Gas/Oil prices hitting low bad

[speedyjuarez Premium Member]

I believe it's the local gas station that makes a couple cents per gallon, they make money from you coming in the store to buy stuff. The big corporations make lots of money, but they take risk when drilling.

 

[hispls 5,000+ posts]

I believe it's the local gas station that makes a couple cents per gallon, they make money from you coming in the store to buy stuff. The big corporations make lots of money, but they take risk when drilling.

The "big corporations" operate on a 2.5% profit margin on gasoline sales. The corner gas station makes the same or less, and as you say, either makes their real profits in beer, smokes and snacks, or service/repair. It's likely that nearly half of what you pay at the pump is fuel taxes (more or less depending on the state in which you live)

 

[wew lad 5,000+ posts]

Oil companies operate on 2.5% profit margin on gasoline (evil corporations). Federal tax 20%, state taxes 25% and up (big brother will protect us from those evil greedy corporations). Typical liberal logic.



Nothing stopping you and every other Marxist from buying STOCK in any oil company you like until you control the majority of shares, then you can operate at a loss, or whatever else you think is "fair".

compare the profits made by large aviation companies and those made by oil companies and get back to me. I'm far from a liberal, making assumptions in political discussions is never a good idea.

2.5% on gasoline, what about everything else? i still stand by my point, how many billions is too much? The CEO, all the upper level board members, and those high up in the corporate food chain are making ludicrous amounts of money which isn't considered profit and is ultimately written off as a part of the budget - yet they can't add to that budget for the workers? If you don't think there's greed at play here then we're never going to come to an agreement. Gas prices were inflated, still are inflated, and will always be inflated.

I don't understand who else there is to blame here, the massive influx of oil from the middle east (blame OPEC) drove prices down, the american energy revolution also drives prices down. This is in part due to normal technological advancement of society and now because the oil companies can't afford to stuff their pockets AND pay workers well it seems that they've decided to keep the former while forgetting about the latter.

 

[hispls 5,000+ posts]

I believe it's the local gas station that makes a couple cents per gallon, they make money from you coming in the store to buy stuff. The big corporations make lots of money, but they take risk when drilling.

compare the profits made by large aviation companies and those made by oil companies and get back to me. I'm far from a liberal, making assumptions in political discussions is never a good idea.
2.5% on gasoline, what about everything else? i still stand by my point, how many billions is too much? The CEO, all the upper level board members, and those high up in the corporate food chain are making ludicrous amounts of money which isn't considered profit and is ultimately written off as a part of the budget - yet they can't add to that budget for the workers? If you don't think there's greed at play here then we're never going to come to an agreement. Gas prices were inflated, still are inflated, and will always be inflated.

I don't understand who else there is to blame here, the massive influx of oil from the middle east (blame OPEC) drove prices down, the american energy revolution also drives prices down. This is in part due to normal technological advancement of society and now because the oil companies can't afford to stuff their pockets AND pay workers well it seems that they've decided to keep the former while forgetting about the latter.

I don't think you have any idea what profit MARGIN means. 2.5% is a very small profit margin for any business. These companies control an enormous amount of assets and are exposed to great risk. I repeat, nothing stopping you and all the other Marxists to cob together in buying a majority share of the stocks of one of these companies and you can run it at a loss, hire some high school dropout for CFO and CEO positions paying them 10$ an hour or whatever else you see fit.

It's oh so easy to spend someone elses money or run their business from the sidelines when you risk nothing. Put your money where your mouth is. There's plenty of others who spew that same rhetoric that you could get to join along with you.

 

[speedyjuarez Premium Member]

I don't think you have any idea what profit MARGIN means. 2.5% is a very small profit margin for any business. These companies control an enormous amount of assets and are exposed to great risk. I repeat, nothing stopping you and all the other Marxists to cob together in buying a majority share of the stocks of one of these companies and you can run it at a loss, hire some high school dropout for CFO and CEO positions paying them 10$ an hour or whatever else you see fit.
It's oh so easy to spend someone elses money or run their business from the sidelines when you risk nothing. Put your money where your mouth is. There's plenty of others who spew that same rhetoric that you could get to join along with you.

Sorry but how does my post relate to this? This is how America is run, I believe it's called capitalism.

 

[hispls 5,000+ posts]

compare the profits made by large aviation companies and those made by oil companies and get back to me.

Boeing 4.5-7%, over the past 4 years, Northrop Grumman 9% this quarter, Lockheed Martin 4.5-9%

These numbers are HIGHER than the profit margin on gasoline and pretty well on-par with the overall profitability of the energy businesses.

 

[hispls 5,000+ posts]

Sorry but how does my post relate to this? This is how America is run, I believe it's called capitalism.

Sorry, had you multi--quoted from earlier. Your comment wasn't supposed to be lumped in there.

 

[speedyjuarez Premium Member]

Sorry, had you multi--quoted from earlier. Your comment wasn't supposed to be lumped in there.

I was like what did I do?

 

[hispls 5,000+ posts]

I was like what did I do?

Apart from that sig gif?

 

[los33]

The "big corporations" operate on a 2.5% profit margin on gasoline sales. The corner gas station makes the same or less, and as you say, either makes their real profits in beer, smokes and snacks, or service/repair. It's likely that nearly half of what you pay at the pump is fuel taxes (more or less depending on the state in which you live)

Somebody did there homework //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/wink.gif.608e3ea05f1a9f98611af0861652f8fb.gif.

Still don't understand why so many people believe companies have control over prices.

Even vehicles are under us taxes and are enforced in a way that one company cannot get to big compared to others.

Sent from my draconis using Tapatalk

 

[sam_mc50]

I'm in Houston and have seen gas as low a 2.10 at costco.

I also work for a service provider designing tools. I have been in R&D for 15 years and been through too many of these down turns to count. Oil will come back up sooner or later

 

[Boomin_tahoe 5,000+ posts]

Pppppfffffttttt....Boeing. We have Boeing here in WA....one of the largest employers in state and I think they make up 1/3 of employment here. They are demanding tax breaks to remain in state. Otherwise they threaten to move to a cheaper more affordable state. Likewise, they always do this. We can thank the machinist unions for going on so many strikes because of it.

Back to gas prices.....I've yet to see it here. 3.09-3.49 is around that average that I see in my area. I swear WA is last for it to "catch up" with everybody else. Saw on the news that a 7 cent tax hike is happening soon for road improvements and projects. I see it happening already. My street just actually got repaved a week ago. Now if they would do the backroad that leads to wal mart, then I'd be impressed.

Oil/gas prices goes along with the lines of airline prices.....there's no set "price" continuiously forever. Although some of us would like it so but that's dreaming. One thing I do know is Americans don't wanna see posted profits of how much millions or billions oil companies made in a quarter. That's just gonna **** them off.

 

[loudexpedition 10+ year member]

i paid $3.99 a gallon here today, but i run 91.

 

[sundownz Pro Seller]

i dont think that gas prices are the problem, it's greedy corporations that keep maximizing their profit without any concern for those who actually do the work.

Not sure that I can agree :

https://finance.yahoo.com/q/ks?s=XOM

* Exxon-Mobil = 7.91% Profit Margin

https://finance.yahoo.com/q/ks?s=CVX

* Chevron = 7.87% Profit Margin

https://finance.yahoo.com/q/ks?s=RDS-A

* Shell = 3.98% Profit Margin

https://finance.yahoo.com/q/ks?s=BP

* BP = (-2.24%) Profit Margin

Do those sound like massive profit margins to you ? They don't to me...

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https://finance.yahoo.com/q/ks?s=AAPL

* Apple = 22.62% Profit Margin

https://finance.yahoo.com/q/ks?s=GOOG

* Google = 21.79% Profit Margin

https://finance.yahoo.com/q/ks?s=FB

* Facebook = 18.7% Profit Margin

https://finance.yahoo.com/q/ks?s=MSFT

* Microsoft = 13.03% Profit Margin

https://finance.yahoo.com/q/ks?s=NKE

* Nike = 10.7% Profit Margin

https://finance.yahoo.com/q/ks?s=005930.KS

* Samsung = 10.08% Profit Margin

Now those are all pretty impressive... Apple is totally killing it.

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And for another "greedy" company :

https://finance.yahoo.com/q/ks?s=WMT

* Wal-Mart = 3.32% Profit Margin

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Goes to show which companies REALLY are "greedy" if you want to use that word.

When you run a company or any venture you should be looking at profit margin percentage when you decide if it's worthwhile as a venture... otherwise just plop your money in the stock market & rack up a better return without all the hassle of running a company.

I consider ~7-10% to be a healthy level for a company to be at but not crazy by any means; certainly not greedy by any stretch, IMO... you get into the 15-20% or higher range and, sure, maybe you can call that "greedy" and those companies should probably pay workers more and/or do more charity work and/or pay more dividend to shareholders rather than just swim in their massive money bins like Scrooge McDuck.

Popular companies to poke fun at for being greedy like Wal-Mart & Oil Companies really have a reasonable to low profit margin -- they just sell a high volume so TOTAL profit is high; but as a percentage it's not crazy at all.

 

[adulbrich 5,000+ posts]

I like Shell //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/smile.gif.1ebc41e1811405b213edfc4622c41e27.gif

That's my favorite place to get gas