Oil ends lower as U.S. drillers add to rig count
2017-11-10 2:43 PM ET (MarketWatch)
Trump wants to open up Alaskan oil.
Will gasoline be down to a dollar per gallon?
Remember that many North Dakota drillers gave up because it was not profitable for them. Then OPEC dropped its production and prices got better for U.S. oil. See https://www.npr.org/2017/05/24/529852301/boom-time-again-for-u-s-oil-industry-thanks-to-opec.
As the above MarketWatch item states, more production lowers prices.
Showing posts with label supply and demand. Show all posts
Showing posts with label supply and demand. Show all posts
Sunday, November 12, 2017
Sunday, October 21, 2012
Who controls gasoline prices
As I watch the gasoline prices drop, I wonder if those who blamed Obama for an increase in prices are giving him credit for the drop. I doubt it, because the latter is just as unrealistic as the former.
"In the end, supply and demand is causing prices to moderate once again."
Sharon Epperson, CNBC, 2012-10-18 via Yahoo Finance.
In other words, free market proponents are all for free markets when markets work to their benefit, but they blame someone else when markets work to their detriment.
"In the end, supply and demand is causing prices to moderate once again."
Sharon Epperson, CNBC, 2012-10-18 via Yahoo Finance.
In other words, free market proponents are all for free markets when markets work to their benefit, but they blame someone else when markets work to their detriment.
Friday, September 17, 2010
Why gas prices go up faster than down
How often have you heard the complaint that gas prices go up faster than when they go down? Especially after the latest pipeline break in Illinois.
Consider how wholesale gas or any high turnover products are purchased.
Merchants pay for product with some of today's receipts. In order to buy more product tomorrow, they need to raise prices PDQ.
Conversely, when prices go down they want to make up for some of the smaller margins they had as prices went up and to provide some protection against prices going up again.
If the rate of prices going up matched the rate of prices coming down, we would probably be very upset when our favorite station ran out of gas.
Consider how wholesale gas or any high turnover products are purchased.
Merchants pay for product with some of today's receipts. In order to buy more product tomorrow, they need to raise prices PDQ.
Conversely, when prices go down they want to make up for some of the smaller margins they had as prices went up and to provide some protection against prices going up again.
If the rate of prices going up matched the rate of prices coming down, we would probably be very upset when our favorite station ran out of gas.
Saturday, August 14, 2010
Fair share of taxes, what's that?
Charges go back and forth about taxes. Some say the rich should pay their fair share of taxes; others say that taxes hinder entrepreneurship. As usual, the extreme positions miss the truth by a couple miles or a hundred.
First, what is a fair share? Is it the same percentage as everybody else? Is it a progressive rate without a lot of gimmicks to reduce taxes. Or is it a share commensurate with the benefits received?
Second, how many rich people are really entrepreneurs? Few of us really know. Some have inherited their wealth and are just "clipping coupons", an old phrase for getting the interest payment on bonds. Some have invested in stocks, but how many were original investors? Aren't many "investors" really traders trying to take advantage of the variations of stock prices? About the only social benefit traders provide is liquidity. Some rich people are executives of companies that they didn't create, but have managed by one means or another to gain control, sometimes with disastrous results for the shareholders, employees, and society.
Let's look at the hypothetical entrepreneur to determine what his "fair share" of taxes should be.
Bugs Bunner has forty acres in which he has planted carrots. He starts by plowing his fields all day in the early spring. Then he uses a planter to put in rows and rows of carrot seeds. He spends many a day cutting the weeds down and keeping the deer and rabbits out. Come fall he takes his carrots to market and hopes to cover his costs and make a profit.
One year he finds a carrot variety that keeps well and tastes great even after a year of cold storage. Grocers all over the state seek his carrots out.
Now we get into the first problem of being a self-sufficient entrepreneur. How do his carrots get into the stores? On public roads. How do the roads get paid for? By taxes. What is Bugs Bunner's fair share of the cost of the roads? Is it a share of his income? Is it the cost of his use of the roads? If everything was truly free market, he would pay the owner of the roads a toll for every use of the roads.
Bugs Bunner's carrots are so popular that he buys more land and plants even more carrots. His plantings get so extensive that he can no longer do all the work himself. He has to hire farm laborers. How much will he pay them? It partly depends on the supply of labor - low supply, high wages; high supply, low wages. Let's suppose there is a high supply of labor and he pays low wages.
Will he pay enough for decent housing, for health care, adequate food, and so on? If not, who pays for making sure the needs of his work force are met. Would that be called welfare? Welfare is often paid for by taxes. How much of these taxes should Bugs Bunner pay?
If he requires literacy in his laborers, who pays for them to learn to read? Their parents? But if the next generation of his laborers are the children of his current laborers, can the parents afford to pay for their children's schooling? If the parents can't afford to pay for schools, then the government will have to pay for the schools. Guess what? This requires taxes. What is Bugs Bunner's fair share of these taxes?
On and on it goes. Until we recognize that "no man is an island unto itself", we will continue to argue what a fair share of taxes is.
First, what is a fair share? Is it the same percentage as everybody else? Is it a progressive rate without a lot of gimmicks to reduce taxes. Or is it a share commensurate with the benefits received?
Second, how many rich people are really entrepreneurs? Few of us really know. Some have inherited their wealth and are just "clipping coupons", an old phrase for getting the interest payment on bonds. Some have invested in stocks, but how many were original investors? Aren't many "investors" really traders trying to take advantage of the variations of stock prices? About the only social benefit traders provide is liquidity. Some rich people are executives of companies that they didn't create, but have managed by one means or another to gain control, sometimes with disastrous results for the shareholders, employees, and society.
Let's look at the hypothetical entrepreneur to determine what his "fair share" of taxes should be.
Bugs Bunner has forty acres in which he has planted carrots. He starts by plowing his fields all day in the early spring. Then he uses a planter to put in rows and rows of carrot seeds. He spends many a day cutting the weeds down and keeping the deer and rabbits out. Come fall he takes his carrots to market and hopes to cover his costs and make a profit.
One year he finds a carrot variety that keeps well and tastes great even after a year of cold storage. Grocers all over the state seek his carrots out.
Now we get into the first problem of being a self-sufficient entrepreneur. How do his carrots get into the stores? On public roads. How do the roads get paid for? By taxes. What is Bugs Bunner's fair share of the cost of the roads? Is it a share of his income? Is it the cost of his use of the roads? If everything was truly free market, he would pay the owner of the roads a toll for every use of the roads.
Bugs Bunner's carrots are so popular that he buys more land and plants even more carrots. His plantings get so extensive that he can no longer do all the work himself. He has to hire farm laborers. How much will he pay them? It partly depends on the supply of labor - low supply, high wages; high supply, low wages. Let's suppose there is a high supply of labor and he pays low wages.
Will he pay enough for decent housing, for health care, adequate food, and so on? If not, who pays for making sure the needs of his work force are met. Would that be called welfare? Welfare is often paid for by taxes. How much of these taxes should Bugs Bunner pay?
If he requires literacy in his laborers, who pays for them to learn to read? Their parents? But if the next generation of his laborers are the children of his current laborers, can the parents afford to pay for their children's schooling? If the parents can't afford to pay for schools, then the government will have to pay for the schools. Guess what? This requires taxes. What is Bugs Bunner's fair share of these taxes?
On and on it goes. Until we recognize that "no man is an island unto itself", we will continue to argue what a fair share of taxes is.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)