And I've yet to see "I did that!" Biden stickers on gas pumps in US for this. It's almost like the president doesn't control the price a private business sets for their products.
> US government could recognize that just like milk, gas is a necessity and regulate the price
In practice this means the government paying for gas, as every gas subsidy the world over shows. (Also, since when did milk become a necessity or price controlled?)
You might have noticed that the price of milk hasn’t skyrocketed over the years, as farmers haven’t been able to pull the same market abuse that the gas companies do?
> the price of milk hasn’t skyrocketed over the years, as farmers haven’t been able to pull the same market abuse that the gas companies do?
To the degree milk is price regulated in America, it is with respect to a minimum price [1]. We subsidise exports to raise the price of milk.
Gas is competitively extracted and competitively refined. The price is high because crude surged and we don’t have many refiners and nobody in the West wants to invest in production because there is a good chance it will be banned or supertaxed soon. Broadly speaking, any time you think the reason for gasoline’s price movement is conspiracy, apart from OPEC, you’re probably wrong.
They’re releasing from the strategic petroleum reserve, so yeah “he did that” but it’s not sustainable. Meanwhile the administration still actively hostile towards domestic production, which is what will actually solve the problem.
Getting off of oil solves the problem, not bandaids like temporarily stoking production of a resource we don’t want to be using.
In an ideal scenario, we’d institute a carbon tax and subsidize EVs and clean electrical generation if US politics weren’t broken, but here we are.
The average voter doesn’t understand global oil market economics, geopolitics, refinery capacity, fossil investment divestitures, etc, they just want to drive where they want to go. Don’t want to be beholden to a constrained energy resource? Switch to proven alternatives. It’s not rocket science. Make it cheap to buy EVs and make it more financially painful to by combustion vehicles, even if you’re cutting checks to EV makers out of the Fifth Fleet’s budget.
Im all for getting off oil, but getting off it onto rare earth minerals is not green.
EVs have a life span of less then 10yrs, they often blow up catastropically, they rely one rare earth minerals to be built and run, they are very hard and expensive to fix, and they are charged via fossil fuels the majority of the time; they are not saving the planet of anything. They are marketing! Green is worth big money.
This is demonstrably false, as the Model S alone was first released in 2012 and still has a KBB value estimate of over $20,000 for a 100k mi very good condition example.
>This is demonstrably false, as the Model S alone was first released in 2012 and still has a KBB value estimate of over $20,000 for a 100k mi very good condition example.
I agree EVs can easily last as long as any other car so long as you're willing to do a battery once but KBB value doesn't mean squat other than as a measure of original purchase price vs how hard the owners drove them into the ground. Considering who buys Teslas and how they get treated they had better hold their value or something is seriously wrong.
> In an ideal scenario, we’d institute a carbon tax and subsidize EVs and clean electrical generation if US politics weren’t broken
US politics isn’t “broken” most voters just don’t care enough about climate change to actually do anything more than support mitigation efforts in the abstract as long as it doesn’t cost them anything.
My parents, for example, are core democrat voters: older minorities who vote straight ticket democrat not only in presidential elections, but random local ones. My parents didn’t even vote for Larry Hogan, who won our Biden-leaning county by 38 points.
And they don’t care at all about climate change! They have a car and aren’t going to buy an EV. Their biggest concern right now is inflation and gas prices. (My dad blames Biden for not strong arming Ukraine into quickly capitulating so the Russian gas can keep flowing.) If you polled them they would say that we should do something about climate change, because they know republicans are climate change deniers and don’t want to come across as being Republican, but it’s a purely symbolic belief that doesn’t affect their voting patterns at all.
Indeed, your entire comment is accurate, in broad strokes, across the electorate. Luckily, adoption is ramping quickly enough that we're already passed an inflection point in the US (per Bloomberg): https://archive.ph/wPQ9B
I still argue politics is broken if people don't care about climate change; that apathy flows to their representatives. C'est la vie, we'll clean it up on the backend with tech and clean energy's version of Moore's Law.
"People don't care enough about my pet issue" does not make politics broken for any value of pet issue no matter how legitimate said value is.
"Politics is broken" is right up there with the. "people are bad at X" family infantile assertions always boil down to the old Principal Skinner "everyone else is wrong and I'm right" argument. Said argument is inherently wrong for issues of social norms or consensus where the "average man" is always tautologically correct.
For those who can afford it, absolutely. I spoke with someone yesterday who sold their F350 pickup and partner’s gas vehicle for a Model 3 and a Y because they could no longer justify their gasoline expenses with their driving cycles. The free hand of the market at work. As I mentioned, carbon taxes and EV point of sale rebates for those less well off.
If you don’t want to tax carbon and offset EV prices with the proceeds, yes, people of lesser means will experience economic pain in the near term due to apathetic energy policy since the 70s oil embargo. The price of oil will only go up with capital divestments (including refineries at maximum capacity perpetually) and the price of EVs will continue to decline over time. Nothing will spur increased investment in fossil fuels long term in the current political climate. There is no short term fix. You must lean hard into electrification.
Your own source says you are wrong. The price of a gallon of gas has dropped by almost a dollar according to the article in this post.
Your own link says:
“As shown in the table above, our analysis suggests that President Biden’s historic SPR release, in coordination with IEA partners, lowered the price of gasoline by 17 cents to 42 cents per gallon, with an alternate approach suggesting a point estimate of 38 cents per gallon.”
So, even their most generous estimate doesn’t support what you are saying. And that’s assuming that the price of gas wont drop any further (it will).
Policy causes increases on the market, and you shouldn’t shill politics on HN of all sites.
In my area we went from 1.80 to a high of 4.60 and are sitting around 4.00 today. The administration doesn’t get credit for a small correction on a massive price spike.
Agreed, the current administration doesn't get the credit for lower gas prices just as it shouldn't get the blame for higher gas prices. That was the point of my comment, that many people in America are quick to blame the president for a price increase but don't say a word of thanks when it decreases. Can't have it both ways.
That's not the point. The President's actions absolutely have substantial effects on gas prices. The point is that if you raise prices of something by 250% and then lower them by 15%, you don't get to take credit for lowering the prices, since your net action was still to raise them by 200%.
He didn't agree with you if I read his post correctly.
He said "Policy causes increases on the market" meaning that the government can impact prices. Your original post went against that idea, or at least attempted to discredit it by reducing the argument down to a stock phrase.
And then he said "The administration doesn’t get credit for a small correction on a massive price spike". I'll give him the benefit of the doubt and assume he's a reasonable person. So perhaps he's willing to give a letter of thanks rather than the whole word until prices fall further.
At this point it's like thanking someone for a bandaid after they've cut your finger off.
Some quick googling says your full of crap and misrepresenting. Sure maybe gas went to 1.80 at the bottom of COVID! But most likely that was from a previous value of about $3. Georgia had a high of about 4.60 and now gas is 3.70 up from $3 a year ago.
Amusingly, I saw an “I did that” sticker on a Plug-in America Electric Car charging unit. I think it was probably more accurate than anything related to oil.
In my part of Europe it is also down. Now €1.68/litre from a peak of €2.20/litre in June. If you take into account the USD/EUR exchange rate change this year, then prices are nearly back to their winter 2021 levels.
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[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 82.6 ms ] threadIn practice this means the government paying for gas, as every gas subsidy the world over shows. (Also, since when did milk become a necessity or price controlled?)
https://www.ers.usda.gov/webdocs/publications/42300/15259_ai...
To the degree milk is price regulated in America, it is with respect to a minimum price [1]. We subsidise exports to raise the price of milk.
Gas is competitively extracted and competitively refined. The price is high because crude surged and we don’t have many refiners and nobody in the West wants to invest in production because there is a good chance it will be banned or supertaxed soon. Broadly speaking, any time you think the reason for gasoline’s price movement is conspiracy, apart from OPEC, you’re probably wrong.
[1] https://www.ers.usda.gov/webdocs/publications/42300/15268_ai...
In an ideal scenario, we’d institute a carbon tax and subsidize EVs and clean electrical generation if US politics weren’t broken, but here we are.
The average voter doesn’t understand global oil market economics, geopolitics, refinery capacity, fossil investment divestitures, etc, they just want to drive where they want to go. Don’t want to be beholden to a constrained energy resource? Switch to proven alternatives. It’s not rocket science. Make it cheap to buy EVs and make it more financially painful to by combustion vehicles, even if you’re cutting checks to EV makers out of the Fifth Fleet’s budget.
EVs have a life span of less then 10yrs, they often blow up catastropically, they rely one rare earth minerals to be built and run, they are very hard and expensive to fix, and they are charged via fossil fuels the majority of the time; they are not saving the planet of anything. They are marketing! Green is worth big money.
This is demonstrably false, as the Model S alone was first released in 2012 and still has a KBB value estimate of over $20,000 for a 100k mi very good condition example.
It's 13,476 for everyone. This link breaks it down by age and sex:
https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/ohim/onh00/bar8.htm
I agree EVs can easily last as long as any other car so long as you're willing to do a battery once but KBB value doesn't mean squat other than as a measure of original purchase price vs how hard the owners drove them into the ground. Considering who buys Teslas and how they get treated they had better hold their value or something is seriously wrong.
US politics isn’t “broken” most voters just don’t care enough about climate change to actually do anything more than support mitigation efforts in the abstract as long as it doesn’t cost them anything.
My parents, for example, are core democrat voters: older minorities who vote straight ticket democrat not only in presidential elections, but random local ones. My parents didn’t even vote for Larry Hogan, who won our Biden-leaning county by 38 points.
And they don’t care at all about climate change! They have a car and aren’t going to buy an EV. Their biggest concern right now is inflation and gas prices. (My dad blames Biden for not strong arming Ukraine into quickly capitulating so the Russian gas can keep flowing.) If you polled them they would say that we should do something about climate change, because they know republicans are climate change deniers and don’t want to come across as being Republican, but it’s a purely symbolic belief that doesn’t affect their voting patterns at all.
I still argue politics is broken if people don't care about climate change; that apathy flows to their representatives. C'est la vie, we'll clean it up on the backend with tech and clean energy's version of Moore's Law.
"Politics is broken" is right up there with the. "people are bad at X" family infantile assertions always boil down to the old Principal Skinner "everyone else is wrong and I'm right" argument. Said argument is inherently wrong for issues of social norms or consensus where the "average man" is always tautologically correct.
Repositioning it as an individual problem is a very old PR technique.
https://mashable.com/feature/carbon-footprint-pr-campaign-sh...
https://www.motorbiscuit.com/tesla-model-3-costs-considerabl...
https://www.tesmanian.com/blogs/tesmanian-blog/tesla-model-3...
If you don’t want to tax carbon and offset EV prices with the proceeds, yes, people of lesser means will experience economic pain in the near term due to apathetic energy policy since the 70s oil embargo. The price of oil will only go up with capital divestments (including refineries at maximum capacity perpetually) and the price of EVs will continue to decline over time. Nothing will spur increased investment in fossil fuels long term in the current political climate. There is no short term fix. You must lean hard into electrification.
https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/jy0887
If you think you have a valid counterpoint, feel free to elaborate.
Your own link says: “As shown in the table above, our analysis suggests that President Biden’s historic SPR release, in coordination with IEA partners, lowered the price of gasoline by 17 cents to 42 cents per gallon, with an alternate approach suggesting a point estimate of 38 cents per gallon.”
So, even their most generous estimate doesn’t support what you are saying. And that’s assuming that the price of gas wont drop any further (it will).
In my area we went from 1.80 to a high of 4.60 and are sitting around 4.00 today. The administration doesn’t get credit for a small correction on a massive price spike.
He said "Policy causes increases on the market" meaning that the government can impact prices. Your original post went against that idea, or at least attempted to discredit it by reducing the argument down to a stock phrase.
And then he said "The administration doesn’t get credit for a small correction on a massive price spike". I'll give him the benefit of the doubt and assume he's a reasonable person. So perhaps he's willing to give a letter of thanks rather than the whole word until prices fall further.
At this point it's like thanking someone for a bandaid after they've cut your finger off.
Natural gas prices are still going up though...