Gasoline Prices Reach $5 a Gallon Nationwide for the First Time | Hacker News Reader

Gasoline Prices Reach $5 a Gallon Nationwide for the First Time

wsj.com

21 pointsra739 comments

I have tracked my MPG on fuelly.com since 2014. The lowest price was $1.429 on 23-Feb-2016, and the highest has been $4.369 on 11-May-2022. The average price over my 460 fill-ups so far is $2.61. These purchases have all been in Texas and the Carolinas.

If you're wondering what people are getting in a certain make/model of car (real-world, not EPA estimates) before buying one, you can browse for it on their site. Usual cautions about self-reported data quality apply.

https://www.fuelly.com/car

FYI a gallon is just under 4 litres, for those of us that think in litres.

UK and US gallons are different. When people say "mpg - miles per gallon", they're talking about different units in different countries.

And anyway miles per gallon is kinda stupid way to do it anyway as you can't compare directly consumption as it doesn't change linearly...

Meanwhile, in '$8/gallon territory':

"1.25€ per liter of Diesel sounds like heaven right about now..."

I'm hoping the states and federal government take this opportunity to appropriately tax gas and it's producers profits.

The United States consumes 2.56 gallons of oil per capita every day.

https://www.worldometers.info/oil/us-oil/

Unknown where that number comes from but then I’m theory the oil market is worth 350MM x $5 x 2.56 every day.

If you had to put that 2.56 gallons into your car or water heater like you put batteries into a TV remote, or ink cartridges into a printer, I think people would be much more aware of exactly how much fossil fuels they use.

Having fuel piped into your car and home makes it an unseen problem, and people instead get distracted by small things like whether their drinking straws are made of paper or plastic.

I see a lot of governments in Europe subsidizing gasoline but at the same time I hear of record profits for oil companies. At what point are we (the tax payer) directly paying for those profits?

This seems like an absolute perversion of capitalism where on one side "free" markets allow for such prices and on the other side the government is giving tax money to those same companies.

Again we seem to have a trickle up economy. This can't go on forever.

> I see a lot of governments in Europe subsidizing gasoline but at the same time I hear of record profits for oil companies. At what point are we (the tax payer) directly paying for those profits?

Fossil fuel subsidies are largely a myth. Don't believe me? Look at how the IMF defines "subsidy": https://www.imf.org/-/media/Files/Publications/WP/2021/Engli...

> Globally, fossil fuel subsidies were $5.9 trillion in 2020 or about 6.8 percent of GDP and are expected to rise to 7.4 percent of GDP in 2025. Just 8 percent of the 2020 subsidy reflects undercharging for supply costs (explicit subsidies) and 92 percent for undercharging for environmental costs and foregone consumption taxes (implicit subsidies). Efficient fuel pricing in 2025

A normal person would construe "subsidy" to mean a cash transfer from one party to another, not some difference between the price actually paid and what you think it should have been, based on some generous externalitites-based estimate. Even the IMF's definition of "explicit subsidy" falls far short of what we commonly construe "subsidy" to mean. I've seen things like LIFO (which firms in other industries can use as well) as a supposed fossil fuel subsidy that needs to be eliminated.

As their "record" profits? They are nowhere near as profitable in absolute or relative terms to FAANG. Go compare their financial statements (they're mostly publicly traded) if you don't believe me.

> A normal person would construe "subsidy" to mean

any discount or accordance offered to provide an incentive toward particular courses of action a person or organization desires.

affordance*

> A normal person would construe "subsidy" to mean a cash transfer from one party to another

And tax breaks, and royalty breaks, and exemptions, etc.

You're in to something, but the goverments hands are tied because of how much transportation needs fuel. If they don't stave it off, you'll just be "taxed" in good costs.

Hmm, but higher prices for goods whose production or transportation is fuel intensive would allow and encourage us to adjust our habits to avoid or find greener substitutes for those goods. What we're doing by subsidizing fuel is essentially the opposite of a carbon tax, actively worsening greenhouse gas emissions.

Yeah, I do think you're right to an extent, but I think everyone has to be ok with that pain while things change. That's the difficulty.

Can you expand on what "subsidizing" entails? Are they literally giving people discount vouchers to buy gasoline with?

>This seems like an absolute perversion of capitalism where on one side "free" markets allow for such prices and on the other side the government is giving tax money to those same companies.

agreed. this is a supply-side problem. it can't be solved by throwing more money on the demand side.

> Are they literally giving people discount vouchers to buy gasoline with?

Mostly no. They're doing things like giving some/all people a one-off €300 payment to help with increasing costs. Some governments are also reducing the taxes on fuels. As far as I know, no western government directly subsidizes fuels to consumers.

> This seems like an absolute perversion of capitalism

You are criticizing capitalism for the sins of socialists. Capitalists never advocate for subsidies.

Oil companies routinely and vigorously advocate for subsidies. If oil company owners aren't capitalists then I don't know who is.

Is that a fact? In what country?

Try searching for "fossil fuel subsidies", "fossil fuel lobby" and so on. There are many examples.

Aren't you moving the goalposts? The OP was complaining specifically about European governments subsidizing the price of gasoline (at a time when oil companies have record profits). You then start claiming that these companies are lobbying for these subsidies, vigorously. You are now switching to "fossil fuel subsidies" in general. I know, I know, oil companies are bad and evil, but this was not what was being discussed here.

The fact that the some European governments decided to subsidize gasoline is clear socialist move. It was not spurred by the oil lobby. Maybe capitalism has problems, but this is not one of them. This is a socialism problem.

I'm not sure what you're looking for. There's a lot of info out there about fossil fuel subsidies and fossil fuel lobbyists. If you have some particular subsidy in mind then you can research it yourself.

Your claim

> Capitalists never advocate for subsidies.

was very broad and absolute, going beyond any particular industry or even the present day. I'm really not sure but maybe you meant something like "advocating for subsidies is not a capitalist thing to do." In any case I'm not personally interested in whether there is a "capitalism problem" or "socialism problem" going on.

So are Tesla sales up?

No, but that is because demand exceeds supply so they are currently selling everything they make. Which has pretty much been the case for them for years.

I can't see how Biden will run again in 2024. I'm not saying everything is his fault but a Biden ticket will essentially be a freebie for the GOP

It drives me nuts seeing comments by Americans about how Biden is responsible for the current oil/fuel prices, it's a result of either an unfortunate lack of education on the subject, or an intentional misrepresentation of it.

I did come across this video recently that puts it into fairly easily digestible terms: https://youtu.be/QnBqAzJXVGo

Doesn’t matter. People always blame their problems on the current President. And to be fair, he could be signing some executive orders that signal he’s doing something about it, but I haven’t seen him do much more than say it’s his top priority and maybe negotiate with Venezuela and get snubbed by Saudi Arabia.

Venezuela producing oil to meet the US demands is never going to be possible. The industry in the country is hardly able to produce 800K barrels a day

I'm just saying that's all I've seen him do to address the issue other than lip service. Obviously it's not going to solve things by itself.

Personally, I don't like or want any of the "solutions", not really (new pipelines, facilities, more fracking, more oil production, encourage poor Americans to buy expensive EV cars they can't afford, it all sucks).

All of this shit is basically turning the opposite direction from where we need to head towards for climate goals, and I hate it. But I also know people as a whole don't give a shit, and will punish whoever is in power if they're hurting enough come election time (and it does seem like a lot of people are legit suffering from the high gas and food prices).

At least for the midterms, Democrats look like they're fucked, and their general attitude of "Shrug, we can't change the status quo because of that one bad man Manchin, oh well, guess we'll do nothing" means they probably deserved it, as much as I'd hate to go back to Republican Congress of "fuck the environment, cut taxes for the rich, and turn back the clock on all progress" overall agenda.

EDIT: Actually I forgot there's something that Biden could be pushing for and is pushing for the opposite instead - encouraging/incentivizing corporations to keep/switch their staff to WFH, but instead he encouraged (during the State of the Union address even) everyone to go back into the office. Making more people WFH would cut down on demand for gas and might lower the gas prices at least somewhat, but no, it's more important to "return to normalcy" so fuck that, keep encourage everyone to use as much gas as possible.

It recently leaked that the Irish government have a plan to force more WFH if their fuel situation gets worse[1], so it's not like this has no precedent elsewhere.

[1]: https://www.independent.ie/irish-news/politics/return-of-wor...

> guess we'll do nothing" means they [Democrats] probably deserved it

To use an Americanism, “all y’all” don’t deserve it, but you’re the ones who will suffer while the people you elect will, by and large, float on.

Personally, I think most Americans are generally good people who’d just like to get along, having adequate empathy to support basic human rights and basic social welfare systems. If more voted, everyone would be better off. Mind, getting more people involved in primaries is probably necessary, because the parties as-is are not representative of the people: they’re representative of decades old internal power struggles. All y’all need new, fresh representatives.

Are you able to summarize the 23-minute video into a few sentences? Thanks.

Literally everything was blamed on Trump for 4 years, now it's Biden's turn. After Biden, it will be somebody else's turn.

The office of the Presidency works because people need a scapegoat, it's a psychological thing that has been understood for thousands of years (seriously, look up the history of where the term "scapegoat" comes from).

It doesn't really matter who is at fault, it helps humans feel more in control of their environment.

This current administration cancelled yet another round of oil and gas leases recently. I really can’t comprehend why they think this is a good idea.

https://www.usnews.com/news/politics/articles/2022-05-12/bid...

Maybe because the refineries are maxed out? Pumping more oil isn't going to help in the short term.

And the oil companies aren't risking more (expensive) refineries long-term when the world is moving off of oil.

How are they maxed out? I don't think that's the case at all, neither can I find any substantial evidence to back that claim. There's an obvious change between Trump and Biden. The latter canceling oil and gas leases since getting into office in the name of clean energy.

https://www.spglobal.com/commodityinsights/en/market-insight...

The democrats told us they wanted to get rid of carbon based fuels. This is what that looks like. There is no way to get to that without going through this.

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