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Greater Greenville Economic Developments


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Never let it be said that the oil companies won't take the opportunity of a disaster to line their pockets. Gas prices jumped 16c a gallon today. Gas has now shot up 50 cents in under 2 months for no reason. Our 2 cent, that's right 2 cents tax increase went into effect on July 1st. Knowing the oil companies would go up much more than the 2 cents, they waited 5 days and then jumped prices 17 cents a gallon on July 6th. Less than a week later it jumped anther 10 cents then it "dropped" a penny or 2 then boom another 10 center!. Now today an incredible 16 cents jump. We cannot even imagine how much extra the oil companies make by these moves. So in less than 2 months it has only taken 4 increases to get to the total of 50 cents prices have increased. Yet if and when prices go down its a penny or 2 at a time. Talking about price gouging and taking advantage of people. Yet the oil companies have a free reign to do what they want and no one ever questions them. The government really needs to regulate these people. Sorry for the rant. 

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9 hours ago, apaladin said:

Just saw it was almost $9 a gallon in Texas. Nothing like screwing your neighbor in times of need,

Price controls in times of crisis will actually screw your neighbor more than letting the price fluctuate with the supply and demand. Allowing the price to move freely ensures a better distribution of a limited supply of a good. Check this blog post out--this guy explains it much better than I ever could: http://www.coyoteblog.com/coyote_blog/2017/08/price-gouging-laws-allocating-goods-in-an-emergency-to-people-who-have-nothing-much-valuable-to-do.html

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3 hours ago, GMoxley said:

Price controls in times of crisis will actually screw your neighbor more than letting the price fluctuate with the supply and demand. Allowing the price to move freely ensures a better distribution of a limited supply of a good. Check this blog post out--this guy explains it much better than I ever could: http://www.coyoteblog.com/coyote_blog/2017/08/price-gouging-laws-allocating-goods-in-an-emergency-to-people-who-have-nothing-much-valuable-to-do.html

Agreed. I just saw the price at a station here in Concord as $2.35, up about a quarter over just a few days ago. That would indicate that gasoline inventories are now flowing to Texas (driving prices up incrementally everywhere else), which means that the $9.00/gallon price there will be relatively short-lived. Eventually prices will return to normal everywhere--as long as no price controls are instituted.

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So while I was at work for 3 hours tonight gas prices jumped 25 cents up to $2.50 a gallon. I guess now this increase will increase production and flow and everything will be ok. No all this does is give the oil companies billions in profit by selling the same gas they were planning on selling for $2 dollars a gallon for $2.50. This won't do anything but give the oil companies windfall profits. I'm sure they are not through either. Look for prices to be back to $3 a gallon by Labor Day where the oil companies want it.

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9 hours ago, apaladin said:

So while I was at work for 3 hours tonight gas prices jumped 25 cents up to $2.50 a gallon. I guess now this increase will increase production and flow and everything will be ok. No all this does is give the oil companies billions in profit by selling the same gas they were planning on selling for $2 dollars a gallon for $2.50. This won't do anything but give the oil companies windfall profits. I'm sure they are not through either. Look for prices to be back to $3 a gallon by Labor Day where the oil companies want it.

A few observations:

1) I may be wrong, but it seems to me that you're saying that the oil companies are out to screw us. There are, of course, always bad apples, but the vast majority of people who work in the oil industry are just like you--people with a strong moral sense.

2) Granting what you say for the sake of argument, why focus your ire on the oil companies? How do you know it's not the retailers--QT, Sheetz, etc--who are the real culprits?

3) There are a lot of variables that you don't seem to be taking into account. For example, costs. I'll defer to people more knowledgeable than me on this specific kind of situation, but it seems to me that at least some of the oil companies have themselves suffered losses from the hurricane, since there's so much of their capital in that part of Texas. But even if the oil companies hadn't suffered any catastrophic losses, the costs of getting oil and gas into a heavily flooded area are likely very great, and so whatever "windfall profits" they may be experiencing are likely much less than you're implying. They could well be in a situation where they're making less money at $9.00/gallon. Whatever the case, it is clearly not as simple as you seem to be saying, and its a dead certainty that their profits aren't nearly as large as you think.

4) I doubt that prices will settle at $3.00/gallon, but if they do, it will not be because of the reasons you imply. There's only one entity able to set and enforce prices: government. Everybody else, including oil companies, are subject to consumer preference (to the extent they aren't protected by government). If prices get high enough, people will stop buying gas in such large quantities, either by forgoing it altogether, by buying a more fuel efficient vehicle (which I did recently), or some other way.

5) Oil company management are beholden to their investors, many if not most of whom are ordinary people. By your argument, you are effectively asking potentially millions of ordinary people to sacrifice their own capital invested in oil company stocks, because if prices were artificially held at $2.10 per gallon or whatever it was before the hurricane (or $3.10, or $4.10, etc.), they'd likely be losing money, potentially by the barrel-full.

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On 8/31/2017 at 9:23 AM, btoy said:

It's up because supply is done.  The nation's largest refinery is shut down right now.  It is basic economics.

Supply is not down, there is already 6 months worth at least in storage tanks. If a few days of interruption of part of the production causes major shortages then the U.S. is walking on a thin line to catastrophe. 

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On 9/4/2017 at 1:09 PM, apaladin said:

Supply is not down, there is already 6 months worth at least in storage tanks. If a few days of interruption of part of the production causes major shortages then the U.S. is walking on a thin line to catastrophe. 

We may have backup supply, but when they shut down the pipelines that distribute the gas, then we definitely end up with a supply shortage at the gas pump. 

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8 hours ago, russwd said:

I assume that 5,000,000 is divided by the 100 companies that were mentioned in the article.   

That’s still five million square feet of new space total though. It will be on 243 acres of land: http://www.greenvilleonline.com/story/money/business/2017/12/19/new-f-16-s-smart-city-campus-lead-sctac-annual-highlights/962264001/

Edited by gman430
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Greenville misses out on economic development due to sewer limitations

Informative article on why these big job announcements go to Spartanburg and Anderson instead  of Greenville. 

I have mixed feelings on it. How well do these jobs pay to begin with? Should we focus on white collar jobs instead?  It sounds like at least in the southern part of the county, we could be more competitive if the county got more involved.   

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10 hours ago, vicupstate said:

Greenville misses out on economic development due to sewer limitations

Informative article on why these big job announcements go to Spartanburg and Anderson instead  of Greenville. 

I have mixed feelings on it. How well do these jobs pay to begin with? Should we focus on white collar jobs instead?  It sounds like at least in the southern part of the county, we could be more competitive if the county got more involved.   

It also helps prevent sprawl...

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