Gas Prices

[Guest]

It's called profiteering.  Any excuse to raise the prices will do...

Chris

None is needed.

[The Rabbi]

If our store was selling it for $1.79 and the store down the street was $1.81 we raised our prices to the higher price. Seems to me, it would be more competitive to keep selling at the lower price

Obviously marketing felt they could still attract enough customers at the higher price.
Gas prices are funny.  People will drive down the block for gas that is 1 penny cheaper, even when they only put in 10 gallons.
If the store down the street cut its price to 1.80 you can be sure yours would too.

[The Rabbi]

Then you complain about prices?  We're lucky we have gasoline at all.

In Friedman's book he mentions that Carter was pushing for an expensive synfuels program (with massive gov't subsidies of course) otherwise we would run out of oil by 1990.  They scrapped the synfuel idea and guess what?  We still have plenty of oil.

[Guest]

At 150 miles a day round trip, if this goes on much longer, I'm going to have to move..which I really don't want to do for another four years.

[garrettwc]

Rabbi, you are quite right.

The more I think about it, this may be capitalism in its most raw form.