Yup you’re right. But they all seem to be tied to the oil/gas industry. I should have been more general.
Oranges don’t work that way. I’ve seen orange crop disasters that wiped out over 30% of the crops, but prices didn’t budge for many weeks/months. Outside of oil/gas I don’t see it.
As I said Gas (oil/propane - anything tied to energy) seems to work differently.
Agreed. I put my plan in place at the start of hurricane season, and I’m implementing it now. I fueled up my vehicles on Saturday. I put some of my shutters up on Saturday, and I plan to put up the rest this evening. If the storm’s 3-day cone comes up the middle of the state or up Florida’s east coast, I’ll be evacuating to Jacksonville first, and use it as a jumping off point if the storm heads my way. If it goes toward the Gulf of Mexico, I’ll stay put at home in Vero Beach.
+1
In the aftermath of Superstorm Sandy, the NJ Attorney General successfully prosecuted a substantial number of businesses for profiteering to the detriment of those who had been affected by the hurricane. In addition to a score of gas stations that jacked-up their prices to an unconscionable level, he also prosecuted stores that were charging extortionate prices for bottled water. He even prosecuted several motel owners who charged newly-homeless people ~5 times the normal room rate.
Its that gasoline/energy does not have real alternatives. If the orange crop is wiped out people can simply eat apples. It is referred to as price inelasticity. When the price of gas increases a dime, i don’t change my behavior because I need gas to get to work and grocery store. When beef prices go way up, I will eat more chicken or pork. I have that option with food but not with fuel.
I converted my camry to run on propane several years ago. It saved my thousands in fuel because I could buy propane once a year when it was low and drive on it all year. When gasoline was $3.50/gal, I was driving on $0.85/gal or $1.06/gge. Currently I am driving on gasoline because my carmry had 270K miles and many mechanical problems. I have not converted my current auto over but i do have the kits in my shop to do so.
I never once made any statements on the how or why. All I said was that it acted different.
The only problem with the way the gas/oil industry handles pricing is rate changes completely different on the way up then on the way down. When ever there’s a fluctuation in the market - gas companies have their highest profits. When gas prices are stagnant - profit is at it’s lowest. Even when gas prices are dropping - gas companies have higher profits.
Was thinking about taking offers, paying the buyout price then selling it for profit, naturally it would take a day or 2.
Good news. Gas prices are already on their way down today.
And OJ? It’s up over 10% in this last week, before one orange has been knocked off one tree by the hurricane that is still days away:
Still don’t know what I’m wrong about.
I wonder if supermarkets will raise the price of OJ on the shelf during the hurricane, probably not.
And we won’t know, because there aren’t 2-foot signs outside every store announcing the price for OJ, unlike for gas.
I think this is a losing discussion since everyone will be of the same mind regardless of what is said here. But like I said before, if the super market has to pay more for their next order of orange juice, you can be assured that they will raise the price of all of their inventory of OJ on hand. Their computers don’t maintain separate pricing depending on what pallet that container of OJ was on. I don’t know why this is such a hard concept. Inventory management is hard enough without maintaining separate pricing for separate lot numbers, unless of course you are a pharmacy.
Sincere applause to Coke.
I saw on the news that they had a distribution center in the Houston area with countless thousands of bottles of water and Coke products. They gave authorities permission to cut the lock on their gate and raid the inventory free of charge for distribution to affected persons. This, rather than scalping, should be what the world does.
The only car I ever leased was a 1996 Miata. One penny down and $199 per month. I knew it would be a base model but that would be a plus for a purest like me. I expected something like refrigerator white but it was Montego blue. Color shifting between blue and green. The 36 month lease was as advertised. I had much more than the $7,200 in enjoyment.
Thought harvey was bad, projected path for Irma right up the state of florida, cannot imagine.
I was in New Orleans after Katrina. It had been a while and most of the levees had temporary repairs at the time and most of the water had been pumped out. There was still a lot of trash and more dead cars that I ever imagined. Most of the roads were passable by the time I got there but there were some with entire houses, buildings, boats, etc. just sitting there. Most roads were still lined with parked but flooded out cars. The ones that were in the way had been moved to large lots where they began stacking them on top of each other. There were so many cars just getting loaded up for scrap or whatever.
These cars had been sitting in water for weeks and not hours or days like in Harvey. Since NO is below sea level in most places, it took a while to get rid of all the water. Houston may be flat but the water eventually runs off. It all had to be pumped out after the breaches in the flood protection system were patched in NO so was there a while. It was also salty/brackish as it came out of Lake Pontchartrain so that did a number on the cars.
The cars that I saw had various water lines on them. You could tell there were pauses as the water was being pumped out. Most cars had the rims stolen which made their removal even more difficult. This was for multiple reasons. I saw some nice Cadillacs that likely had stylish rims on them that someone wanted so these rims got taken. Then there was the issue with all the trash and debris on the roads once the roads re-opened. People got lots of flat tires so would just take the wheels off the flooded out cars that matched their make/model. You saw cars up on buckets, block of wood, or whatever people could find so that they could jack the car up and remove the wheels.
Then there were the cars that only got partially flooded or where people had parked them on highway ramps to keep them dry. All the wheels were gone and the radios were stolen. There were a few nice Cadillacs that I saw that likely had some type of custom trim as I saw some where the trim had been removed. Then I came across a car that was flooded and it was filled with car radios. All I can figure is that they were stealing them as people evacuated and then got caught in the flood themselves. The wheels on this one were also missing and it was just sitting on the street.
I was there for two weeks and they were really starting to get the remaining cars rounded up by the time I left. I really don’t think anyone, even the most dishonest seller, was going to get much from these since they were underwater for weeks and in pretty bad shape.
Then there were the roads… The entire city is settling as the layer of peat and other organics dewaters, decays, and settles. The sewers and manholes are all situated many feet below the surface. As the surface settles these do not settle at the same rate and remain high points. All the sewer and manhole lids protrude and are scratched from all the cars driving over them and bottoming out. There was a pretty constant stream of traffic driving through the devastated areas from about 10AM to 4PM. People were driving slow looking at the damage. It was mainly tourists checking out the area. Some would be speeding and bottom out their cars but good. People quickly learned that you cannot speed in New Orleans as the roads were horrid.
Of course the French Quarter and downtown were largely spared as these are the oldest parts of town. The first to arrive claimed the high ground and all those that came later had to drain the swamps to reclaim the land. So, all the bars, sex shows, and such remained open most of the time. It was strange to walk through those areas with all the surrounding areas so devastated.
The media is of course biased against Trump. He is a bad guy if he visits but can you imagine the outcry if he didn’t? He may not have been my first choice either but it does seem like they can’t give the guy a break. This whole situation does seem to be getting handled better than Katrina on all levels so that is a plus.
The people being more self-sufficient is also a plus. I don’t believe in the whole living paycheck to paycheck although I have done it in the past myself. I will buy quantities of things that I know I will need when they are on sale. I always max this out even if I don’t currently need to change my oil. https://mobiloil.com/en/promotion/mobil-promotions They do this twice a year so get a great deal on 4x total oil changes with the rebates on quality synthetic oil. My girlfriend always thinks I am nuts for doing this but I tell here that the oil doesn’t spoil and that I get it for like $12 for 5 quarts at Wal-Mart which as a great deal on oil of this caliber. She does it the one time that she needs an oil change during the promotion and then pays full price the next time around. Her car requires synthetic by the way so this is a great deal for her. She has talked about doing extreme couponing. I think this isn’t a good idea as you can make more money working than you can couponing. Buying cheap synthetic oil like this is the extent of my extreme couponing.
The “paycheck to paycheck” people really come out on the days when the govt benefits are distributed. In my business they have money for about two days and then it is all blown on stupid crap. I mean you see people buying $300 worth of lottery tickets the instant they get their money!!! These days are when I know I need to batten down the hatches are prepare to deal with complete idiots.
This is unfortunately what it looked like after Katrina. I see a convertible Corvette, BMW, and others in this mess. There were lots of boats since of course they are designed to float so ended up in all kinds of strange places. The barge pictured here was the most impressive one though.
[quote=“cwatkin, post:154, topic:107314”]
I mean you see people buying $300 worth of lottery tickets the instant they get their money!!!
[/quote]I will say it for the umpteenth time. Lotteries are a tax on people who are very, very, very bad at math.
A local RV dealer had a lot full of used FEMA trailers used by Katrina refugees. Most of them were so trashed that they were unsellable. These people are like rats that soil their own nest.
A lot of the Katrina refugees from New Orleans never went back. There is a popular seafood and Cajun food restaurant in Brady, TX that was founded by someone who fled NOLA during Katrina. Near Marble Falls, there is a black church founded by NOLA refugees, they just fell in love with their new surroundings and the people and love being able to safely go out after dark. Maybe they were surprised that the real small town Texas was so different from how the media portrays small town Texas.
I clicked the link claiming that three out of four American workers were living from paycheck to paycheck and I didn’t have to read far to get a sense that the author had an ax to grind, like Mike Bloomberg’s Every Town for Gun Safety’s claim that there were over 200 “school shootings” since Sandy Hook, where suicides and even events near schools where no shots were fired were included as “school shootings”. This guy used an equally liberal definition of “living from paycheck to paycheck” to produce a scary story.
Most people who live paycheck to paycheck are young, just out of college and use their money to buy the fastest and biggest cars they can get a loan on instead of living with an old beater. I stopped living paycheck to paycheck not by suddenly making more money, but by scrimping to pay off my debts and starting to live within my means. That included opening the windows instead of turning the air conditioner on and walking or riding a bike to my job. It’s been over 30 years now since I bought a vehicle by financing it, that includes brand new cars and motorcycles.
I like Bing’s garage space analogy on spending money. The more garage space you have, the more your junk expands to fill it. The more money you make, the more luxuries become “necessities”.
I take it you didn’t actually read the article about OJ. It said Orange FUTURES is up. Which has NOTHING to do with what I said.
But the price at the market hasn’t changed. I buy oranges a few times a week…even bought some yesterday…prices haven’t changed in weeks.
But nice try…You’re extremely good at those Straw Man Arguments.
Also prices in Oranges have been higher then other years because of a disease that’s effected up to 40% of plants.
You can be assured that they will raise their prices, despite the reality that the majority of the oranges used for orange juice sold in The US come from…Brazil!
But, I guess that this is a fair trade. We sent them the tooling for the excellent Willys Aero sedans, and we get OJ in return. (See how I brought this back to cars?)
In any event, here is some up-to-date info on the OJ situation.
As to why the gas prices spike up, then drop down more slowly: in this situation, the refineries got shut down almost at the same time. Bringing them back on line takes time, and can take a lot of time for some of them. It’s not like hitting the ‘on’ button. So supplies will be tight for a while, and prices will slowly decline during that period.
As to the comment that it’s 16% of total capacity off line (I’ve read more like 20%, but let’s go with 16%): The US refinery system typically run at over 90% of capacity (94% in June). So take away 16% of the total capacity, there’s a shortage.
