Oil just went below $ 100

[Davdeb1]

Originally Posted by Senior Chief

The Federal minimum wage in 1964 was $1.25/hour, which is what I made at my first "real" job. It bought at least 5 gallons of gas, up to 10 gallons when we had price wars.

I'm not disputing that you made 62 cents an hour, just that it was not actually the minimum wage.

Ditto, my first "real job then $1.25, which was fed min wage. Gas was about 25 cents then, so you got 5 gallons for an hour.

[henderson]

Originally Posted by Senior Chief

The Federal minimum wage in 1964 was $1.25/hour, which is what I made at my first "real" job. It bought at least 5 gallons of gas, up to 10 gallons when we had price wars.

I'm not disputing that you made 62 cents an hour, just that it was not actually the minimum wage.

My mistake I made $1.68 which was 6-8 gallons per hour. VS 2012 minimum $7.25 less than 2 gallons. So a gallon of gas now costs 3.5 to 4 times hours worked

[Davdeb1]

Yep 1.25 per hour then, equivalent to 20 per hour today. Anything wrong with that picture? New car then, 2000 now equivalent 30,000. Auto and gas increased about the same, wages? Not so much.

[62_inrightlane]

[QUOTE=Senior Chief;1168153]

Originally Posted by vegascouple

I'm sure you know (but hate to believe) that energy companies don't get any subsidies, but only get the same tax write-offs that other manufacturing industries get, only the energy companies get less (6 cents for every 9 cents other manufacturing gets).

Its a cool talking point to say we "subsidize" the oil industry, but shucks- just isn't true. Too bad.

They ship our oil out of the country creating a shortage here so that they can import and charge more money.

The US oil companies ship diesel to Europe and import gasoline because that's how the refineries are situated. We produce more diesel than we can use- Europe produces more gasoline than they use. They ship here; we ship there. We can't build more gasoline refineries here because the EPA won't let us.

What they don't tell you is that very little of those huge profits actually trickles down to the stock holders.

What is it you believe- that oil company execs all have a big room full of money and jewels like Scrooge McDuck? Can you articulate where you think all these huge profits go?

Profits go to the owners of the company- and the owners of a publicly traded corporation are ..... wait for it.... the stockholders.

If you own a lot of stock, like pension funds and mutual funds do, you get a lot of dividends. If you own fewer shares, like me and you, you get less in dividends. Easy to understand, right?

But what you say IS true in one way- most of an energy company's profits are plowed back into research (into developing more efficient methods of extraction) and development of new energy sources (i.e., new wells and fields).

Just like a farmer has to plant a new crop when an old one is harvested, an energy company has to continually look for new sources, new wells, new fields and spend money on developing better and more efficient ways to extract the oil they are pumping now.

Its expensive and it all comes out of PROFITS. Profits come after costs and TAXES (and who pays the biggest percentage of corporate taxes in the USA? You got it- energy companies).

A guy who pushes a broom for an occasional living probably thinks that YOU make too much money- YOU get tax breaks he doesn't because you own a house. YOU make more money just because you went to college or spent years learning your trade. He dropped out of school and drank beer instead of learning to work, but he probably thinks its not fair, and you should not make so much money. You should pay your fair share in taxes (much more than he does, which is nothing because he makes minimum wage and receives food stamps).

Is he right? No.

Are you right about oil companies?

Well stated!

I love it when people look at facts and then formulate their opinion based on facts. So many folks just adopt the opinion of someone else because it sounds good!

After working for 40 years for a publicly traded company I can tell you that any increase in the cost of doing business is passed on to the consumer. If you raise the taxes on a company you essentially turn them into tax collectors. They raise the price to offset the increased cost of doing business. They sell the product to you at the higher price and then pay the higher tax.

Goverment loves this because they get more tax dollars from the people and the people blame the business!

[Davdeb1]

Ditto to above. I'm glad some on here really understand this.

[mrschwarz]

I have been following this and have a few questions. Since oil is a commodity, it follows the laws of supply and demand. During the last election there was the hew and cry to 'drill baby drill'. An earlier poster said that we need to allow more drilling to get the price of fuel down.

My son-in-law works for a drilling company that drills wells for natural gas. When the price of gas goes up, everybody works. When the price of gas comes down, rigs get shut down and people lose their jobs. This effectively reduces supply which drives prices up.

I can't imagine that the oil drillers are much different. Isn't this a form of market manipulation? Isn't it a bit disingenuous to claim that oil prices are rising because the oil companies cannot get access to more drilling rights when they aren't exercising the ones they already have?

[Dutch Star Don]

Well.........Oil is now at $95.00 a barrel and the gas stations hear in California jsut went up .18 cents in three days. Now at $4.35 a gallon. That's .65 cents higher than it was when oil was $95.00 a barrel in January. What happened to our elected officials who were going to insure we were not being gouged?

[Jack1234]

Originally Posted by mrschwarz

I have been following this and have a few questions. Since oil is a commodity, it follows the laws of supply and demand. During the last election there was the hew and cry to 'drill baby drill'. An earlier poster said that we need to allow more drilling to get the price of fuel down.

My son-in-law works for a drilling company that drills wells for natural gas. When the price of gas goes up, everybody works. When the price of gas comes down, rigs get shut down and people lose their jobs. This effectively reduces supply which drives prices up.

I can't imagine that the oil drillers are much different. Isn't this a form of market manipulation? Isn't it a bit disingenuous to claim that oil prices are rising because the oil companies cannot get access to more drilling rights when they aren't exercising the ones they already have?

During the last federal election....if you recall...McCain blamed gasoline prices on a combination of government incompetence, environmentalists (opposing drilling) & foreign oil. Obama blamed it on greedy oil companies & wasteful consumers driving gas gobbling SUV's.......How about Wall Street?

In 1936.....if you recall.....Roosevelt passed the Commodity Exchange Act designed to prevent speculators from messing around in important things like food, oil, etc. The Act did this by setting "position limits" on speculators. These limits worked very well for over 50 years until the early 1990's when Goldman lobbied the first Bush administration into relaxing the rules so that by 2008 - 80% of the commodities market was dominated by Wall Street!

......and these guys had massive pools of money from pension funds, trade union funds & sovereign wealth funds in which to go "long" on indexed commodity trades. The only problem with indexed commodity trading, as opposed to stocks, is that it is "long only". As a result, when you introduce massive quantities of funds all chasing a finite commodity in one direction......it does tend to push prices "up".

So....while oil (& gasoline) prices were going through the roof in the first part of 2008, there was in fact a glut of oil in the market! By July oil hit $149 a barrel....then like all manipulated markets/bubbles....it all went bust and by Dec. the price was $33 a barrel......and "what" if anything has changed since 2008? Has the government introduced new regulation to limit this type of market manipulation?

Well....in 2007 Bart Chilton was nominated/confirmed by Bush & ............reappointed......... by Obama in 2009 as the chairman of the CFTC - Commodities Futures Trading Commission!!! Hhhhmmmmmmmmm.

[Jack1234]

Who oops...Bert Chilton is Chairman of the Environment Markets Advisory Committee of the CFTC.....sorry....the Chairman is Gary Gensler...a former Goldman Executive!