Memorial Day Gas Gouging

Another American holiday tradition: honoring our fallen soldiers by gouging travelers at the gas pumps.

Memorial Day is a day set aside to honor those who sacrificed their minds, bodies and lives defending our freedoms.

In recent decades many of our fallen heroes died in conflicts that also threatened the supply line and profit margins of big oil companies. To show it's gratitude Big Oil, along with Wall Street speculators, has kept the price of oil high.

Gee. Thanks.

While the price of oil does have a large part in the cost of gas, it isn't the only factor. For the past couple weeks the cost of oil has dropped almost $15 per barrel.

Big Oil doesn't produce the gas we use in our vehicles. Refineries do that. (Though some refineries are owned in part or outright by Big Oil.) The refineries in this country seem to be quite profitable despite running at 57 - 80% of capacity.

Where I live, there is a big refinery less than a mile outside of town. The gas stations in town that carry the brand of gas made at the refinery are always among the highest priced.

Either those gas stations are padding their profit margins by selling cheap "mother-company" gas for outrageous prices or the refinery itself is overcharging.

I suspect it may be both.

Which leads me to my next thought.

Usually gas stations don't make much on the sale of gas. They make most of their money selling the overpriced junk food, beverages and trinkets inside their store. However; I suspect they pad their fuel profits a bit more just before, during and after every major travel holiday.

Whether its just one link in the chain or the whole line that is gouging us at the gas pump, the end result is the same. They are grossly profiting from the deaths of our fallen soldiers who sacrificed their lives for higher ideals than increased profit margins.

Note: To our men and women in uniform, past and present, and to their families - thank you.



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Shabby's Economic Indicator

Earlier Ol’Shabby had a few thoughts collide to form an idea for a simple, straightforward economic indicator.

An economic indicator may be a report, a statistic, a regularly occurring seasonal trend, or any combination of those things. Economists use economic indicators to determine what is going on in the economy and to make predictions of the future.

(Given their track record over these past few years, most economists are either the class drop-outs, doing too many drugs, live on another planet, or are paid to NOT say what they really think.)

My idea for an economic indicator is based on two observations.

First, walking around my neighborhood and driving around town, I notice a lot of homes for sale. By the overgrowth of grass and shuttered windows some of those places look like they’ve been on the market for quite awhile.

Second, the local newspaper’s help-wanted section used to span several pages. In recent years it has dwindled to a handful of help-wanted ads in a single column. Most of the jobs listed are part-time, temporary, seasonal or on-call. Rarely is a job opening posted that would pay enough to afford one of the homes for sale.

Put these two observations together and you get this:

When the number of homes for sale far exceed the number of available jobs that pay enough to afford those homes, you don’t have an economic recovery!

Yeah, I know this flies in the face of what the main stream media is pumping out. Radical and revolutionary ideas like this usually do.

In the meantime, I’ll be waiting for my Nobel Peace Prize in Economics and my Pulitzer Prize for Creative Writing. They may be one and the same.



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Please, keep your comments clean, civil and relevant. Cussing with foul language just for the sake of using foul language only proves the person to be an obnoxious, dull-witted fool.

Jelly Bean Inflation

The other day I had a craving for jelly beans. So on my way home I pulled in to one of the two grocery stores in town to buy a pound of jelly beans.

I remember, when I was a kid, there was a five-and-dime in the town near where I grew up. Inside the store was a long, u-shaped glass counter and behind the glass were bins and trays full of different sweets and sugary delights. For a dime, a white paper bag containing a pound (usually topped off with an extra large scoop) of jelly beans could be had.

This and other old memories began to surface as the now adult me walked towards the bulk-candy section of the grocery store.

As I stood under the large hanging sign that proclaimed “SAVE BY THE POUND!” my memories of yesteryear were smacked-down by the reality of today.

$3.99 for a pound of generic jelly beans.

What the . . . ?

Ah, come on!

These are just generic, no-name, balls-of-sugar-and-food-coloring, jelly beans.

Four bucks?!

(And this didn’t include sales tax yet!)

I looked over the next couple bins to where the gourmet “Jelly Belly” brand was stored.

Oh, they only want $8.99 for a pound of those things.

Phttt!

I walked out of that store and drove to the other grocery store in town.

The second grocery store doesn’t have a bulk-candy section. The candy is sold, prepackaged, in one of the aisles.

$1.79 for a 15oz (not quite a full, 16oz pound) plastic bag of the store brand (generic) jelly beans.

$1.79?

Just shy of a pound?

I bought a bag to satisfy my sweet tooth and hoped the sugar rush would ease my depression caused by seeing massive inflation in real-time.



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Please, keep your comments clean, civil and relevant. Cussing with foul language just for the sake of using foul language only proves the person to be an obnoxious, dull-witted fool.