Big surprise, in a state where you're not even allowed to pump your own gas. If they did allow Tesla sales, you'd have to hire someone to plug it in for you. Electricity is dangerous, dontchaknow.
I'm afraid I don't understand this bit (being European and all). Are you saying that not only there are attendants, but that you are forbidden from using the pump if an attendant is not available?
Sure, but we still end up paying less for gas than our neighbors.
Don't get me wrong, if it were up to me, this would be gone in a heartbeat ... but it's not the end of the world.
(Yeah, yeah, I know, I should STFU and move to Somalia...)
Full-service gas stations, on the other hand, are neither prohibited nor mandated in most states. They would exist if there was a market. There's not. End of story.
Way to be hyperbolic. Why not let the customer decide whether or not they want to do it themselves, rather than choosing what's best for them?
And surprise, surprise: in the 48 states where customers are free to choose, they overwhelmingly choose to pump their own gas.
Then you'd be happy to know that in addition to having full service, Oregon's gas prices are ~$.40 per gallon cheaper than California's. Full service doesn't seem to be resulting in dramatically higher prices.
> Who is so lazy at they can't get out of their comfy seat for 2 minutes?
Who doesn't have better things to do with their time than inhale gasoline fumes?
And now you're being willfully ignorant. California has a variety of other regulations that lead to higher prices. But that doesn't change the fact that Oregon's gas-pumping regulation also leads to higher gas prices.
California's gas tax is ~$.70 per gallon, Oregon is ~$.50. Now granted, California has roughly 3x the miles of roadway that Oregon has...[1] This probably explains why California's roads are atrociously bad and Oregon's are relatively pristine.
[1] http://blog.cubitplanning.com/2010/02/road-miles-by-state/
Oregon's standards allow it to buy from a far larger market.
California has an interesting history with environmental legislation, as it had a clean air board before the EPA existed: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Air_Resources_Board
This is actually one area where the refining industry wants federal regulation: they would vastly prefer to deal with a single set of standards for the whole country than tailoring individual plants to 50 different standards.
http://www.epa.gov/otaq/fuels/gasolinefuels/rfg/areas.htm
So the state specific requirements only really matter if they exceed the federal standards.
It's pretty likely that reformulated gasoline is effective in reducing smog (I think CO is the big target).
Which is exactly the case in California, hence the higher prices.
There's no shortage of things they could be doing, but instead, we're paying them to stand around most of the time inhaling gasoline fumes. We could instead be paying those people to do something actually useful, like running fiber to homes and businesses, or delivering goods so that we don't have to travel, or a million other things that would increase our productivity.
It seems that it would actually be less convenient to have to wait for an attendant, especially when the station is busy. Unlike service from behind the checkout counter, the attendant must walk around to each car...at least twice I'm assuming...to start and stop the fuel? I'm not familiar with it.
When I got back from my 2 year Alaska->Argentina drive I genuinely had to stop and think about what I was doing, unsure of how to proceed. It was a great novelty :)
I don't even understand what the objection is.
I don't understand the objection to laws against cooking for yourself at home.
If it was cheaper to hire a Chef to cook meals, I wouldn't understand all the noise about making it mandatory either.
Bad analogy. If you want ammunition, I'll give you the following. Having an attendant pump your gas sucks because:
1. They screw up what type of fuel you want. Or how much of it.
2. When you yell at them to fix it, they have no idea what you're saying, because they don't speak English.
3. At a busy station, you have to wait for five minutes for them to even get to you.
4. And then you have to wait for another five minutes for them to come back and finish off.
5. If you have the tag you use to pay for gas on your keys ... well you have to hand your keys to a stranger. Same with a credit card, when you could have simply swiped yourself.
I can go on, but really, at the end of the day, this isn't a big deal. There are far worse things to complain about.
But my point is that it is indeed cheaper to hire a chef to cook meals -- in some cases, but that doesn't justify making it mandatory.
You're taking, as given, the claim that attended fuel pumping is cheaper -- but that's only true sometimes, just like with the home chef, especially if (as in my ignorant aristocrat example) you factor in opportunity costs, which was the point.
When people insist that attended fuel is cheaper in terms of sticker price ... well, that's dubious, but let's assume, for whatever reason, it is (maybe there are insurance savings?). It still has a higher opportunity cost for several reasons, many of which you just listed.
I'm shocked, shocked to find that New Jerseyans are capable of performing such tasks. Are you sure you're pumping it properly? :D