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[–]HeroLost 73ポイント74ポイント  (94子コメント)

I want my gas to stay cheap thanks

[–]thikthirdMontrose 16ポイント17ポイント  (1子コメント)

as someone who works in o&g...me too.

[–]Sleepy_One 5ポイント6ポイント  (0子コメント)

Maybe not too cheap? I like my job more than I like cheap gas.

[–]ButtGardener -2ポイント-1ポイント  (89子コメント)

I'd happily pay $5 per gallon if it meant job security and a vibrant Houston economy.

[–]iancole85Heights 13ポイント14ポイント  (25子コメント)

Downvotes because, fuck economics?

[–]Visual217 21ポイント22ポイント  (10子コメント)

Yeah and the flip side of that economic argument is that gas is a pretty common good most people need, including poor people. Which makes it a short run inelastic good (meaning people must buy it because there's not many alternative options assuming someone must drive and public transport is out of the question. At least until they can eventually afford a smart car or electric car in the future which is why it's short run) and a higher gas price takes away more of the poor people's incomes that they use for other necessities and what little luxuries they can afford.

It's not just "it'll create more jobs", it's also "you end up costing the poor people more by taking away more of their disposable income and possibly their income that goes towards necessities, meaning they'll give up more to accommodate for the price increase"

Pretty sure that's where the downvotes are coming from, bruh. Most economic decisions involve pros and cons, not only pros.

[–]iancole85Heights -2ポイント-1ポイント  (9子コメント)

Of course I agree, and that argument makes perfect sense if you live literally anywhere else besides the petrochemical capital of the country.

What meager savings there are at the pump between $1.50 gas and $3 gas is quickly, quickly outweighed by the effects on the local economy coming from reduced activity in oil production. I get that we're more diverse than ever, but oil production is still a major piece of our financial pie, and rooting against oil prices while living in Houston is so fucking myopic that it boggles me.

Do you have a job that depends on people spending money? You want oil to go up. Do you own property in the area? You really want oil to go up.

If you:

  • Drive an inordinate amount in an inefficient vehicle, OR

  • Make very little money, or work in a role completely isolated from local economic downturn, AND

  • Do not own any property,

Then you want oil to go down.

And all that being said, if you fall into that category and have a rational understanding of why you're rooting for oil to fall, keep in mind that you're still rooting against most of the rest of the city, and actively hoping for a decline in local business, and failing of things like bars, restaurants, day care, car washes, tax accountants, construction companies, etc etc etc.

Generally, if you live in Houston and root against oil prices, you are a moron.

fin

[–]Metro4050 16ポイント17ポイント  (1子コメント)

Using a 15 gallon tank (what many efficient, inexpensive cars have) that's a $1200 saving over the course of a year or about $100 a month. To the poor those are not "meager savings."

[–]wwarren92The Woodlands 3ポイント4ポイント  (0子コメント)

Shit, even a 11 gallon tank and saving maybe $40 a month isn't meager savings. That $40 goes back into the economy, and goes towards tipping my bartenders, buying groceries, and such.

[–]Visual217 1ポイント2ポイント  (3子コメント)

Yes definitely, I totally agree but the other thing is that Houston is very disproportionate in the spread of people who can afford this gas change versus those who can't. It completely works for those who can afford the change but there are quite a lot of people who can't afford it (they'll have to give up driving as often or cut out more luxuries or even cut back on necessities)

So the question comes down to: which way has a better gain? Should we care about the poor people that can't afford the price changes as well? Should we try to find a balance or compromise? Remember, if prices stay too high as technology improves, electric/hybrid cars will become more prevalent in the future and the industry will suffer again if more and more people are driven away from it because it's too expensive and just cheaper to buy a new gas-free/efficient car in the long run. (especially because those hybrid/electric cars will be cheaper when used models become substantially cheaper than they are now due to depreciation)

[–]iancole85Heights -5ポイント-4ポイント  (2子コメント)

I hear you, but it's a lot easier for low income people to move from cheap, inefficient vehicles, to cheap, efficient vehicles (e.g. used Expedition to used Honda) for very little or no net cost, than it is to keep our economy going for an extended period.

Do I want our economy to falter so that poor people can drive old trucks? No. No, I don't.

It will be an interesting story as we a.) run out of easy oil and b.) move to electric vehicles and wait for a strong advance in power storage technology. Two competing themes that will have strong impacts on our city.

[–]Visual217 1ポイント2ポイント  (1子コメント)

There are a couple of reasons why it's actually not as easy for people to switch right now:

  1. Most poor people have old car models that are depreciated to hell and cannot offset the cost of a used hybrid car efficiently enough to be of very little cost to them. It often ends up costing more than they can afford.
  2. Hybrid/electric SUVs and Trucks are not really a thing just yet and if the person has a large family only a large car can fit or works a job that needs a truck, there's no fuel efficient alternatives for them just yet (which will be a long time before those alternatives are affordable once they come out)
  3. Poor people are also generally less educated about the economics of gas increase and how to make investments around these changes. Yeah I wouldn't really blame others for their ignorance but you can't really blame them for their ignorance because most of them simply haven't had an opportunity to learn about it.

[–]iancole85Heights 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

Look, thanks for the well-written answer, but that is like placing a feather on the other side of the scale from a lead weight. I will gladly pay $5/gallon and watch our city flourish. Houstonians rooting for cheap gas is like Detroiters rooting for less cars. Honestly.

[–]deadpa -2ポイント-1ポイント  (2子コメント)

Of course I agree, and that argument makes perfect sense if you live literally anywhere else besides the petrochemical capital of the country.

We are also a huge health care and biomedical capital, finance, manufacturing, trade, aerospace, tech, and education center.

Petrochemicals have served the economy well but they're only a piece of a rather large pie.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Houston

[–]iancole85Heights 2ポイント3ポイント  (1子コメント)

Ok keep arguing and downvoting, this sub has a hard on against oil and gas and I'm not going to drag you guys kicking and screaming to common sense. If oil stays depressed, it's bad for our city and everyone in it. It's mildly good for low income people everywhere else. If you don't agree then fine, but you are dead ass wrong.

[–]deadpa -1ポイント0ポイント  (0子コメント)

First off, I didn't downvote you. Second, all of the things you just attributed to my comment are nowhere to be found in my comment. I didn't disparage oil and gas. I made no argument over the matter of oil being a negative. Feel free to specify exactly what was wrong in my post big guy. Common sense indeed.

[–]Metro4050 2ポイント3ポイント  (61子コメント)

I'd happily pay $1 per gallon because low oil prices don't affect me at all. See how selfishness works?

[–]ButtGardener 5ポイント6ポイント  (58子コメント)

Yeah because wanting the city I live in to thrive and be a great city is selfish...

[–]bad2bone2212 6ポイント7ポイント  (9子コメント)

It won't thrive if the 10 guys making less than 30k a year are having to pay $4-$5 a gallon and the oil and gas guy making $100k is doing the same. Who's really being the most affected? So you're basically saying if you don't have a job Fuck everyone else saving money on oil and gas?

[–]ButtGardener -1ポイント0ポイント  (8子コメント)

Do you understand that the guy earning 100k creates more jobs than the high school drop out flipping burgers at Wendy's?

If oil price is high, more people are on good wages, more taxes are paid, more business is made to other business, more jobs are created. On average 5 jobs are created for every well paid employee in Houston.

4-5 bucks a gallon is still cheap considering the global price of gas at the pump and the cost to get that oil out of the ground and refine it.. Infact, its cheaper than water right now. You have been spoiled.

[–]themothman99 3ポイント4ポイント  (5子コメント)

You're assuming the wages of the little guy are far more elastic than they are in reality. Your pipe dream works better if as prices go up, wages of O&G go up, as would those of the McDonald's cook.

What you fail to consider is that as prices go up, so does the cost of production for, you guessed it, everything.

Not only does the poor guy have to pay more to get to work, things cost more for him, and he's got less to work with, to boot. $1.50 may not seem like much, but when it suddenly doubles to $3, I would refer you to the greatest economic recovery of our age, when gas prices were soaring, which lead to increased production costs, made all better by jacking up the cost of a worker to $7.25 an hour... I forget, how many people immediately had a job because O&G was doing so well?

Texas, as always, was buffered slightly by oil, so we hit a shallower and much later recession. However, the state never really came out of that, and lower retail, real estate, and a hiring slowdown resulted.

I admire your tenacity, but your facts don't line up with events or really even truth.

/micdrop

[–]ButtGardener 2ポイント3ポイント  (4子コメント)

You just wasted a bunch of words when you could have just used the world inflation.

I'm afraid to say, wether oil is $20 or $120 per barrel inflation exists and the prices the small guy on minimum wage has to pay will always go up.. Its just the way our economy is set up I'm afraid.

Case in point, gas has decreased by about 80% over the past two years. Has inflation for the minimum wage worker dropped at all? No. Latest inflation results for January 15 through 16 show a 1.6% inflationary rise.

But again, you are missing the point here. The less people employed in well paying jobs, the less jobs there are all around. Some people can't even get a job right now to even afford $1.50 per gallon gas because of the state of the oil industry.. Paying $3-4 bucks per gallon isn't as fun as $1 per gallon, but the economics of it makes sense. Especially for an oil capital city such as Houston. Unless there's some other natural resource Houston can harness, which there isn't.

/PicksUpMicPutsItOnItsStandBecauseMicrophonesAreExpensiveAndOnlyPoorPeopleWhoGetGovernmentHandOutsDontValuePropertyAndDropItOnTheGround

[–]Metro4050 3ポイント4ポイント  (1子コメント)

The less people employed in well paying jobs, the less jobs there are all around.

Okay, well let's pay more people more money then. That way when the Oil and Gas sectors has it's down period other sectors of the economy can pick up the slack.

[–]themothman99 -1ポイント0ポイント  (0子コメント)

Haha, calm down, Bernie. No, I get what you are saying.

This guy is just (mistakenly) crowing what most O&G workers are saying these days: we being rich makes you rich, so fuck you for enjoying your extra loaf of bread and cheaper commute! IT WONT LAST! As much as I understand trickle down economics, it only works if the rich aren't essentially raising a tax on the poor for the sake of "keeping you employed"

I know, I'm just a dude dressed as a dude playing another dude, not some person freaked out about losing my job, probly losing my livelihood, and I'm totally outside the O&G water-cooler echo chamber, so what do I know?

In before angry Scotsman buttgardens me

[–]themothman99 -2ポイント-1ポイント  (1子コメント)

Huh. So that black bird is black because it's black. Can't argue with circular reasoning, especially with concentric circles as small as yours. I did waste a bunch of words, but it was bothering to enlighten you a tad.

I do enjoy how you mistakenly tried to label me as being on govt cheese, and I accurately labelled you Eurotrash before checking your comment history and finding I was right. Must piss you right off, eh chap?

Enjoy your economic roller coaster, brah. Toodles!

[–]ButtGardener 1ポイント2ポイント  (0子コメント)

Ahh ad hominen attacks, the last refuge of ignorant scoundrels.

[–]FluffyDumplet 1ポイント2ポイント  (1子コメント)

You are wrong. 100% wrong. How are you so wrong?

Trickle Down Economics doesn't work

Oil quadrupling in price does not lead Jeff the roughneck into making $200k instead of $50k. That's not how the economy works.

The Banking and Tech Industries are flush with cash. Do you think the people that work at Starbucks in San Francisco are buying houses with all the coffee that Brett the TechBro is buying?

You know why gas is cheap here? Because it's subsidized and our economy collapses if energy is expensive. When Obama wants a tax on oil to pay for mass transit (just like those counties you are alluding to), this subreddit goes nuts. When oil is too low, this subreddit goes nuts.

The FACT is that the more income one has, the smaller the portion of that income is spent back in the economy. Ten people making $30k a year spend nearly all there income back in the economy while the one guy making $300k might spend have that with the rest going into savings or the stock market.

But hey, it's everyone else's fault the the oil industry took out too many loans and had to lay off workers to make it's debt payments.

I'm still in awe that you think one middle class manager creates more demand than 10 food service workers. Does $100k mean you can afford 10 cars, 30 meals a day, 10 apartments?

[–]King_DesmondWestwood 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

Shh. He took 'macro and now he knows everything.

[–]FluffyDumplet 1ポイント2ポイント  (0子コメント)

"I don't give a shit about the rest of the country. I don't care if America is in another Great Depression as long as Houston has money for coke and hookers. I got mine, fuck them."

If it takes $140/bbl oil to stop this city from tearing itself apart in 3 years maybe ya'll transplants should move back to where ever the hell you came from. We did fine before you got on board.

[–]Metro4050 -4ポイント-3ポイント  (46子コメント)

You don't want the city to thrive, you want your paycheck to thrive. That's selfish. There are plenty of ways for Houston to thrive without $5 gas. Extremely high oil prices are/were a recent phenomenon, yet Houston thrived for decades beforehand. You're just greedy and want to profit on the backs of others.

[–]ButtGardener 5ポイント6ポイント  (35子コメント)

Sure I'm the selfish one.. Says the guy who wants cheap gas at the expense of the number 1 employer and industry in the city.

[–]Metro4050 9ポイント10ポイント  (34子コメント)

Then you can afford $5 gas. The majority of the city cannot. If you have a 15 gallon tank you fill that up at $1.50 that's $22.50. At $5 that's $75. If you have to fill up once a week at $1.50 that's $1170 for a 52 week period. At $5 that's $3,900. The difference is TWO THOUSAND SEVEN HUNDRED AND THIRTY DOLLARS. A mere pittance to you but to the "burger flippers" you so foolishly think you keep employed that's a significant and budget breaking difference. You're being selfish and greedy.

So, tell me again how I sound like people that figured Detroit would be okay without an auto industry? I think Houston's O&G industry is vital, just not enough to subsidize it at $5 a gallon, not even $3. $2.50 is a fair price, however.

[–]zerofucksleft 0ポイント1ポイント  (3子コメント)

When the shit was gas $5 a gallon? Why is everyone saying this like it's a thing? And what makes people think it's all of the sudden going to jump up to $5 once the downturn ends?

[–]Metro4050 2ポイント3ポイント  (2子コメント)

ButtGardener suggested we pay $5 a gallon to keep Houston great.

[–]themothman99 2ポイント3ポイント  (0子コメント)

Suggested? He literally snorted it out of his Western Eurotrash nose down at us. Fuck that guy

Edit: Hah! Guessed Eurotrash, got Eurotrash from his comments after looking lol. This stupid American shore do gots a gud feelin about things sumtiemz

[–]zerofucksleft 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

So he did... My bad.

[–]ButtGardener 0ポイント1ポイント  (25子コメント)

I'm from a place where gas is more like $10 per gallon and the minimum wage earners do just fine.

[–]Metro4050 7ポイント8ポイント  (24子コメント)

This isn't that place.

[–]ButtGardener 2ポイント3ポイント  (4子コメント)

It can be any place.

[–]juangamboa -1ポイント0ポイント  (3子コメント)

When the fuck has gas ever been $5 here?!? If you're going to do math and shit you should do it at a realistic #.

[–]Metro4050 1ポイント2ポイント  (2子コメント)

I'm not the one who suggested paying $5 a gallon. Reading is fundamental.

[–]juangamboa -2ポイント-1ポイント  (1子コメント)

You're right it was the other guy who mentioned 5$/gallon first.. But c'mon, that was clearly an exaggeration.... If you're going to make a serious comparison make, make it with some realistic #s.

[–]jb4647West U[S] 2ポイント3ポイント  (9子コメント)

Such bullshit. You certainly don't know the history of Houston. It's built on oil $.

[–]gt35r 3ポイント4ポイント  (0子コメント)

Honestly just because something is built on a certain industry doesn't mean in the future, that same industry is going to be the one that thrives the most. Economics is always evolving and changing.

[–]Metro4050 2ポイント3ポイント  (4子コメント)

It wasn't built on $100 oil. Try again.

[–]jb4647West U[S] 1ポイント2ポイント  (3子コメント)

If you account for inflation it was. You really don't know our history do you?

[–]Metro4050 1ポイント2ポイント  (2子コメント)

Even adjusted for inflation Houston has never relied on long term $100+ per barrel (or equivalent) oil prices. If that were the case Houston should have been in a two decade depression starting in the mid 80s.

[–]jb4647West U[S] 0ポイント1ポイント  (1子コメント)

Our growth was much lower '86-'03 than it was after that.

[–]ClassicYotas 1ポイント2ポイント  (0子コメント)

That's a problem. We should be able to function without that dependency, especially for being such a large and diverse city.

[–]cycophuk 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

Things change. It's just a matter of time that society stops being solely dependent on oil as an energy source. What happens to Houston then? It has to adapt to change at some point.

[–]juangamboa -2ポイント-1ポイント  (1子コメント)

If you live in Houston and think that the price of oil doesn't affect you AT ALL; then you're an idiot.

[–]Metro4050 2ポイント3ポイント  (0子コメント)

It doesn't (besides gas prices). There's life outside of the oil and gas bubble.

[–]cuntroach -1ポイント0ポイント  (0子コメント)

Tell us more about trickle down economics.

[–]Takeme2yourleader -4ポイント-3ポイント  (0子コメント)

That's a selfish thing to say

[–]gt35r -1ポイント0ポイント  (0子コメント)

Same.