I'm surprised there's not an inflation thread yet
POSTED BY: 6IXSTRINGJACK
UPDATED: Thursday, June 11, 2026 17:04
VIEWED: 37356
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I liked this example of inflation because it was so blatantly a huge grab for money while people were vulnerable. Texas electric generators took in $50 billion in one month when they usually take only $9.8 billion in 12 months!
Texans spent an exorbitant amount on electricity during a week in which most of them couldn’t get much electricity. For the entirety of 2020, Texans paid $9.8 billion to keep the juice flowing. But on February 16, 2021, they spent roughly $10.3 billion. Costs for the month of February totaled more than $50 billion.
During the February 2021 freeze, the gas industry failed to deliver critically needed fuel, and while Texans of all stripes suffered, the gas industry scored windfall profits of about $11 billion.
It’s possible that some of the massive profits were illicit. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission is looking into potential market manipulation by Texas pipeline companies, which are subject to the least regulation and oversight of any pipelines in the country. Those companies operate in a regulatory penumbra. For their pipelines operating only in Texas, they’re generally exempt from reporting tariffs and other market information the federal government requires of interstate pipelines.
The article in Texas Monthly explains how they got away with legally stealing all that money in higher electric and gas bills. It is tl;dr for most people, but that's EXACTLY why most people always get screwed by inflation. To understand how sellers use inflation you need to think like a seller who can arbitrarily raise prices sky-high when the conditions are right. When are conditions right? When you can falsely shift the blame for higher prices away from the sellers who actually control prices to the weather, to the pandemic, to somebody else.
https://www.texasmonthly.com/news-politics/texas-electric-grid-failure
-warm-up/
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:
I liked this example of inflation
We know you do. You've made 7,000 posts about it already.
Biden* killed the keystone pipeline to make AOC happy. The UK didn't get any wind this year and was willing to pay anything to keep warm.
Energy prices went up.
Thank you Leftists.
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Quote:I've assumed that the average man will never understand how prices are set. It is NOT the government setting the price, but because the average man believes it is the government, the real powerful people have even more power than they would if Mister Average understood.
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:Quote:
Originally posted by second:
I liked this example of inflation
We know you do. You've made 7,000 posts about it already.
Biden* killed the keystone pipeline to make AOC happy. The UK didn't get any wind this year and was willing to pay anything to keep warm.
Energy prices went up.
Thank you Leftists.
Gasoline Price Inflation: Exxon hits a $23 billion gusher in profits
EXXON’S BOTTOM LINE
2021 profit: $23 billion, compared with a loss of $22.4 billion in 2020.
2021 revenue: $285.6 billion, compared with $181.5 billion in 2020.
Q4 2021 profit: $8.9 billion, compared with a loss of $20.1 billion a year earlier.
Q4 2021 revenue: $85 billion, compared with $46.5 billion a year earlier.
US Regular Gasoline Price
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=LAei
Fuel has the reputation of being very price-inelastic: Consumption changes little even when the price changes. One way to illustrate this relationship is to compare the gasoline sales with prices.
https://fredblog.stlouisfed.org/2014/12/keep-the-car-running-retail-ga
s-sales-and-prices/
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Quote:If you looked at a pipeline map you would know that not building the Keystone Pipeline was good for Texas and bad for Canadian tar sand oil producers. The Canadian energy infrastructure company TC Energy officially abandoned the project in June 2021. Either Indiana gasoline dollars go to Canada or to Texas, but price per gallon of gasoline does not decrease when Canada is selling tar sand oil in the USA because tar sand oil is more expensive to refine into gasoline than West Texas crude.
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Biden* killed the keystone pipeline to make AOC happy.
https://www.nrdc.org/stories/what-keystone-pipeline
Quote:Wind power generation is not how natural gas prices are set.
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
The UK didn't get any wind this year and was willing to pay anything to keep warm.
Russia made a slight reduction in the amount of natural gas sold to Europe and the result was a huge increase in Russia's income from natural gas. The price all over Europe, not solely nations buying Russia's gas, skyrocketed. "Russia’s natural gas production is expected to hit an all-time high this year, beating the 2021 record, yet this winter season’s deliveries to Europe have been much lower than usual." Putin has at long last understood how Capitalism works -- an artificial reduction in cubic meters of natural gas sold causes a huge increase in price and income measured in Euros.
Low natural gas deliveries from Russia appear to have artificially tightened the European gas market, the IEA’s Executive Director Fatih Birol said earlier this month, adding that energy systems “face significant risks” by relying too much on one supplier for a key energy source.
“We see strong elements of ‘artificial tightness’ in European gas markets, which appears to be due to the behaviour of Russia’s state-controlled gas supplier,” Birol wrote.
https://oilprice.com/Energy/Natural-Gas/Russian-Natural-Gas-Production
-Expected-To-Hit-All-Time-High-This-Year.html
Price of Natural gas in the EU
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=LyJd
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:
I've assumed that the average man will never understand how prices are set.
You keep proving that every day. Thanks for doing your part.
Quote:
It is NOT the government setting the price
I never once said that it was.
But you're the one disingenuously pretending that government policy doesn't have any part in the prices that we pay.
You are a liar.
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Vaccinated People: "You need to get muh vaccination shots that don't work because I got muh vaccination shots that don't work and I'm afraid of people that didn't get muh vaccination shots that don't work because muh vaccination shots that don't work don't work."
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Quote:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:Quote:
Originally posted by second:
I've assumed that the average man will never understand how prices are set.
You keep proving that every day. Thanks for doing your part.Quote:
It is NOT the government setting the price
I never once said that it was.
But you're the one disingenuously pretending that government policy doesn't have any part in the prices that we pay.
You are a liar.
When the Federal government hands out trillions of dollars, that does not raise prices. But sellers know that buyers now have money that they didn't have before the government handed out trillions. The sellers raise their prices to take that money away. Sellers are not forced to raise their prices but they will when the opportunity comes along. Buyers don't understand how to handle sellers while sellers understand how to cheat buyers. Sellers who are too dumb to raise prices will go out of business, leaving smarter sellers to continue swindling their stupid customers who have no idea about what to do, other than to withdraw from life. I haven't seen many buyers do anything other than surrender to sellers without a fight.
I realize you won't understand, because if you did you would have to fight. Most Americans won't fight because they are kind of cowardly when facing someone with a strong will and a belligerent attitude, which describes most sellers. Buyers won't band together in a war against one seller, although that is the obvious strategy of a union against one employer.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Quote:this might be interesting.
Originally posted:Quote:I've assumed that the average man will never understand how prices are set.
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:Quote:We know you do. You've made 7,000 posts about it already.
Originally posted:
I liked this example of inflation
Biden* killed the keystone pipeline to make AOC happy. The UK didn't get any wind this year and was willing to pay anything to keep warm.
Energy prices went up.
Thank you Leftists.
Gasoline Price Inflation: Exxon hits a $23 billion gusher in profits
EXXON’S BOTTOM LINE
2021 profit: $23 billion, compared with a loss of $22.4 billion in 2020.
2021 revenue: $285.6 billion, compared with $181.5 billion in 2020.
Q4 2021 profit: $8.9 billion, compared with a loss of $20.1 billion a year earlier.
Q4 2021 revenue: $85 billion, compared with $46.5 billion a year earlier.
Expenditures in 2020: $203.9 B. (Average $51.0 per Q) For Q4: $66.6 B.
Expenditures in 2021: $262.6 B. (Average $65.7 per Q) For Q4: $76.1 B.
Other than Lord Darth Obidens inflation, this seems remarkably stable. It takes a long time for such a large company to slow down the rate of expenditures. But they were able to do so in 21Q4 in order to make a small profit.
Quote:
US Regular Gasoline Price
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=LyA9
Quote:A more useful chart would be gas consumption volume.
Fuel has the reputation of being very price-inelastic: Consumption changes little even when the price changes. One way to illustrate this relationship is to compare the gasoline sales with prices.
https://fredblog.stlouisfed.org/2014/12/keep-the-car-running-retail-ga
s-sales-and-prices/
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Starbucks: "we are forced to raise prices due to inflation and supply-chain issues"
Also Starbucks: "our profit just went up 31% and we gave our CEO a 39% raise to $20.4 million"
Companies are doing a great job rebranding corporate greed as "inflation"
https://twitter.com/DanPriceSeattle/status/1488726631493550085
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Next time you hear about "supply chains" and "inflation" causing rising gas prices, keep in mind:
Exxon just posted a $8.9 billion profit and is giving it all to shareholders and executives via a stock buyback.
Its main competitor just did the same thing
Chevron just posted a $15.6 billion profit, its biggest since 2014. The extra money is going to investors via a larger dividend.
We have a corporate greed problem, not an inflation problem
https://twitter.com/DanPriceSeattle/status/1488632447495516163
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Expect $4.00 at the pump before spring.
Go Joe!*
--------------------------------------------------
Vaccinated People: "You need to get muh vaccination shots that don't work because I got muh vaccination shots that don't work and I'm afraid of people that didn't get muh vaccination shots that don't work because muh vaccination shots that don't work don't work."
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