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Originally Posted by Schneed10
That's not price gouging, that's just basic principles of business. You charge the customer what the customer is willing to pay. You're willing to pay for it aren't you? As long as you keep handing over the cash to drive your car, there's nothing to complain about. That's life.
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Thanks for the breakdown of inelasticity... very interesting stuff indeed.
In terms of complaining, if you lived out here in LA you'd do the same thing... we don't have a great public transportation system like back home on the east coast. If you take the LA transit, you must allocate up to four x the amount of time to get to and from work. Basic economics says that this lossed time = negative output. The cost of taking the MTA offsets the savings cost at the pump. Every person here drives one to a car b/c of the crap MTA. We depend on our cars like we depend on food out here- sorry, it's just the way it is. It's not a luxury for most of us to have to drive our cars to work.
As you also know, rising oil prices also increase the costs for those who DO use public transportation. Are they allowed to complain? Many of the people who work downtown live way north in the Valley or way south in Orange County- the public transportation prices are outrageous nowadays!
Here's another analogy... a few years back, grocery workers went on strike due to union issues out here. Basically, we were forced to go to non-unionized food outlets to buy sustenence- and we paid more to do so. The chain grocery stores remained open (they hired temps/scabs), but there was hardly any food in the aisles. I kept shelling out extra cash to the smaller food outlets (trader joe's, gelson's, etc), so does that mean i wasn't allowed to complain? I had to eat didn't I?