

Re:How?

[HomelessInLaJolla]

the short term elasticity is so low That's one component of the "I'm not buying it". People have been pumping fuel out of the ground for, what, a little over one hundred years? It's been an extraordinarily profitable commodity product since at least the first decade of the 1900s. There is probably enough petroleum product stored up, around the globe, to last us all for at least a year or two. That's more than plenty time to adjust production and refining rates. This is about government protected profiteering.

People need to get to work, and in the car they have now That's a very astute observation and the Wall Street market fund managers who invest in various segments of the petroleum industry know it every bit as well as you do--and they're leveraging that need, guaranteed because people are (conveniently) in debt (due to systems which the same market fund managers and bankers also happen to conveniently control), against the population using government protected trusts and monopolies (which are in reality but due to some accounting technicality legally aren't).

we hit the wall of refining capacity Only because the financial game is rigged. In decades past many groups have expressed interest in shoring up our refining capacity and making it redundant. Those moves have been blocked on both the business and the political sides by already existant vested money interests.

Prices needed to go up to push demand down Yet demand never has gone down. This further illustrates (and debunks) the complete idiocy with which people attempt to apply supply/demand/price explanations to a major global real world market. It may work for apples and oranges in the classroom, it may work for five cent lemonade stands in the streets, but it damn sure doesn't work that simply within a socially stratified society.

Re:How?

[HomelessInLaJolla]

They've already allocated their resources in what they believe to be the best way possible Including using their collective monopoly position to kill funding on alternative energy methods, stifle the formation of competitive providers, and finance politicians who will not threaten their guaranteed profit margins.

As if they have a right to milk the American population for their own personal greed. The Constitution was written by men who were asserting their right to compete rather than be milked.

Re:How?

[Bloke down the pub]

It's not connected to the amount of petrol you consume.

A tax of 38-60 cents per gallon is clearly tied to the amount consumed.

It's clear that he's talking about other taxes, such as income taxes, you stupid prick.