How Stupid Are They?

[v8vega]

Todays gas prices are 100% idiot Bidens policies and were stuck with this fool for another 2 1/2 years.

[Rufus T. Firefly]

Todays gas prices are 100% idiot Bidens policies and were stuck with this fool for another 2 1/2 years.

Well, you are posting in the right thread - unquestionably stupid. Has nothing to do with Biden or the Gov't, and everything to do with the oil companies gouging the frell out of everyone to make up for the year when oil was negative in price per barrel and they stopped production of everything we need now. They took refineries off line and now they have no reason to return to the production capacity that we enjoyed forever.....they're making money. Oil (and nat. gas...) production is at record high levels beyond what this country even needed; refineries, no.

[robert.]

One thing i find funny is. People complaining about a living wage. Imagine how much gas will be if the station clerk is paid $20. an hour. You'll need to pay more to cover that wage. There may be greed involved and that's not going away. When a station owner pays more to his employees. His greed will only raise prices twice as much.

[HONDO74]

One thing i find funny is. People complaining about a living wage.

What is a living wage today. $15 dollar an hour ? $50 dollars an hour. ??

I was just reading this about Berkley Calif. The average price of a home is now 1,6 million and rent for a one bedroom apt is 3 to 4 thousand dollars a month. How much does one have to make to afford that. Heck the taxes on that house are probably 10 thousand a year just for the privilege of living there.....

[robert.]

https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/1703 ... 3064_zpid/ Property tax $68,000 a year 2021. only to go up with this sale. That is $1300 a week! that's $41.00 an hour before payroll taxes. Just to pay property tax. Your mortgage would be around $6,200 a month toss in the tax. $11,400 a month. Roughly $135,000 a year without a utility bill or a drop to eat. You would need a family income of $175,000 minimum. That would keep you around the house poor level. I read that wrong. Tax is less than $5,000 a year in 2021. That's not that bad on a 1.4 million dollar house. I don't know how much the assessment will change after the sale.

[robert.]

After my adjusted screw up your mortgage would be about $6,800 a month with tax at the current rate. I'll say $84,000 a year. A family income of $150,00 could pull it off. quick math $35x2 an hour should be livable. $35x2 may not qualify for a mortgage.

[Rufus T. Firefly]

One thing i find funny is. People complaining about a living wage.

What is a living wage today. $15 dollar an hour ? $50 dollars an hour. ??

I was just reading this about Berkley Calif. The average price of a home is now 1,6 million and rent for a one bedroom apt is 3 to 4 thousand dollars a month. How much does one have to make to afford that. Heck the taxes on that house are probably 10 thousand a year just for the privilege of living there.....

It's not funny around here.

Ave home price where I live in the immediate area is ~$700k. I can go 2 miles down the road and it's $1.6-2.2 mil for new houses. Over in a new development that a friend of mine is overseeing construction in - tore down a few and put up double the number - they just sold a new home for $2 mil cash.

Couple years ago an efficiency 1 bedroom apt was $2k; probably $3k now.

You can't live around here making $20/hr unless you share a house with 4 other people......or you commute in from WVa or PA.....and a lot do just that.

Going to get a lot worse in a few years after Amazon, Boeing, and others move in and find out that there's no housing available for 30+ miles around.

[robert.]

People here are moving out in droves. They're selling to people from Jersey and NYC. Sell your house in north Jersey for 1.8 and buy one in central bucks for $8-900,000. Bank they difference and commute back to work or work from home. I would say 1 in 10 of the higher end houses i go to don't match the voter registration records i have. My registration records are from Feb 1 2022. People are moving in and not registering to vote or have not changed it yet.

[gregj410]

Has nothing to do with Biden or the Gov't, and everything to do with the oil companies gouging the frell out of everyone to make up for the year when oil was negative in price per barrel and they stopped production of everything we need now.

I’d love to hear something to substantiate this theory. If it’s that simple than why does Joey the dunce insist it’s Putins invasion of Ukraine causing the gas hikes? Furthermore try and convince the American people that’s Biden has nothing to do with it. Prices went up after he was elected.

[Mitch]

They took refineries off line and now they have no reason to return to the production capacity that we enjoyed forever.....they're making money. Oil (and nat. gas...) production is at record high levels beyond what this country even needed; refineries, no.

Not true, Rufus. Daily US oil production is 1.2million barrels below pre-pandemic levels. What is true is that they took refineries off line during the pandemic, (which was world wide), but now usage is going up all over the world, with less oil being produced by oil companies everywhere including OPEC. The oil companies are hesitant to invest in re-opening a couple of refineries because they just can't pull their wallets out and shell out the money. They need investors, and how many big buck investors want to risk their money in production when the administration's ultimate goal is to eliminate fossil fuels altogether? Biden has been blaming Putin and vilifying the corporations every day for gouging.
There is a refinery in Texas that is 100 years old this year, and it is scheduled for shutdown in December '23. It refines 840,000 barrels per day; 400K diesel, the rest gasoline and JP4 & JP5 jet fuel. It would need a complete revamping and would be cheaper to build a new one. We haven't built a refinery in this country since 1980. It's true that they're makin' money right now, but they lost their asses for 2 years during the pandemic. Not to worry! Joe's gonna fix it by nailing them with a windfall tax, in which if the investors weren't already scared, they should be terrified now.
Now I know you're gonna come back to show me how wrong I am and defend Biden to the hilt, but I don't want to hear it! Go buy your electric car and don't worry about the fuel.

[v8vega]

Under Trump we exported oil we had so much, Idiot Biden reversed Trumps oil production policies and thats why Biden is now trying to import oil. Gas was 1/3 the price under Trump than now under illegitamate Biden.
People buy gas all the time, I sure hope this will help in Nov. election, the bad thing is all the election laws that made it so easy for Democrats to cheat are still in place so expect massive cheating again

[Rufus T. Firefly]

Has nothing to do with Biden or the Gov't, and everything to do with the oil companies gouging the frell out of everyone to make up for the year when oil was negative in price per barrel and they stopped production of everything we need now.

I’d love to hear something to substantiate this theory. If it’s that simple than why does Joey the dunce insist it’s Putins invasion of Ukraine causing the gas hikes? Furthermore try and convince the American people that’s Biden has nothing to do with it. Prices went up after he was elected.

No theory - the refineries are the bottleneck and have been for decades. Every summer they take a few off line and prices jump; put them back online and prices drop 75% of that increase and the oil companies pocket the profits. Blaming Ukraine has never made sense on the oil front (other items, yes; Russian oil etc. was ~4% of our import while we were producing and exporting record amounts as the US is energy positive. And there are the 2 real problems - we're exporting what we need and we're not refining (or building refineries for many, many years...) - we're our own worse enemy.....again.

Convincing people of the reality is impossible - they always want to believe the worse of anyone and always want to blame someone regardless of whether they had anything or any control of it. There was a hilarious bit of film taken at some fair with a guy asking people why doesn't Obama fix this and they all immediately fixated on him to blame....except he was out of office and they did not even understand that. Just showed that you can direct and fix blame on whoever and lead the average person around blindly -- the herd of sheeple. Sadly, people want to be part of the herd, and politicians and their owners love having the herd.

[HONDO74]

Here you have it direct from the donkey's mouth. It's PUTIN"S fault not the oil company's

Biden says 'Putin's tax on both food and gas' is to blame for record-high inflation
President Biden said the United States "has never seen anything like Putin’s tax on both food and gas," after the Labor Department announced Friday that inflation hit a new four-decade high in May.

The Labor Department said Friday that the consumer price index, a broad measure of the price for everyday goods, including gasoline, groceries and rent, rose 8.6% in May from a year ago. Prices jumped 1% in the one-month period from April. Those figures were both higher than the 8.3% headline figure and 0.7% monthly gain forecast by Refinitiv economists.

It marks the fastest pace of inflation since December 1981.

The president, from the Port of Los Angeles Friday, said fighting inflation is his "top economic priority," while, again, casting blame on Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine for the surge in prices.

"Today I'd like to speak about my top economic priority, fighting inflation," Biden said. "I understand Americans are anxious ."

"We’ve never seen anything like Putin’s tax on both food and gas," Biden said.

The Labor Department Friday said price increases were widespread: Energy prices rose 3.9% in May from the previous month, and are up 34.6% from last year. Gasoline, on average, costs 48.7% more than it did one year ago and 7.8% more than it did in April. In all, fuel prices jumped 16.9% in May on a monthly basis, pushing the one-year increase to a stunning 106.7%.

In another worrisome sign, shelter costs – which account for roughly one-third of the CPI – accelerated in May, climbing 0.6%. It marked the fastest one-month gain since 2004. On an annual basis, shelter costs have climbed 5.5%, the fastest since February 1991.

Food prices have also climbed 10.1% higher over the year and 1.2% over the month, with the largest increases in dairy and related products (up 2.9%, the biggest monthly increase since July 2007), non-alcoholic beverages (1.7%), cereals and bakery products (1.5%), and meats, poultry, fish and eggs rose (1.1%).

Scorching hot inflation has created severe financial pressures for most U.S. households, which are forced to pay more everyday necessities like food, gasoline and rent. The burden is disproportionately borne by low-income Americans, whose already-stretched paychecks are heavily impacted by price fluctuations.

Rising prices are eating away the strong wage gains that American workers have seen in recent months: Real average hourly earnings decreased 0.6% in May from the previous month, as the inflation increase eroded the 0.3% total wage gain, according to the Labor Department. On an annual basis, real earnings actually dropped 3% in May.

[HONDO74]

Just showed that you can direct and fix blame on whoever and lead the average person around blindly -- the herd of sheeple. Sadly, people want to be part of the herd, and politicians and their owners love having the herd.

That reminds me.
Eli Wallach from the movie the The Magnificent Seven

"If God didn't want them sheared he would not have made them sheep!"

[robert.]

I think for prices are up higher than they claim. Most stores have a price they set as the standard price for an item. They usually sell it for less than that set price. This allows them to raise the price during emergencies and get away with it. IE. a bag of pretzels. Set price $3.99. They sell it for $3.49. 50 cents below their regular price. Today they sell it for $3.19 and claim it only went up 19 cents. Yet i'm paying 70 cents more than a year ago.