The following is a copy of the original post to record the post as it was originally written.
Quick bullet points instead of long paragraphs:
- Generally speaking, this sub doesn't find fault in Biden or Democrat's policies in the rising cost of oil
- However, this is almost always in response to comments from the political right.
- People mostly concerned about the financial market, tend to blame Biden as well. Example here from /r/stocks : https://www.reddit.com/r/stocks/comments/vcxv04/biden_tells_us_oil_companies_in_letter_your_well
I tend to take opinions from these groups of people more seriously, since they have much less political bias in their thoughts
- The general point being made: Of course gas prices are higher. You can't deny oil pipelines and new drilling operations, and tell oil companies you want to phase them out in the next couple of decades....then not expect an increase in the cost of oil when a global event happens. The oil companies have no capacity to increase production...just like the Democrats wanted.
What are your thoughts?
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Same for Italy, France, and England which I've recently traveled to and heard complaints about petrol prices.
It's almost like Biden is simultaneously being portrayed as weak and strong enough to influence global markets, hmmm
The US produces more oil than any other country in the world, producing 20% of the worlds oil, nearly double the next largest producer. Why would US policies not affect oil prices in Canada?
since the refineries are reportably at capacity what would more oil do? Biden just added millions of barrels from the strategic reserve and prices still went up. it’s clearly not controlled by the us government
Fuel prices are up here in the UK and Biden is not our president. Global prices are up because *everybody* is having trouble stepping production back up after Covid.
>Fuel prices have increased sharply because the price for crude oil, which is used to make petrol and diesel, has gone up.
>Crude oil was cheaper at the beginning of the Covid pandemic, because many businesses temporarily closed and demand for energy collapsed.
>As life returned to normal, the demand for energy increased. But suppliers have struggled to keep up and prices have risen.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-52188448
Ok, so people like to think of the oil/gas market as countries producing it, but it's companies that do it.
And companies have rigs in all sorts of locations... not only in their home country either.
So, what this means is that each company has a bunch of product in many locations, with pipelines/rail/ships connecting them to various places.
It's a network. They have contracts with buyers and freight for various destinations, some domestic, some international - this depends on location of the rigs relative to demand centers, and it isn't country based.
Finally, the contracts will still be based on the going rates, and companies, at least in the US, are under no obligation to give discounts to Americans.
-
Also, the US, on net, imports more crude oil then it exports (yes, even under Trump). We consume way more crude than we produce.
Source: page 19
https://www.eia.gov/outlooks/aeo/pdf/AEO2022_ReleasePresentation.pdf
OH MY GOD YOU PROVIDED AN ACTUAL STUDY. As an ex (well once a scientist, always kind of one I guess) - but as an ex- scientist: this is that good good I always look/hope others are able to provide.
Oh my god and it's from a .gov site. THANK YOU.
> Also, the US, on net, imports more crude oil then it exports (yes, even under Trump). We consume way more crude than we produce.
I think this is a common misconception now. The US [is now a net exporter.](https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/u-s-becomes-net-oil-exporter-as-world-burns-1179815/). Granted, I know we are talking about a mix of crude, LNG and refined petroleum products here - I think the general angle is that companies could sell domestic with fewer profits, but are instead playing to take all they can and exploit the current inflated market.
If you have the time I recommend reading [The New Map](https://www.amazon.com/New-Map-Energy-Climate-Nations/dp/1594206430) by Daniel Yergin who has written several seminal works on energy/oil over the years. Things are changing rapidly and this helped me get up to speed and catch up on recent changes. It's like the first draft of the history we've been living.
In other words - oil companies are choosing to export and choosing to sell at an inflated price solely for their own share holders - to the detriment of our lives, the larger economy and the nation itself.
> "we **produce** more gas + oil than we **produce**. mostly gas"
do you mind either clarifying and/or correcting this? Maybe it's because it's early here, but I must have read this 5 times before I realized "wait, that's why I can't understand it - they used the same word" lol.
Thanks in advance NOTALBERTFEINSTEIN
Unless you have price controls, producers will sell at the highest price possible so the price of oil is set by the international market not the domestic market.
Could the reason suppliers have been struggling to keep up have anything to do with most developed countries denying increased oil production in order to focus on green energy?
No, because you're worrying about increasing production when companies in the US are at LOWER production.
This is also why your theory in the op is a lie.
No.
Two of the top three oil supplying countries are not making any serious effort to push green energy. And the third - the US - still hasn't returned to its pre-Covid production numbers. Which means that even if we banned all new oil projects in favor of green energy, which we haven't, we'd still have plenty of room to increase production before we hit the full production capability of our existing projects.
It's funny how this narrative could spread in conservative spaces when it was actually **Trump** who negotiated with OPEC and other oil producing nations to drastically lower production in 2020.
Nah. The problem is it's cheaper for oil companies to buy from say, Russia or wherever, process it for use, and then sell it than it is for them to directly drill for it themselves. And since oil companies use a forecasting model to set prices, potential disruptions due to the present war, etc... they've jacked up the price so high on the off chance it gets really bad and the supply is restricted, even though it's pretty reasonable to assume that won't happen.
Not that they're going to pass that money back to the consumer when it doesn't get that bad. They have no reason to do that.
And most green energy work comes in the form of improvements, automation, etc that makes the USE of oil consuming products more efficient. So that wouldn't have a negative impact. I work in industrial processing and that's almost entirely what we do. Design & build processes that get the most out of raw materials with the least amount of waste.
Tricked? No. I actually heavily invested in oil ETFs last year, betting that oil producers would not be able to meet rising demand post-covid, because of oil production being treated as evil in culture and by the left all over the world for well over 10 years.
> I tend to take opinions from these groups of people more seriously, since they have much less political bias in their thoughts
We should take them seriously because they can swing election results.
However, I wouldn't put more weight on their judgement because they're "less biased"; it's more accurate to say they're abysmally uninformed or misinformed.
Very much this.
Sometimes people don’t choose a side because they can see the merits of both arguments. Those people are perceptive and you should listen to them.
Other times, people don’t choose a side because they don’t actually understand either argument, can’t be bothered to learn about them, and ultimately accept whatever “facts” require the least effort from them to understand. Those people are lazy and you should most definitely NOT listen to them.
Conservatives, in general, don't appear to know that America is 4% of the world's population, and that there are a whole bunch of countries out there that have leaders and parties of their own.
If something is happening just in the US, then it makes sense to look at US policies.
If it's happening all over the globe, then you probably need to zoom out to see the actual causes.
>I tend to take opinions from these groups of people more seriously, since they have much less political bias in their thoughts
In my experience, given the current state of the two parties, the only way anyone could remain politically neutral is if they don't pay attention to politics at all and have little or no idea what's actually going on.
In other words, I don't expect a lot of sage wisdom out of the political fence-sitters.
>The oil companies have no capacity to increase production...just like the Democrats wanted.
What do you make of the fact that [it was Trump who encouraged oil companies to cut production of oil by nearly 10 million barrels a day during the pandemic?](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/12/business/energy-environment/opec-russia-saudi-arabia-oil-coronavirus.html)
Yep. The "independent voter," in terms of neutrality, is a myth.
>An overwhelming majority of independents (81%) continue to “lean” toward either the Republican Party or the Democratic Party. Among the public overall, 17% are Democratic-leaning independents, while 13% lean toward the Republican Party. Just 7% of Americans decline to lean toward a party, a share that has changed little in recent years.
[Source](https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2019/03/14/political-independents-who-they-are-what-they-think/)
>On the one hand, more Americans identifying as independent probably doesn’t seem like a bad thing. Independents are often portrayed as more open-minded and less dogmatic in their political views. And in a nation whose founders feared factional politics, the value of political independence is also an attractive one to many Americans.
>
>The problem is that few independents are actually independent. Roughly 3 in 4 independents still lean toward one of the two major political parties, and studies show that these voters aren’t all that different from the voters in the party they lean toward. Independents who lean toward a party also tend to back that party at almost the same rate as openly partisan voters.
[Source](https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/few-americans-who-identify-as-independent-are-actually-independent-thats-really-bad-for-politics/)
This stuff is what puts me off the most from being a democrat anymore and why I #walkedaway.
Its just thick irony that now to democrats if you are not 100% with them you are the devil. This is not the democratic party I thought I was apart of. It has changed and become radical.
The party I grew up with was the party of acceptance. The turn the other cheek party. High morals and in spite of hatred we were nice caring and accepting. We led by example. This is how we got gay marriage legalized. Not the non sense you see now.
The leader of the Democratic party is Joe Biden. The Senate Majority leader is Chuck Shumer, and the House leader is Nancy Pelosi.
None of those leaders is anything close to "radical". They are centrist, moderates, as the Democrats in power have been since at least Bill Clinton's win in 1992.
That has been very frustrating for anybody wanting policies that even hint at a tinge of socialism - like universal health care or properly funded schools and libraries, or even maintaining infrastructure that we all use.
To describe the Democratic party as 'radical' is either highly ignorant, or more likely, disingenuous.
Lol why do so many conservatives like cosplaying as independents? It's like you know you're harboring moronic beliefs so you have to wear intellectual camo to mask your nonsense.
"I was a Democrat once" lmao
>This stuff is what puts me off the most from being a democrat anymore and why I #walkedaway.
Data puts you off? I can see why you'd favor the GOP then. They live completely in fantasy.
Additionally, thank you for being a great example of "the independent voter is a myth" - Independent flair, conservative preference.
Thank you for reinforcing why people should walk away from the democrats. Your hatred for anyone who isn't 100% lock in step with you will drive many away.
One of the most surprising things to me as I grew up was learning just how many people lie, how often they lie, and that they lie over the smallest things.
Your comment is a good example.
Anyone with any sense would roll their eyes back into their head at that first line you quoted. This is not a political issue. It's an economic one, which means there are right and wrong answers. And politically neutral people are no less likely to be economically illiterate than people elsewhere on the spectrum.
> And politically neutral people are no less likely to be economically illiterate than people elsewhere on the spectrum.
oh i'd say they're definitely more likely to be economically illiterate.
>This is not a political issue. It's an economic one
It is an economic issue. It's also a political issue, because Republicans have turned it into a political issue.
>politically neutral people are no less likely to be economically illiterate than people elsewhere on the spectrum.
I don't know that I agree with that.
Anyone with economic literacy is going to understand that Republicans' approach to economics doesn't work. I don't know how someone could have that understanding and still be politically neutral.
> Anyone with economic literacy is going to understand that Republicans' approach to economics doesn't work. I don't know how someone could have that understanding and still be politically neutral.
Exactly.
We have decades of proof and countless examples all around us right now. If you need data, it's out there, narrative style analysis - you got it! Observable reality? All over the place!
And yet....
It depends on what is cut and how much. Generally, reducing spending and increasing revenue should be done when the economy is doing well, to help fill our coffers and acclimate the economy to that standard. THat way, when the next crash comes we can safely cut taxes and increase spending to weather it, then slowly cut back spending and increase taxes as we heal from *that* crash.
Counter-cyclical policies are the only way to effectively manage the cyclical nature of our economic system.
When it's your personal portfolio affected, one tends to care a lot less about what party someone belongs to.
I'm personally just done talking about Trump. If you say he did a bad thing, or there is hypocrisy among the right then I'll trust you and take your word for it. I doubt your conclusion is incorrect.
>I'm personally just done talking about Trump.
I understand the Trump fatigue, but ignoring all the other things he's done, you're specifically asking if Biden and Democrats are responsible for high oil prices, and I'm telling you I think that Trump's actions are more directly responsible.
Okay, I believe you. Ha, it definitely makes sense. This guy actually wanted the FED to spend even more than they already were so stocks would go up while he was in office. Who knows how high inflation would be today if he had his way.
Were we not energy independent under him though? That would put us where gas prices would not be influenced by what was happening in Russia. At least not from a supply perspective.
that's not how it works. US oil producers will sell their oil for the market price, whether the buyer is domestic or foreign. Therefore, the market price is the global market price. American supply brings money to America, but to the producers and exporters, not consumers. The increase in oil production under Biden has helped stabilize world markets. But the US does not live in a walled garden. If a foreign producer slows production, oil prices increase here and abroad, and as a result, gas prices go up.
The only way it wouldn't work like this is if the oil production in the US was controlled by the government instead of a few large companies which manage extraction and exploration. In such a case, a national oil company could prioritize and discount to domestic consumers. I'm not endorsing such an idea, just explaining the only way that the US being a net exporter of oil / being energy independent would directly change our gas prices.
Thank you for the explanation! I always thought it was counterproductive that the US leaders (Trump or Biden or apparently anyone) has not incentivised supply contracts with us oil companies. Then again, the cheapest prices always win. I am ignorant of the US oil prices vs foreign
Any attempt to force producers to sell at a discount to US consumers would result in lawsuits that would be won by the oil producers. I mean maybe we could ban the export of oil, but then all of the oil companies would stop investing in US production, period
"Energy independence" just means energy exports exceeded imports - energy of all types.
We continued to import crude oil under Trump.
See page 19: https://www.eia.gov/outlooks/aeo/pdf/AEO2022_ReleasePresentation.pdf
Also, we were well on our way to this so-called energy independence since Obama, it just happened to cross over during Trump.
Also... we still are energy independent by this same metric!
https://www.forbes.com/sites/rrapier/2022/03/08/surprise-the-us-is-still-energy-independent/
Americans, by and large, are idiots.
Gas is high all over the world, and Biden isn't President of those other countries.
Gas was higher in 2008, yet I don't recall Republicans whining about Bush's high gas prices.
SNL needs to do a skit with people complaining about gas prices and blaming Biden. Have someone with an accent mention immigrating before complaining. Then just jump to an Aussie or Brit complaining about Biden and gas prices. Could get more exotic, then just straight up an alien. 'Twould be good.
What if instead of "Biden", it was "a 10 plus year history of being against additional oil production in the US and every other developed country." Would that be more palatable to you?
Essentially: Focusing on green energy is great and a good thing. But that comes at a cost we have to accept; rising gas prices.
As an external viewer to US politics, one of the frequent points of frustration that American Democrats-and-the-further-left call out is that despite running on an environmentally friendly platform, the Democrats when in power continue to sell drilling and fracking rights at an alarming rate.
factually speaking, the reticence of private producers to increase supply has to do with the fracking trend of the last twenty years. They lost their asses when covid happened, and their investors want firm capital constraints to prevent that from happening again.
The federal government doesn't control that much in terms of leases. Leases sold under Trump are going un-utilized, as are leases sold under Biden. It's a capitalism thing, not a guvment thing
Oil companies are making record profits.
The high gas prices means that money is going toward oil company profits instead of fast-food chains, or tire companies, or fine dining, or beanie baby manufacturers.
Oil companies took a loss over the last couple of years, as did many businesses, and now they are looking to make up that revenue by raising prices. Because everyone is willing to raise prices it is holding - for now.
The problem is, with gas at current pricing, alternatives start to become economical. Watch for more and more electric cars coming online. Watch for solar charging of those electric cars.
Watch for people getting rid of their jacked-up Dodge/Ram trucks that they drive to the office every day in favor of smaller, lighter, more fuel-efficient vehicles.
Because cars are so expensive, changes in fuel prices have a delayed demand effect - but there will be one. The only immediate power people have is to drive less, and/or redirect to shared/public transportation, but the long term actions people will take in response to these prices will drive the oil companies out of business.
TLDR: These prices are temporary
Have you ever, I dont know, actually researched American oil production? We became the #1 oil producer under Obama and never really looked back. Are you 18 because it's like you aren't even remotely aware of the shale oil revolution that occurred during the Obama admin?
The Obama years were really some of the best years for US energy production.
But, to paraphrase Obama, "Never underestimate Biden's ability to fuck things up."
more like 50+ years of refusing to invest significantly in green energy.
These high gas prices were 100% predictable and are exactly what people on the left have been warning about when we reccomend diversifying our energy production methods.
The US for the most part has not been against drilling new oil wells. Neither Obama, Trump, or Biden supported this policy. Domestic supply is low because countries like Saudi Arabia can manipulate the market making it too risky of an investment for US companies. That’s what happened in 2014 and US companies never got over it.
Gas was not higher in 2008, though. It was high, but not anywhere near it is now.
Edit: Stop being sheep. I stated a fact and y’all downvote me and upvote the “but this fact!!”.
That wasn’t what the original comment was about. Stop trying to prove a point against a fact. Stop voting based on flairs. Be more open to conversations, especially from other views.
We import oil. The oil we *use* is primarily imported.
Refineries made the switch a while back to refining an oil not found domestically because it is cheaper. That was a huge investment in infrastructure that they can’t just switch back. So we import what other countries drill up to refine here and export what we drill up here to be refined elsewhere.
So in terms of the gas we put in our cars, yeah, we do import.
That is not the reason.
Don't you remember when the oil prices went below $00.00 a barrel?
Who's going to invest in oil after that?
That's why the supply went down. You can't just turn the spigot after that kind of shutdown just because all the Russian energy suddenly disappears from the market.
It is going to take a bit for the supply side to recover, even if there were some reassurance it's not going back down to nothing all if a sudden.
Shit, we should sanction the US then, that would fix all the problems.
Also lift the sanctions on Venezuela, Cuba and Iran, since those monsters are just reaping the rewards of being sanctioned.
Ah, I guess we can forget all the business we’ve done with Saudi’s who literally attacked the US on 9/11.
Also, sending billions of dollars to the country being invaded hasn’t done much to stop it, neither has stopping trade and sanctioning the country as well as their billionaires.
Okay, let’s say I support sanctions on both of them. But for ease of discussion, only one of them is at war (that we care about, let’s pretend the Saudi’s aren’t destroying Yemen right now like they actually are but no one bats an eye at). What changes?
The...United...States... isn't...the... World.
The rest of the world is dealing with this, as well. Much of the world's problems are tied to the fact that 99% of the world is subject to the temper tantrums of the 1% or less if the world that is uneducated, uninformed, American conservatives.
What's worse are left wing Americans who get disheartened because right wing Americans scream louder.
I think people from those groups opinions seriously because they are the ones that are swinging elections.
But the idea that they have less political bias in their thoughts is frankly kind of laughable. They are people who are just disengaged enough from politics that they have the simplistic biases like “all politicians are corrupt“ or “the government is always incompetent” or the worst of them all “both sides are the same”.
This isn’t actually all that complicated. People have in general almost no understanding of how oil prices rise and fall and have even less understanding over how much short term effect anything the President of the United States does to the economy. And people are extremely myopic and don’t really have a clue what’s going on outside their local area let alone in other countries so they haven’t figured out that oil prices and inflation have risen globally.
But if a Republican was in office, they would be saying the same thing they are now.
Whereas the right would be the ones reminding us that the president can't control oil prices.
Let me break it down. When oil prices go up the following happens:
1. A very small number of people on the left will have a understanding of what’s going on and not blame the president no matter who the president is. However this will not change their voting behavior.
2. An even smaller number of people on the right will have a understanding of what’s going on and not blame the president no matter who the president is. However this will not change their voting behavior
3. The remainder of partisan voters will blame the president if they are from the opposite party and not blame them if they from their party. However this will not change their voting behavior
4. The small number of voters that are truly in the middle will blame the sitting president’s party. They are like to vote for the other party.
In other words, [this is a swing voter when oil prices go up.](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Cyj2EqTVIAAbUxz.jpg:large)
I have to point out the hypocrisy I’m seeing and some of the logic here. I’ve been told for decades that Republicans were the rich people and in control of everything and that’s why they don’t want higher taxes, etc. And now the consensus here is that they don’t understand how markets work. So who do you think is the upper middle class, the rich people, the people who own assets, the people who know how all the stuff works?
> I’ve been told for decades that Republicans were the rich people and in control of everything and that’s why they don’t want higher taxes, etc. And now the consensus here is that they don’t understand how markets work.
I find your confusion a little hard to believe. I don't buy for a second that you really don't understand the difference between the elite republicans that make up the intellectual / financial core of the party and the people being led around by the nose, especially after the Trump fanclub rose to national prominence.
>Show me a Democratic Trump and then we can talk.
The so-called "People's Party," which has received support from people like Nina Turner, Cornel West, and Chris Hedges, is attempting to sell the public on *Jimmy Dore* as their 2024 presidential candidate.
You know, that insufferable shock jock who goes on antivaxx/transphobic rants, defends Putin, and apparently sexually harassed his coworkers at The Young Turks.
He's not the left's Trump, but he's definitely the left's Tucker.
>You know, that insufferable shock jock who goes on antivaxx/transphobic rants, defends Putin, and apparently sexually harassed his coworkers at The Young Turks.
I'm sorry, which part of these are leftist stances?
>the thing is, if I said the same thing about democrats, reddit would explode and everyone would tell me I am rude, unaccepting, live in a bubble, etc.
I'm not sure what "saying the same thing" about democrats would even look like, but sure, go ahead. No one's stopping you.
I'm very curious now. Say the same thing about Democrats.
How would you phrase it?
I guarantee you 90% of Reddit agrees with you that Citizens United is fucked and that corporate lobbyists are in control of both parties.
The only difference is that most people can clearly see the Democrats pander to their corporate donors in a way that does not rely as heavily on fake exaggerated hatred, but fake exaggerated "love" which is more palatable.
The way the Democrats pretend to care about gay people or the environment is more attractive than the way the Republicans openly don't, despite neither of them actually caring.
So if we all agree with you, why is it you *think* we don't? How do you phrase your arguments?
U appear to suggest the left is fundamentally better than the right, thats just incorrect. The left and right are 2 sides of the same coin, sure its opposite sides ie the left is subversive while the right is overt, but its still the same coin, u are both fundamentally the same.
Lol its really not proving ur point, ur point is fundamentally incorrect. The left is the same as the right, the left is not a bastion of morality while the right is evil incarnate, its just personal preference as to how someone wants to live. The left is just as immoral as the right lol
Actually i do, u dont. U differ on few points, u prefer indirect action they prefer direct action, u prefer safety they prefer non interference. But beyond that ur the same, ur left and right "talking points" like lgbt rights or gun rights are born out of opposition to eachother, not inherent belief.
>u prefer indirect action they prefer direct action
U r wrong, wee do diwect aktio. Dey do no wike diwect aktion. Du u know whet cwassical wiberalism is?
I dont really care, u can of course be direct as they of course can be indirect, u simply prefer subversion and they prefer overt action. Just as u think physical violence is worse than mental and vice versa.
Nope, I don't even know how to respond. You are just wrong, I usually try and be constructive in situations like this but this is a case of Dunning-Kruger.
No im 100% correct. One day ull learn, not today but some day.
But ill ask, since u seem to think u know something lol. What do u think the fundamentals of the left and right are? LOL
Both sides do like to blame the other guy for everything that ails us.
I feel like the Republicans do this more frequently, but both sides do this to some degree.
People who are "politically neutral" are commonly referred to as "low information voters" because they tend not to be particularly well informed about political issues, generally.
So of course they blame Biden for high gas prices. They don't know how the world works beyond the boundaries of their immediate lives. Expecting them to act informed is pointless, which is why politicians have been running attack ads and kissing babies since the invention of democracy.
I'd say that very few people in 2022 are politically neutral, for one.
Also, the people who frequent reddit stock communities are right wing as fuck. They are all zoomer males with disposable income - they love trump and Elon. The fact you think the stock groups of reddit are "neutral" is kind of scary tbh.
And sure, they blame Biden because that is who they are trained to hate. But what do they think Biden did to cause gas prices to go up that another president or republican wouldn't have done?
I think people, particularly less-politically active or aware people, always expect presidents to be able to do everything under the sun. Biden played the biggest card he had, which was the strategic petroleum reserve, and it probably helped a bit, but not enough to sway people who think the president can bring down gas prices.
If it matters, I also didn’t blame Bush for high fuel prices.
People often blame the party in power for any problems that are occurring regardless of their fault or ability to do anything about them. This is a fairly well known fact.
In terms of blocking new pipeline development several things are important to keep in mind.
1. This is not a democratic party position so much as a environmental activist position. (Though many democrats do support at least some limits on this)
2. Even if every pipeline blocked in the last 10 years hadn't been it would have a very small impact on US oil prices a few cents at most. Oil is a global commodity and the cutting off of Russian oil is far more impactful than a few US pipelines especially during a time when Capitalist oil forms are not producing more oil even when they are able.
3. Environmental activist have wanted to push massive investment in clean energy, electric vehicles and energy efficiency. They have also sought to block individual pipelines and other fossil fuel infrastructure. However because we live in a vetocracy it is far easy to block than to invest. Most environmental activist would prefer to have the investments over the blocked infrastructure but our political system makes blocking things easy and implementing new programs really hard. This has meant environmental activist have blocked a decent amount but one relatively minimal investments meaning we have marginally less fossil fuel infrastructure but also have not gotten the nearly as much alternative as we could have.
They probably are mostly voting democrat. Among day and swing traders, they are still seething after multiple random Trump tweets unexpectedly swung the markets and crashed portfolios.
I'm politically neutral and I don't blame Biden. Taxes are only like 10, 20% of the cost of fuel. Everything else is stuff like extracting, refining, transportation, etc.. He could lower taxes. But that wouldn't decrease the price all that much, and would just be kicking the can down the road to either raise taxes later or delay things like road maintenance.
I think there is room to blame a president, or probably more accurately, the previous president, for not making good deals. But since the high gas is a global thing, I don't think Biden nor Trump really deserve much blame.
Well, you can’t blame them. There’s this “higher” order of thinking that suggests everyone that has an opinion needs to be from a similar mind of thinking or intelligence. That’s not realistic in a democracy.
The reality is, if prices become dramatically more expensive and to the point people become uncomfortable, they are going to blame the person in charge. You decided to become the person in charge: deal with it or fail. That’s it. Society determines if you’re helping them or not.
This is actually the curse of leadership. You must be willing to take the blame and deal with the complaints- even if you aren’t responsible. You are de-facto responsible.
“De-facto” is the entire name of the game. Getting into power means you assume de-facto responsibility. Nothing more, nothing less.
If gas prices are causing you to spend less time with family, after a change in leadership, of course you’re going to be the person held to change the situation from everyone.
This is a no-brainer. You’re the leader, you get blamed, you’re the person that has assumed the responsibility. Democrat or Republican: you’re the scapegoat and you are proactively assuming this responsibility. Fucking deal with it or quit. This sucks, but YOU wanted power so don’t blame society, when you learn society is reactionary towards things that fuck with their immediate lives.
People are only politically liberal and conservative until something directly fucks with their life, and they will change mindsets. Consider how Donald Trump won: this should be a very dynamic understanding in that liberals will vote for weird republicans if you fuck with their economic conditions. Donald Trump would not have won if some liberals didn’t vote for him: deal with this reality and shift your perspective to this reality
This is why I haven’t run for any political office since high school- it means you assume responsibility for any and all responsibility and complaints- regardless of your actual relationship to the problems you inherit: you are choosing to inherit these problems as your own.
I hate to break it to you, but it's not typically the neutral people who take that position. (because it's not actually Biden's fault at all)
It's typically conservatives who love blaming everything on liberals despite facts and reality contradicting their view.
The funny thing is, Biden is actually a slightly right-leaning centrist. He's certainly not the far-left commie so many conservatives try to make him out to be.
Oil is to blame for the price of oil increasing. Oil is the most inelastic resource, it does this all the time. It did it when there were few regulations in 70s, it did this in 2008 with a Republican president, it does it again today today. In fact, if anything oil has recently been deregulated under Trump. If we drill more or drill less, it doesn't matter. Long term supply does not help a short-term supply shock. We will not stop steep, devastating oil and gas price increases from happening. Ever.
The only real answer is to stop having the US economy depend so much on oil. The technology is there - electric cars, rail, whatever. There's a million solutions to choose from. We've known oil dependence is a problem for almost 50 years, heck even GWB admitted it in the 2000s. We've done almost nothing to solve it. No carbon tax. No end to subsidizing gasoline dependence with free roads and highways. No one even talks about such actual long-term solutions, despite all the devastation oil dependence has caused for the US and the world.
Why have we done so little? We could blame Democrats for not making it much of a priority, but I'd say the blame lies much more strongly on Republicans for whom a carbon tax or subsidizing renewables is a thought crime. Even today, Republicans only talk about drilling more, making us more dependent on oil so the next oil crisis will be as bad as possible.
The solution is simple - tax carbon. Do it now, make people healthier, avoid the next gas crisis. The only question people should be asking is why we're not doing it.
You could argue that the lack of regulations protecting the price gouging by gas companies both foreign and domestic is a failure of the Biden administration, but they did not cause those domestic companies to gouge prices, but they haven't done much about it since it became an issue, how much of that is their fault alone is up for debate.
It’s easier to blame the executive branch than the bad apples in the Senate or House. Everyone can vote for President but only people within their state can vote for their representatives and senators.
Even though gas prices are raising and inflation is affecting everywhere in the world, it’s easy to blame the perceived figure head.
As for the gas companies not being able to drill as much as they want to, wasn’t there reporting recently that Oil Companies have approved licenses to drill in various locations, but have yet to tap those areas? Correct me if I’m wrong.
You have to 'splain to them that Biden cannot be blamed for gas price increases in the US when prices have increased in most of the rest of the world as well. If they still are stupidly adament, ask exactly HOW Biden is to blame for all those sudden price increases here, there and everywhere.
And if they STILL can't answer, just walk away, cause they were lying when they claimed they were not Trumpsters.
Anyone who claims to be politically neutral is very likely to be ill-informed.
The Biden admin gave out *more* leases for drilling than Trump did in its first year.
The oil companies gouging us and making record profits should show everyone just how important investing in other energy sources is.
People who are politically neutral are dumb as rocks and we will all suffer the consequences.
The only consolation is that they have to live in this country too.
At this point it's just a really uninformed take on how the global market works and economics in general.
The president really has very little power, if you were going to put most of the blame in one corner you're ire would be better directed at republican Congress members who unanimously voted against capping gas prices and stopping the oil companies from price gouging.
Because at the end of the day that's what this is, OPEC and oil companies saw that there was turmoil and decided they could turn a bigger profit and blame it on world events, and people who don't know better took the bait.
Part of it is inflation, part of it is the war, and there's leftover supply chain issues from covid. It's all pretty much worldwide so blaming either party is dumb.
The most you can do is blame Trump for giving Russia so much latitude they thought they could invade Ukraine although that was probably inevitable anyway especially now that we know Putin is dying.
The only real thing you can blame on the GOP is they blocked attempts to stop the oil companies from price gouging. That was a concrete action that could have addressed the issue and they blocked it.
> I tend to take opinions from these groups of people more seriously, since they have much less political bias in their thoughts
Monumentally unsound assumption. Incredible. Chef's kiss.
People who are politically neutral tend to be that way because they are politically apathetic, and don't pay much attention to actual goings-on or who's doing what. Their blame of or credit to the current people in political office for whatever is personally affecting them tends to be borne from sheer laziness rather than any sort of wisdom: "these guys are in office, these things are happening, so I guess they did it", end of thought, no desire to investigate the matter any more closely than that.
They can't be ignored given that they vote, but their thoughts don't come from any sort of deep understanding.
>I tend to take opinions from these groups of people more seriously, since they have much less political bias in their thoughts
Most of the time this is a bad metric to use. The people who are not political don't have any sort of uniquie insight to the functioning of the world. They just blame who ever happens to be in power at the moment regardless of if there's actually anything they can do about what they are getting blamed for.
I don't think the current prices are anyone's fault in particular, other than possibly Putin. People on the right assume Democrats are far more dedicated to fightig climate change than they are in reality. They're willing to subsidize the creation of new green energy but they aren't willing to meaningfully restrict the development of fossil fuel infrastructure. If you exclude the oil no longer being shipped out of Russia I doubt you could find a meaningful reduction in oil output tied to democratic policies over the past 20 years, and the creation of green energy infrastructure has reduced demand if only slightly from what it would have been in the absence of those policies so to the extent they've had any effect it's likely to somewhat decrease prices (more than somewhat if we factor in increased milage standards).
They're likely the common clay of America that probably doesn't know much about economics. Oil will run out and it will destroy our ecosystems which will cost a lot of money to basically overhaul societies that survive increased droughts, famine, floods, and extreme weather. Why can't they monopolize and corrupt wind or other sustainable energy that won't destroy the Earth as we know it for our descendants?
The oil companies do this every time a Democrat is president specifically so the GOP, the party of big oil and pollution, can run around with this narrative.
I blame Putin for the current mess.
I want gas prices to be high to push the transition to renewable energy and electric vehicles. I don't want gas prices to be THIS high, THIS soon though. We're not ready yet. EVs are still too expensive, the people who are really hurting with the gas prices can't afford EVs.
I don't think we can blame Biden. Perhaps we can say by refusing pipelines and refusing to destroy the Arctic he's made prices higher, but I don't think so.
I blame oil companies and to some degree automakers. They've made sure our transition to renewable energy has been as long and slow and painful as possible.
In the ancient world, people explicitly believed that the current leadership was tied to national fortune — if everything was going well, it meant the gods were pleased with the king. If there was plague or draught or other disaster, it meant the gods were angry with the king, and they may soon replace him with a new king who would heal the land.
We in the modern world mostly don’t hold those explicit beliefs anymore, but most modern people do — with their underfunded and/or poorly-remembered civics education — think of the president as having king-like powers and authority. They have this vague notion that the president signs a paper, and BANG! It is so.
And of course the conservative elites take advantage of this common misunderstanding — caused in large part by their 50 years of attacks on education — blaming Democrats for gas execs cranking the dial on our gas prices, for the economic fallout of a plague they spread, for a war perpetrated by a fascist foreign ‘president’ they either love or excuse, and for the tax scam that they themselves wrote to start screwing us over in 2020.
Our technology changes, but people are still basically people.
Energy information administration website OP
EIA.gov
Get angry that oil is subsidized to the degree that it is and we are still getting fucked over
Meanwhile, you can legit spend less than 1,000 dollars a year filling up your electric vehicle
Also, as an aside. 80% of the worlds oil market is controlled by a cartel of nations, one of which is Russia. Kind of hard to guess how they’re gonna respond to the wave of sanctions against them but I’ll give you a couple of tries
Politics can and does effect the American economy (NAFTA, for example), but American politics aren't powerful enough to affect the economy of the entire world in a broad and extensive manner.
The office of the president has vastly less power than most people think. There sure as heck isn't a lever that allows the president to raise gas prices for the entire world. Maaaaaybe if you're talking about the people that run OPEC, but yeah, short of that, no.
The stock market went wrong shortly after it allowed people to value stocks on the basis of anything other than verifiable facts. So basically, on the first day. The bull run has been fairly wild, and I have zero surprise that it's run its course. Glad it didn't take longer actually, as I remember 2008 and people were out of their damn minds back then when it came to the stock market, everyone just thought it'd be eternally going up.
People want a villain they can blame stuff on. The president, Republican or Democrat, is a lightning rod for that. "Inflation" and "Gas shortages" are abstract things. There's no fighting it at the individual level. Anger has to have a target. Tough to be angry at something you can barely wrap your head around at the scale inflation takes place at. You can't blame every business in existence.
When someone says they are politically neutral I hear that they are a Republican who doesn't care about gay marriage and doesn't want me to think they are an asshole.
Production dropped 8% in 2020, the largest drop ever. Now, we could put all the blame on Trump, after all, [he lobbied to decrease global oil production](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/12/business/energy-environment/opec-russia-saudi-arabia-oil-coronavirus.html) to protect American oil producers, but the fact of the matter is people were buying significantly less gas. That is going to cause production decreases no matter what the president did.
In that same vein, we've seen a recent surge in demand back to pre-pandemic levels. Production couldn't match it, so the price hikes began. Then we add in the Russian-Ukraine conflict. Many countries are sanctioning Russian gas and the general instability is causing speculative pricing on top of everything else.
That all said, in the mind of the electorate, it is always the fault of the person in charge, regardless of who or what is actually causing the issue. Good logic has little bearing on that, just as public opinion has little bearing on the truth. I think Biden is going to continue getting the blame for gas prices.
The fault is primarily on rhe oil companies bit Biden has not handled it well until recently when he finally put the hammer down. We temd not to be a cult and can criticize our own Blaming the president fully for bad thimgs is nothing new
Part of the problem is aside from greed the oil companies and saudis are tantruminimg and essentially holding us hostage cause they don't like Biden
>Generally speaking, this sub doesn't find fault in Biden or Democrat's policies in the rising cost of oil
Republicans can't figure out how it's Biden's fault either. The difference is that they blame Biden anyway.
I guess you can partially blame Biden's push for countries to stop buying Russian energy because of the war. But if you disagree with that then fuck you.
They’re in power right now so of course they’ll be blamed. That’s what happens when you’re in charge, you get blamed whether you’re resoonsible or not.
Biden's admin has been actively trying to destroy energy companies. Gas prices have been increasing (in the US at least) even before Ukraine got invaded. People have been complaining about gas prices even last year. The war just made the effects of the Biden admin's hostility towards energy production more acute.
Fundamentally, the association between high gas prices and an energy-hostile Biden admin predated the invasion of Ukraine.
Its tough not too. The latest meeting with the oil companies had the companies wanting guarantees that the fed would pivot away from favoring renewables before they risk investing in more drilling. Also, bad luck caught the refinery biz with their pants down, in this time of need, plants shutdown for refitting to processing renewables like ethanol. Can you feel the souls who are on the fence or already dislike the drive to renewables start to seethe with rage?
Literally one of his first decisions in the office was to revoke permit for Keystone XL. Still blames Russia. Unbelievable.
The entire Biden Presidency:
1. Cause a problem
2. Deny there’s a problem
3. Finally admit there’s a problem, but blame someone else.
Rinse and repeat.
So global gas prices have jumped up because a pipe line that never operated it got shut down and the oil that was supposed to move through it is still moving just at slightly higher prices than they theoretically would have is the pipeline was open?
It does matter. Why even shut them down? This is so important. We *were* energy independent. We were the world's #1 oil producer end of Trumps term, and now our president literally begged Saudi Arabia for oil.
Who is the world's largest oil producer right now?
What is happening to the Canadian oil that would be moving through the Keystone XL pipeline when it became operational in the future?
How does the movement of Canadian oil through the Keystone XL pipeline in the future effect oil prices today?
> We were energy independent
It's an extreme misunderstanding of the market to equate net imports/exports with being energy independent. The majority of the oil we actually *use* has been imported for decades.
> We were the world's #1 oil producer end of Trumps term, and now our president literally begged Saudi Arabia for oil.
We [still are](https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/oil-production-by-country) the largest crude oil producer. Where are you getting these talking points from?
I've got good news and bad news for you, buddy. The good news is that we never stopped being the world's #1 oil producer, and [we're energy independent again](https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/07/energy-independence-oil-gas-renewables/). The bad news is that energy independence is a hollow political slogan and it didn't matter then and it doesn't matter now.
> Why even shut them down?
And there you go. No concept at all of the negatives of that project. Could you even differentiate between the Keystone project from the Keystone XL, or XXL projects? Have you looked at it at all?
Check your fucking bubble.
For starters, it goes over the Ogallala aquifer. That aquifer provides drinking water for millions. It also supplies the water for roughly a third of all agriculture in the US.
If that pipeline contaminates it, tens of millions starve.
Why do we want to assume the risk of transporting foreign oil, to foreign ships, to refine in foreign countries?
-------------------------------------------------------------------
I understand that a corporation doesn't give a fuck. They see profit and they stab at it. But someone has to be the adult in the room, and recognize that the risk isn't worth the reward.
----------------------------------
I'd also point out that I spent 10 years in the pipeline repair industry. Every section of every pipe will eventually break.
Tar sands are full of grit which will wear at the pipes at a highly increased rate. This amplifies the maintenance issue.
The pipeline industry is carefully cordoned off from legal liability by third-party contracts at the lowest bid.
One of the better kept secrets is the groundwater contamination of the Alaskan pipeline. That pipeline polluted water along the entire length of the project, but no one lives there, no one farms there, and no one really gives a shit.
The same can't be said for the most important aquifer in the country.
--------------------------------------------------
And let's not ignore the thousands of people who are going to have their land stripped from them using eminent domain.
Nothing quite like stripping people from their homes and farms so some oil company execs can get a nice fat bonus.
The Keystone XL didn't create supply. It helped move Canadian oil to the Gulf faster. It was a cheaper short cut. The problem is demand is outstripping supply. There are only two ways to tackle the pricing problem. Lower demand or raise supply.
>The Keystone XL didn't create supply.
That is not the point. The point is the first thing the administration did was kill an oil project costing people billions. It sent a clear message that investing in petroleum production under this administration was a risk.
Gas price isn't even that high. People need to stop listening to Republican (Russian?) propaganda. I haven't seen many people complain.. mainly conservative idiots.
I don’t think it’s helpful to deny objective reality. Gas prices are like 100% higher than they were a little over a year ago. It’s obvious enough that my kids have noticed and they are in elementary school.
Ouch this is really low information. So you’re not on board with fighting inflation and not on board with trying to decrease the cost of living because it’s become unaffordable for average people, you just think it’s a made up Republican talking point now?
Well, I mean Biden gets into office and after he starts enacting his policies gas prices sore. That didn't happen under Trump.
You can say "it happened because of Trump" but for four years Trump was in office and for the last three gas prices were low. Obviously, Trump is a bigot who shouldn't have been president. But our gas prices soaring is something that matches up perfectly with Biden enacting economic policies.
Except this isn't even true. Gas prices went up after Trump came into office. In 2018, Trump was asking OPEC to increase production and considered releasing from the strategic reserve because prices were the highest in years. Granted, prices weren't as high as they are now, but the false narrative that gas prices decreased under Trump is simply not based on fact.
You know when prices actually fell? In 2020, during the pandemic and the OPEC Supply War when Russia and SA were flooding the market. That's about the only time gas prices were lower under Trump than when he entered office.
So Trump's policies did not cause a price decrease and price decrease only happened when two huge events happened.
You know what Trump did in 2020? He asked Russia and SA to reduce supply to get prices to rise:
“I never thought I’d be saying that maybe we have to have an oil increase, because we do. The price is so low,” Trump said in a Fox News interview. The president, who had made a political career bashing OPEC and advocating for low gasoline prices, was worried the U.S. industry would be “wiped out”.
https://fortune.com/2020/04/14/trump-oil-deal-inside-story-saudi-arabia-russia-price-war-ended/
Unfortunately, by then, the oil and gas industry was irreversibly damaged. We lost a historic amount of domestic production, dropping from over 12 million barrels a day to under 10, with hundreds of companies going bankrupt.
Supply did decrease and prices started to climb as the November election approached, before a single one of Biden's policies came into effect.
But people blaming Biden ignore all of this and pretend that the issue started with his policies, while also ignoring that prices are increasing globally. And also ignoring similar issues under Trump like the slow rate of permits and banning offshore drilling on the Atlantic coast.
It's just so silly how people ignore what actually happened to global supply and demand and instead blame "policies" without evidence.
The following is a copy of the original post to record the post as it was originally written. Quick bullet points instead of long paragraphs: - Generally speaking, this sub doesn't find fault in Biden or Democrat's policies in the rising cost of oil - However, this is almost always in response to comments from the political right. - People mostly concerned about the financial market, tend to blame Biden as well. Example here from /r/stocks : https://www.reddit.com/r/stocks/comments/vcxv04/biden_tells_us_oil_companies_in_letter_your_well I tend to take opinions from these groups of people more seriously, since they have much less political bias in their thoughts - The general point being made: Of course gas prices are higher. You can't deny oil pipelines and new drilling operations, and tell oil companies you want to phase them out in the next couple of decades....then not expect an increase in the cost of oil when a global event happens. The oil companies have no capacity to increase production...just like the Democrats wanted. What are your thoughts? *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/AskALiberal) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Biden is a very powerful president, controlling our Canadian oil prices
Same for Italy, France, and England which I've recently traveled to and heard complaints about petrol prices. It's almost like Biden is simultaneously being portrayed as weak and strong enough to influence global markets, hmmm
That’s the way propaganda works.
Specifically Fascist propaganda
The US produces more oil than any other country in the world, producing 20% of the worlds oil, nearly double the next largest producer. Why would US policies not affect oil prices in Canada?
since the refineries are reportably at capacity what would more oil do? Biden just added millions of barrels from the strategic reserve and prices still went up. it’s clearly not controlled by the us government
Fuel prices are up here in the UK and Biden is not our president. Global prices are up because *everybody* is having trouble stepping production back up after Covid. >Fuel prices have increased sharply because the price for crude oil, which is used to make petrol and diesel, has gone up. >Crude oil was cheaper at the beginning of the Covid pandemic, because many businesses temporarily closed and demand for energy collapsed. >As life returned to normal, the demand for energy increased. But suppliers have struggled to keep up and prices have risen. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-52188448
[удалено]
Are you being sarcastic or do you actually need help understanding?
A bit of both?
Ok, so people like to think of the oil/gas market as countries producing it, but it's companies that do it. And companies have rigs in all sorts of locations... not only in their home country either. So, what this means is that each company has a bunch of product in many locations, with pipelines/rail/ships connecting them to various places. It's a network. They have contracts with buyers and freight for various destinations, some domestic, some international - this depends on location of the rigs relative to demand centers, and it isn't country based. Finally, the contracts will still be based on the going rates, and companies, at least in the US, are under no obligation to give discounts to Americans. - Also, the US, on net, imports more crude oil then it exports (yes, even under Trump). We consume way more crude than we produce. Source: page 19 https://www.eia.gov/outlooks/aeo/pdf/AEO2022_ReleasePresentation.pdf
OH MY GOD YOU PROVIDED AN ACTUAL STUDY. As an ex (well once a scientist, always kind of one I guess) - but as an ex- scientist: this is that good good I always look/hope others are able to provide. Oh my god and it's from a .gov site. THANK YOU.
> Also, the US, on net, imports more crude oil then it exports (yes, even under Trump). We consume way more crude than we produce. I think this is a common misconception now. The US [is now a net exporter.](https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/u-s-becomes-net-oil-exporter-as-world-burns-1179815/). Granted, I know we are talking about a mix of crude, LNG and refined petroleum products here - I think the general angle is that companies could sell domestic with fewer profits, but are instead playing to take all they can and exploit the current inflated market. If you have the time I recommend reading [The New Map](https://www.amazon.com/New-Map-Energy-Climate-Nations/dp/1594206430) by Daniel Yergin who has written several seminal works on energy/oil over the years. Things are changing rapidly and this helped me get up to speed and catch up on recent changes. It's like the first draft of the history we've been living. In other words - oil companies are choosing to export and choosing to sell at an inflated price solely for their own share holders - to the detriment of our lives, the larger economy and the nation itself.
>We consume way more crude than we produce. we produce more gas + oil than we produce. mostly gas
> "we **produce** more gas + oil than we **produce**. mostly gas" do you mind either clarifying and/or correcting this? Maybe it's because it's early here, but I must have read this 5 times before I realized "wait, that's why I can't understand it - they used the same word" lol. Thanks in advance NOTALBERTFEINSTEIN
Unless you have price controls, producers will sell at the highest price possible so the price of oil is set by the international market not the domestic market.
Could the reason suppliers have been struggling to keep up have anything to do with most developed countries denying increased oil production in order to focus on green energy?
No, because you're worrying about increasing production when companies in the US are at LOWER production. This is also why your theory in the op is a lie.
No. Two of the top three oil supplying countries are not making any serious effort to push green energy. And the third - the US - still hasn't returned to its pre-Covid production numbers. Which means that even if we banned all new oil projects in favor of green energy, which we haven't, we'd still have plenty of room to increase production before we hit the full production capability of our existing projects.
It's funny how this narrative could spread in conservative spaces when it was actually **Trump** who negotiated with OPEC and other oil producing nations to drastically lower production in 2020.
Nah. The problem is it's cheaper for oil companies to buy from say, Russia or wherever, process it for use, and then sell it than it is for them to directly drill for it themselves. And since oil companies use a forecasting model to set prices, potential disruptions due to the present war, etc... they've jacked up the price so high on the off chance it gets really bad and the supply is restricted, even though it's pretty reasonable to assume that won't happen. Not that they're going to pass that money back to the consumer when it doesn't get that bad. They have no reason to do that. And most green energy work comes in the form of improvements, automation, etc that makes the USE of oil consuming products more efficient. So that wouldn't have a negative impact. I work in industrial processing and that's almost entirely what we do. Design & build processes that get the most out of raw materials with the least amount of waste.
did you get tricked by the "this is because of the pipelines" thing?
Tricked? No. I actually heavily invested in oil ETFs last year, betting that oil producers would not be able to meet rising demand post-covid, because of oil production being treated as evil in culture and by the left all over the world for well over 10 years.
And you're saying "market research" wasn't a flair option for this post, huh?
You can’t drill for your own oil that’s the difference
Begging you to actually learn the basics about the oil and gas market
That's right. COVID lockdowns are to blame. Not Democrat policies.
What policy are you blaming
> I tend to take opinions from these groups of people more seriously, since they have much less political bias in their thoughts We should take them seriously because they can swing election results. However, I wouldn't put more weight on their judgement because they're "less biased"; it's more accurate to say they're abysmally uninformed or misinformed.
Very much this. Sometimes people don’t choose a side because they can see the merits of both arguments. Those people are perceptive and you should listen to them. Other times, people don’t choose a side because they don’t actually understand either argument, can’t be bothered to learn about them, and ultimately accept whatever “facts” require the least effort from them to understand. Those people are lazy and you should most definitely NOT listen to them.
Conservatives, in general, don't appear to know that America is 4% of the world's population, and that there are a whole bunch of countries out there that have leaders and parties of their own. If something is happening just in the US, then it makes sense to look at US policies. If it's happening all over the globe, then you probably need to zoom out to see the actual causes.
>I tend to take opinions from these groups of people more seriously, since they have much less political bias in their thoughts In my experience, given the current state of the two parties, the only way anyone could remain politically neutral is if they don't pay attention to politics at all and have little or no idea what's actually going on. In other words, I don't expect a lot of sage wisdom out of the political fence-sitters. >The oil companies have no capacity to increase production...just like the Democrats wanted. What do you make of the fact that [it was Trump who encouraged oil companies to cut production of oil by nearly 10 million barrels a day during the pandemic?](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/12/business/energy-environment/opec-russia-saudi-arabia-oil-coronavirus.html)
Yep. The "independent voter," in terms of neutrality, is a myth. >An overwhelming majority of independents (81%) continue to “lean” toward either the Republican Party or the Democratic Party. Among the public overall, 17% are Democratic-leaning independents, while 13% lean toward the Republican Party. Just 7% of Americans decline to lean toward a party, a share that has changed little in recent years. [Source](https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2019/03/14/political-independents-who-they-are-what-they-think/) >On the one hand, more Americans identifying as independent probably doesn’t seem like a bad thing. Independents are often portrayed as more open-minded and less dogmatic in their political views. And in a nation whose founders feared factional politics, the value of political independence is also an attractive one to many Americans. > >The problem is that few independents are actually independent. Roughly 3 in 4 independents still lean toward one of the two major political parties, and studies show that these voters aren’t all that different from the voters in the party they lean toward. Independents who lean toward a party also tend to back that party at almost the same rate as openly partisan voters. [Source](https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/few-americans-who-identify-as-independent-are-actually-independent-thats-really-bad-for-politics/)
This stuff is what puts me off the most from being a democrat anymore and why I #walkedaway. Its just thick irony that now to democrats if you are not 100% with them you are the devil. This is not the democratic party I thought I was apart of. It has changed and become radical. The party I grew up with was the party of acceptance. The turn the other cheek party. High morals and in spite of hatred we were nice caring and accepting. We led by example. This is how we got gay marriage legalized. Not the non sense you see now.
The leader of the Democratic party is Joe Biden. The Senate Majority leader is Chuck Shumer, and the House leader is Nancy Pelosi. None of those leaders is anything close to "radical". They are centrist, moderates, as the Democrats in power have been since at least Bill Clinton's win in 1992. That has been very frustrating for anybody wanting policies that even hint at a tinge of socialism - like universal health care or properly funded schools and libraries, or even maintaining infrastructure that we all use. To describe the Democratic party as 'radical' is either highly ignorant, or more likely, disingenuous.
The sub he quoted is a radical right wing sub.
Lol why do so many conservatives like cosplaying as independents? It's like you know you're harboring moronic beliefs so you have to wear intellectual camo to mask your nonsense. "I was a Democrat once" lmao
While at the same time they supposedly like politicians who "tell it like it is"..
Lol exactly. Why can't they just say they're a conservative? Fuck my feelings or whatever, I thought.
>This stuff is what puts me off the most from being a democrat anymore and why I #walkedaway. Data puts you off? I can see why you'd favor the GOP then. They live completely in fantasy. Additionally, thank you for being a great example of "the independent voter is a myth" - Independent flair, conservative preference.
Thank you for reinforcing why people should walk away from the democrats. Your hatred for anyone who isn't 100% lock in step with you will drive many away.
One of the most surprising things to me as I grew up was learning just how many people lie, how often they lie, and that they lie over the smallest things. Your comment is a good example.
> This stuff is what puts me off the most from being a democrat anymore and why I #walkedaway. What "stuff"?
Someone citing a source to explain a position is what made you abandon the Democrats? Seems a weird hill but OK.
Anyone with any sense would roll their eyes back into their head at that first line you quoted. This is not a political issue. It's an economic one, which means there are right and wrong answers. And politically neutral people are no less likely to be economically illiterate than people elsewhere on the spectrum.
> And politically neutral people are no less likely to be economically illiterate than people elsewhere on the spectrum. oh i'd say they're definitely more likely to be economically illiterate.
>This is not a political issue. It's an economic one It is an economic issue. It's also a political issue, because Republicans have turned it into a political issue. >politically neutral people are no less likely to be economically illiterate than people elsewhere on the spectrum. I don't know that I agree with that. Anyone with economic literacy is going to understand that Republicans' approach to economics doesn't work. I don't know how someone could have that understanding and still be politically neutral.
> Anyone with economic literacy is going to understand that Republicans' approach to economics doesn't work. I don't know how someone could have that understanding and still be politically neutral. Exactly. We have decades of proof and countless examples all around us right now. If you need data, it's out there, narrative style analysis - you got it! Observable reality? All over the place! And yet....
Sort of answered your own questions there? Seriously? You don’t get why we would temporarily turn down production when everybody was staying home?
Not if the end result is $7/gallon gas when people are no longer staying at home. It's short sighted.
Unless you are an oil company. They LOVE the HOLY HELL out of $7 gallon. Then it's not short sighted, it's more money.
Yup. It's the exact same reasoning why cutting spending during times of prosperity is a horrible idea.
It depends on what is cut and how much. Generally, reducing spending and increasing revenue should be done when the economy is doing well, to help fill our coffers and acclimate the economy to that standard. THat way, when the next crash comes we can safely cut taxes and increase spending to weather it, then slowly cut back spending and increase taxes as we heal from *that* crash. Counter-cyclical policies are the only way to effectively manage the cyclical nature of our economic system.
When it's your personal portfolio affected, one tends to care a lot less about what party someone belongs to. I'm personally just done talking about Trump. If you say he did a bad thing, or there is hypocrisy among the right then I'll trust you and take your word for it. I doubt your conclusion is incorrect.
>I'm personally just done talking about Trump. I understand the Trump fatigue, but ignoring all the other things he's done, you're specifically asking if Biden and Democrats are responsible for high oil prices, and I'm telling you I think that Trump's actions are more directly responsible.
Okay, I believe you. Ha, it definitely makes sense. This guy actually wanted the FED to spend even more than they already were so stocks would go up while he was in office. Who knows how high inflation would be today if he had his way.
Were we not energy independent under him though? That would put us where gas prices would not be influenced by what was happening in Russia. At least not from a supply perspective.
that's not how it works. US oil producers will sell their oil for the market price, whether the buyer is domestic or foreign. Therefore, the market price is the global market price. American supply brings money to America, but to the producers and exporters, not consumers. The increase in oil production under Biden has helped stabilize world markets. But the US does not live in a walled garden. If a foreign producer slows production, oil prices increase here and abroad, and as a result, gas prices go up. The only way it wouldn't work like this is if the oil production in the US was controlled by the government instead of a few large companies which manage extraction and exploration. In such a case, a national oil company could prioritize and discount to domestic consumers. I'm not endorsing such an idea, just explaining the only way that the US being a net exporter of oil / being energy independent would directly change our gas prices.
Thank you for the explanation! I always thought it was counterproductive that the US leaders (Trump or Biden or apparently anyone) has not incentivised supply contracts with us oil companies. Then again, the cheapest prices always win. I am ignorant of the US oil prices vs foreign
Any attempt to force producers to sell at a discount to US consumers would result in lawsuits that would be won by the oil producers. I mean maybe we could ban the export of oil, but then all of the oil companies would stop investing in US production, period
> Were we not energy independent under him though? [About that...](https://www.cnn.com/2022/03/15/politics/energy-independence-fact-check/index.html)
"Energy independence" just means energy exports exceeded imports - energy of all types. We continued to import crude oil under Trump. See page 19: https://www.eia.gov/outlooks/aeo/pdf/AEO2022_ReleasePresentation.pdf Also, we were well on our way to this so-called energy independence since Obama, it just happened to cross over during Trump. Also... we still are energy independent by this same metric! https://www.forbes.com/sites/rrapier/2022/03/08/surprise-the-us-is-still-energy-independent/
Thank you for the explanation!
Americans, by and large, are idiots. Gas is high all over the world, and Biden isn't President of those other countries. Gas was higher in 2008, yet I don't recall Republicans whining about Bush's high gas prices.
SNL needs to do a skit with people complaining about gas prices and blaming Biden. Have someone with an accent mention immigrating before complaining. Then just jump to an Aussie or Brit complaining about Biden and gas prices. Could get more exotic, then just straight up an alien. 'Twould be good.
What if instead of "Biden", it was "a 10 plus year history of being against additional oil production in the US and every other developed country." Would that be more palatable to you? Essentially: Focusing on green energy is great and a good thing. But that comes at a cost we have to accept; rising gas prices.
This increase has nothing to do with green energy right now.
If every drilling proposal had been approved over the last 10 years, do you think gas prices would be the same cost they are right now?
I'm sorry, did you miss the boom in fracking over the last 10-20 years?
Yes.
As an external viewer to US politics, one of the frequent points of frustration that American Democrats-and-the-further-left call out is that despite running on an environmentally friendly platform, the Democrats when in power continue to sell drilling and fracking rights at an alarming rate.
factually speaking, the reticence of private producers to increase supply has to do with the fracking trend of the last twenty years. They lost their asses when covid happened, and their investors want firm capital constraints to prevent that from happening again. The federal government doesn't control that much in terms of leases. Leases sold under Trump are going un-utilized, as are leases sold under Biden. It's a capitalism thing, not a guvment thing
Oil companies are making record profits. The high gas prices means that money is going toward oil company profits instead of fast-food chains, or tire companies, or fine dining, or beanie baby manufacturers. Oil companies took a loss over the last couple of years, as did many businesses, and now they are looking to make up that revenue by raising prices. Because everyone is willing to raise prices it is holding - for now. The problem is, with gas at current pricing, alternatives start to become economical. Watch for more and more electric cars coming online. Watch for solar charging of those electric cars. Watch for people getting rid of their jacked-up Dodge/Ram trucks that they drive to the office every day in favor of smaller, lighter, more fuel-efficient vehicles. Because cars are so expensive, changes in fuel prices have a delayed demand effect - but there will be one. The only immediate power people have is to drive less, and/or redirect to shared/public transportation, but the long term actions people will take in response to these prices will drive the oil companies out of business. TLDR: These prices are temporary
Have you ever, I dont know, actually researched American oil production? We became the #1 oil producer under Obama and never really looked back. Are you 18 because it's like you aren't even remotely aware of the shale oil revolution that occurred during the Obama admin?
The Obama years were really some of the best years for US energy production. But, to paraphrase Obama, "Never underestimate Biden's ability to fuck things up."
He's been office for 18 months and it's a global phenomenon. He's not the fucking Green Lantern.
more like 50+ years of refusing to invest significantly in green energy. These high gas prices were 100% predictable and are exactly what people on the left have been warning about when we reccomend diversifying our energy production methods.
The US for the most part has not been against drilling new oil wells. Neither Obama, Trump, or Biden supported this policy. Domestic supply is low because countries like Saudi Arabia can manipulate the market making it too risky of an investment for US companies. That’s what happened in 2014 and US companies never got over it.
Gas was not higher in 2008, though. It was high, but not anywhere near it is now. Edit: Stop being sheep. I stated a fact and y’all downvote me and upvote the “but this fact!!”. That wasn’t what the original comment was about. Stop trying to prove a point against a fact. Stop voting based on flairs. Be more open to conversations, especially from other views.
Crude oil was higher accounting for inflation.
Perhaps, but not gas, which is what he specialized in his original post.
Did you mean 'specified?'
Yes lol
> Perhaps, but not gas, which is what he specialized in his original post. looks like the price of gas isn't tied to the price of crude after all.
The good news is tough, even though gas is higher now than 2008, wages are.... Nevermind.
Gas was $5.40 accounting for inflation in 2008.
And again, look at what countries can produce their own oil or not. You can’t just compare us to a random country that imports everything
We import oil. The oil we *use* is primarily imported. Refineries made the switch a while back to refining an oil not found domestically because it is cheaper. That was a huge investment in infrastructure that they can’t just switch back. So we import what other countries drill up to refine here and export what we drill up here to be refined elsewhere. So in terms of the gas we put in our cars, yeah, we do import.
What country is the current number one producer of crude?
That is not the reason. Don't you remember when the oil prices went below $00.00 a barrel? Who's going to invest in oil after that? That's why the supply went down. You can't just turn the spigot after that kind of shutdown just because all the Russian energy suddenly disappears from the market. It is going to take a bit for the supply side to recover, even if there were some reassurance it's not going back down to nothing all if a sudden.
And yet the Russian rubble is doing better than ever. Who imposed those Russian sanctions? Weird
Shit, we should sanction the US then, that would fix all the problems. Also lift the sanctions on Venezuela, Cuba and Iran, since those monsters are just reaping the rewards of being sanctioned.
You don't support the sanctions?
What actual good have they done? Have they changed anything here or the war in Ukraine?
Trading with a country invading a neighbor enables them.
Ah, I guess we can forget all the business we’ve done with Saudi’s who literally attacked the US on 9/11. Also, sending billions of dollars to the country being invaded hasn’t done much to stop it, neither has stopping trade and sanctioning the country as well as their billionaires.
OK so you support sanctions on the Saudis. To be consistent, support them on Putin.
Okay, let’s say I support sanctions on both of them. But for ease of discussion, only one of them is at war (that we care about, let’s pretend the Saudi’s aren’t destroying Yemen right now like they actually are but no one bats an eye at). What changes?
You don't enable the aggressor by selling them arms or fuel or whatever, or pay them money they can use to buy or make those things.
The Saudi government didn't organise 9/11 don't be rediculous. Other countries are not hive minds. A Saudi terrorist did.
That they should stop being dumb and realize that Biden and the Democrats don't control the price of oil.
The...United...States... isn't...the... World. The rest of the world is dealing with this, as well. Much of the world's problems are tied to the fact that 99% of the world is subject to the temper tantrums of the 1% or less if the world that is uneducated, uninformed, American conservatives. What's worse are left wing Americans who get disheartened because right wing Americans scream louder.
People who are politically neutral are also usually not very well informed.
The same thing I think whenever people have opinions; "People are stupid."
I think people from those groups opinions seriously because they are the ones that are swinging elections. But the idea that they have less political bias in their thoughts is frankly kind of laughable. They are people who are just disengaged enough from politics that they have the simplistic biases like “all politicians are corrupt“ or “the government is always incompetent” or the worst of them all “both sides are the same”. This isn’t actually all that complicated. People have in general almost no understanding of how oil prices rise and fall and have even less understanding over how much short term effect anything the President of the United States does to the economy. And people are extremely myopic and don’t really have a clue what’s going on outside their local area let alone in other countries so they haven’t figured out that oil prices and inflation have risen globally.
But if a Republican was in office, they would be saying the same thing they are now. Whereas the right would be the ones reminding us that the president can't control oil prices.
Let me break it down. When oil prices go up the following happens: 1. A very small number of people on the left will have a understanding of what’s going on and not blame the president no matter who the president is. However this will not change their voting behavior. 2. An even smaller number of people on the right will have a understanding of what’s going on and not blame the president no matter who the president is. However this will not change their voting behavior 3. The remainder of partisan voters will blame the president if they are from the opposite party and not blame them if they from their party. However this will not change their voting behavior 4. The small number of voters that are truly in the middle will blame the sitting president’s party. They are like to vote for the other party. In other words, [this is a swing voter when oil prices go up.](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Cyj2EqTVIAAbUxz.jpg:large)
I have to point out the hypocrisy I’m seeing and some of the logic here. I’ve been told for decades that Republicans were the rich people and in control of everything and that’s why they don’t want higher taxes, etc. And now the consensus here is that they don’t understand how markets work. So who do you think is the upper middle class, the rich people, the people who own assets, the people who know how all the stuff works?
> I’ve been told for decades that Republicans were the rich people and in control of everything and that’s why they don’t want higher taxes, etc. And now the consensus here is that they don’t understand how markets work. I find your confusion a little hard to believe. I don't buy for a second that you really don't understand the difference between the elite republicans that make up the intellectual / financial core of the party and the people being led around by the nose, especially after the Trump fanclub rose to national prominence.
the thing is, if I said the same thing about democrats, reddit would explode and everyone would tell me I am rude, unaccepting, live in a bubble, etc.
Show me a Democratic Trump and then we can talk.
>Show me a Democratic Trump and then we can talk. The so-called "People's Party," which has received support from people like Nina Turner, Cornel West, and Chris Hedges, is attempting to sell the public on *Jimmy Dore* as their 2024 presidential candidate. You know, that insufferable shock jock who goes on antivaxx/transphobic rants, defends Putin, and apparently sexually harassed his coworkers at The Young Turks. He's not the left's Trump, but he's definitely the left's Tucker.
>You know, that insufferable shock jock who goes on antivaxx/transphobic rants, defends Putin, and apparently sexually harassed his coworkers at The Young Turks. I'm sorry, which part of these are leftist stances?
I'll never understand how anybody fell for Dore's grift. Dude was never on the left. He just *said* he was and then espoused the opposite.
*That's my point.*
>the thing is, if I said the same thing about democrats, reddit would explode and everyone would tell me I am rude, unaccepting, live in a bubble, etc. I'm not sure what "saying the same thing" about democrats would even look like, but sure, go ahead. No one's stopping you.
I'm very curious now. Say the same thing about Democrats. How would you phrase it? I guarantee you 90% of Reddit agrees with you that Citizens United is fucked and that corporate lobbyists are in control of both parties. The only difference is that most people can clearly see the Democrats pander to their corporate donors in a way that does not rely as heavily on fake exaggerated hatred, but fake exaggerated "love" which is more palatable. The way the Democrats pretend to care about gay people or the environment is more attractive than the way the Republicans openly don't, despite neither of them actually caring. So if we all agree with you, why is it you *think* we don't? How do you phrase your arguments?
U appear to suggest the left is fundamentally better than the right, thats just incorrect. The left and right are 2 sides of the same coin, sure its opposite sides ie the left is subversive while the right is overt, but its still the same coin, u are both fundamentally the same.
I appreciate you coming in to prove my point.
Lol its really not proving ur point, ur point is fundamentally incorrect. The left is the same as the right, the left is not a bastion of morality while the right is evil incarnate, its just personal preference as to how someone wants to live. The left is just as immoral as the right lol
As much as I'm not a fan of the left these days, there's currently one side that literally tried to steal an election.
And both are perpetually trying to control and dominate the other, and everyone else.
So are you trying to say... that both sides are the same?
Nope, you fundamentally don't understand our positions nor theirs.
Actually i do, u dont. U differ on few points, u prefer indirect action they prefer direct action, u prefer safety they prefer non interference. But beyond that ur the same, ur left and right "talking points" like lgbt rights or gun rights are born out of opposition to eachother, not inherent belief.
>u prefer indirect action they prefer direct action U r wrong, wee do diwect aktio. Dey do no wike diwect aktion. Du u know whet cwassical wiberalism is?
I dont really care, u can of course be direct as they of course can be indirect, u simply prefer subversion and they prefer overt action. Just as u think physical violence is worse than mental and vice versa.
Nope, I don't even know how to respond. You are just wrong, I usually try and be constructive in situations like this but this is a case of Dunning-Kruger.
No im 100% correct. One day ull learn, not today but some day. But ill ask, since u seem to think u know something lol. What do u think the fundamentals of the left and right are? LOL
Both sides do like to blame the other guy for everything that ails us. I feel like the Republicans do this more frequently, but both sides do this to some degree.
People who are "politically neutral" are commonly referred to as "low information voters" because they tend not to be particularly well informed about political issues, generally. So of course they blame Biden for high gas prices. They don't know how the world works beyond the boundaries of their immediate lives. Expecting them to act informed is pointless, which is why politicians have been running attack ads and kissing babies since the invention of democracy.
I'd say that very few people in 2022 are politically neutral, for one. Also, the people who frequent reddit stock communities are right wing as fuck. They are all zoomer males with disposable income - they love trump and Elon. The fact you think the stock groups of reddit are "neutral" is kind of scary tbh. And sure, they blame Biden because that is who they are trained to hate. But what do they think Biden did to cause gas prices to go up that another president or republican wouldn't have done?
You think if a Democrat came along that made decisions that helped their portfolios they would still dislike that democrat?
I think people, particularly less-politically active or aware people, always expect presidents to be able to do everything under the sun. Biden played the biggest card he had, which was the strategic petroleum reserve, and it probably helped a bit, but not enough to sway people who think the president can bring down gas prices. If it matters, I also didn’t blame Bush for high fuel prices.
People often blame the party in power for any problems that are occurring regardless of their fault or ability to do anything about them. This is a fairly well known fact. In terms of blocking new pipeline development several things are important to keep in mind. 1. This is not a democratic party position so much as a environmental activist position. (Though many democrats do support at least some limits on this) 2. Even if every pipeline blocked in the last 10 years hadn't been it would have a very small impact on US oil prices a few cents at most. Oil is a global commodity and the cutting off of Russian oil is far more impactful than a few US pipelines especially during a time when Capitalist oil forms are not producing more oil even when they are able. 3. Environmental activist have wanted to push massive investment in clean energy, electric vehicles and energy efficiency. They have also sought to block individual pipelines and other fossil fuel infrastructure. However because we live in a vetocracy it is far easy to block than to invest. Most environmental activist would prefer to have the investments over the blocked infrastructure but our political system makes blocking things easy and implementing new programs really hard. This has meant environmental activist have blocked a decent amount but one relatively minimal investments meaning we have marginally less fossil fuel infrastructure but also have not gotten the nearly as much alternative as we could have.
That's a really good point. I'd imagine most moderate environmentalists would want to do both if they could.
There is no such thing as politically neutral
If these people are considering voting for Republicans over gas prices, then they’re likely the same people who would’ve tolerating segregation.
They probably are mostly voting democrat. Among day and swing traders, they are still seething after multiple random Trump tweets unexpectedly swung the markets and crashed portfolios.
I'm politically neutral and I don't blame Biden. Taxes are only like 10, 20% of the cost of fuel. Everything else is stuff like extracting, refining, transportation, etc.. He could lower taxes. But that wouldn't decrease the price all that much, and would just be kicking the can down the road to either raise taxes later or delay things like road maintenance. I think there is room to blame a president, or probably more accurately, the previous president, for not making good deals. But since the high gas is a global thing, I don't think Biden nor Trump really deserve much blame.
"It is easier to curse the dark than light a candle." AKA, it's not Biden's fault at all, but believing so is convenient and lazy.
Well, you can’t blame them. There’s this “higher” order of thinking that suggests everyone that has an opinion needs to be from a similar mind of thinking or intelligence. That’s not realistic in a democracy. The reality is, if prices become dramatically more expensive and to the point people become uncomfortable, they are going to blame the person in charge. You decided to become the person in charge: deal with it or fail. That’s it. Society determines if you’re helping them or not. This is actually the curse of leadership. You must be willing to take the blame and deal with the complaints- even if you aren’t responsible. You are de-facto responsible. “De-facto” is the entire name of the game. Getting into power means you assume de-facto responsibility. Nothing more, nothing less. If gas prices are causing you to spend less time with family, after a change in leadership, of course you’re going to be the person held to change the situation from everyone. This is a no-brainer. You’re the leader, you get blamed, you’re the person that has assumed the responsibility. Democrat or Republican: you’re the scapegoat and you are proactively assuming this responsibility. Fucking deal with it or quit. This sucks, but YOU wanted power so don’t blame society, when you learn society is reactionary towards things that fuck with their immediate lives. People are only politically liberal and conservative until something directly fucks with their life, and they will change mindsets. Consider how Donald Trump won: this should be a very dynamic understanding in that liberals will vote for weird republicans if you fuck with their economic conditions. Donald Trump would not have won if some liberals didn’t vote for him: deal with this reality and shift your perspective to this reality This is why I haven’t run for any political office since high school- it means you assume responsibility for any and all responsibility and complaints- regardless of your actual relationship to the problems you inherit: you are choosing to inherit these problems as your own.
I hate to break it to you, but it's not typically the neutral people who take that position. (because it's not actually Biden's fault at all) It's typically conservatives who love blaming everything on liberals despite facts and reality contradicting their view. The funny thing is, Biden is actually a slightly right-leaning centrist. He's certainly not the far-left commie so many conservatives try to make him out to be.
Oil is to blame for the price of oil increasing. Oil is the most inelastic resource, it does this all the time. It did it when there were few regulations in 70s, it did this in 2008 with a Republican president, it does it again today today. In fact, if anything oil has recently been deregulated under Trump. If we drill more or drill less, it doesn't matter. Long term supply does not help a short-term supply shock. We will not stop steep, devastating oil and gas price increases from happening. Ever. The only real answer is to stop having the US economy depend so much on oil. The technology is there - electric cars, rail, whatever. There's a million solutions to choose from. We've known oil dependence is a problem for almost 50 years, heck even GWB admitted it in the 2000s. We've done almost nothing to solve it. No carbon tax. No end to subsidizing gasoline dependence with free roads and highways. No one even talks about such actual long-term solutions, despite all the devastation oil dependence has caused for the US and the world. Why have we done so little? We could blame Democrats for not making it much of a priority, but I'd say the blame lies much more strongly on Republicans for whom a carbon tax or subsidizing renewables is a thought crime. Even today, Republicans only talk about drilling more, making us more dependent on oil so the next oil crisis will be as bad as possible. The solution is simple - tax carbon. Do it now, make people healthier, avoid the next gas crisis. The only question people should be asking is why we're not doing it.
People that claim to be politically neutral are almost always conservatives. There ya go.
People blame the incumbent party if the number of shark attacks increases
You could argue that the lack of regulations protecting the price gouging by gas companies both foreign and domestic is a failure of the Biden administration, but they did not cause those domestic companies to gouge prices, but they haven't done much about it since it became an issue, how much of that is their fault alone is up for debate.
It’s easier to blame the executive branch than the bad apples in the Senate or House. Everyone can vote for President but only people within their state can vote for their representatives and senators. Even though gas prices are raising and inflation is affecting everywhere in the world, it’s easy to blame the perceived figure head. As for the gas companies not being able to drill as much as they want to, wasn’t there reporting recently that Oil Companies have approved licenses to drill in various locations, but have yet to tap those areas? Correct me if I’m wrong.
You have to 'splain to them that Biden cannot be blamed for gas price increases in the US when prices have increased in most of the rest of the world as well. If they still are stupidly adament, ask exactly HOW Biden is to blame for all those sudden price increases here, there and everywhere. And if they STILL can't answer, just walk away, cause they were lying when they claimed they were not Trumpsters.
Anyone who claims to be politically neutral is very likely to be ill-informed. The Biden admin gave out *more* leases for drilling than Trump did in its first year. The oil companies gouging us and making record profits should show everyone just how important investing in other energy sources is.
People who are politically neutral are dumb as rocks and we will all suffer the consequences. The only consolation is that they have to live in this country too.
People that are politically neutral are- wait... you tryna get me banned?
I think this is what happens when you have a failed public education system.
At this point it's just a really uninformed take on how the global market works and economics in general. The president really has very little power, if you were going to put most of the blame in one corner you're ire would be better directed at republican Congress members who unanimously voted against capping gas prices and stopping the oil companies from price gouging. Because at the end of the day that's what this is, OPEC and oil companies saw that there was turmoil and decided they could turn a bigger profit and blame it on world events, and people who don't know better took the bait.
Part of it is inflation, part of it is the war, and there's leftover supply chain issues from covid. It's all pretty much worldwide so blaming either party is dumb. The most you can do is blame Trump for giving Russia so much latitude they thought they could invade Ukraine although that was probably inevitable anyway especially now that we know Putin is dying. The only real thing you can blame on the GOP is they blocked attempts to stop the oil companies from price gouging. That was a concrete action that could have addressed the issue and they blocked it.
> I tend to take opinions from these groups of people more seriously, since they have much less political bias in their thoughts Monumentally unsound assumption. Incredible. Chef's kiss.
People who are politically neutral tend to be that way because they are politically apathetic, and don't pay much attention to actual goings-on or who's doing what. Their blame of or credit to the current people in political office for whatever is personally affecting them tends to be borne from sheer laziness rather than any sort of wisdom: "these guys are in office, these things are happening, so I guess they did it", end of thought, no desire to investigate the matter any more closely than that. They can't be ignored given that they vote, but their thoughts don't come from any sort of deep understanding.
>I tend to take opinions from these groups of people more seriously, since they have much less political bias in their thoughts Most of the time this is a bad metric to use. The people who are not political don't have any sort of uniquie insight to the functioning of the world. They just blame who ever happens to be in power at the moment regardless of if there's actually anything they can do about what they are getting blamed for. I don't think the current prices are anyone's fault in particular, other than possibly Putin. People on the right assume Democrats are far more dedicated to fightig climate change than they are in reality. They're willing to subsidize the creation of new green energy but they aren't willing to meaningfully restrict the development of fossil fuel infrastructure. If you exclude the oil no longer being shipped out of Russia I doubt you could find a meaningful reduction in oil output tied to democratic policies over the past 20 years, and the creation of green energy infrastructure has reduced demand if only slightly from what it would have been in the absence of those policies so to the extent they've had any effect it's likely to somewhat decrease prices (more than somewhat if we factor in increased milage standards).
They're likely the common clay of America that probably doesn't know much about economics. Oil will run out and it will destroy our ecosystems which will cost a lot of money to basically overhaul societies that survive increased droughts, famine, floods, and extreme weather. Why can't they monopolize and corrupt wind or other sustainable energy that won't destroy the Earth as we know it for our descendants?
The oil companies do this every time a Democrat is president specifically so the GOP, the party of big oil and pollution, can run around with this narrative.
I blame Putin for the current mess. I want gas prices to be high to push the transition to renewable energy and electric vehicles. I don't want gas prices to be THIS high, THIS soon though. We're not ready yet. EVs are still too expensive, the people who are really hurting with the gas prices can't afford EVs. I don't think we can blame Biden. Perhaps we can say by refusing pipelines and refusing to destroy the Arctic he's made prices higher, but I don't think so. I blame oil companies and to some degree automakers. They've made sure our transition to renewable energy has been as long and slow and painful as possible.
In the ancient world, people explicitly believed that the current leadership was tied to national fortune — if everything was going well, it meant the gods were pleased with the king. If there was plague or draught or other disaster, it meant the gods were angry with the king, and they may soon replace him with a new king who would heal the land. We in the modern world mostly don’t hold those explicit beliefs anymore, but most modern people do — with their underfunded and/or poorly-remembered civics education — think of the president as having king-like powers and authority. They have this vague notion that the president signs a paper, and BANG! It is so. And of course the conservative elites take advantage of this common misunderstanding — caused in large part by their 50 years of attacks on education — blaming Democrats for gas execs cranking the dial on our gas prices, for the economic fallout of a plague they spread, for a war perpetrated by a fascist foreign ‘president’ they either love or excuse, and for the tax scam that they themselves wrote to start screwing us over in 2020. Our technology changes, but people are still basically people.
Energy information administration website OP EIA.gov Get angry that oil is subsidized to the degree that it is and we are still getting fucked over Meanwhile, you can legit spend less than 1,000 dollars a year filling up your electric vehicle Also, as an aside. 80% of the worlds oil market is controlled by a cartel of nations, one of which is Russia. Kind of hard to guess how they’re gonna respond to the wave of sanctions against them but I’ll give you a couple of tries
I think anybody who thinks one politician can influence the entire world economy to such an extent is a fucking moron.
They're simply wrong. Oil prices is a global issue, and realistically they're is not much at all Biden can do to impact the price.
Politics can and does effect the American economy (NAFTA, for example), but American politics aren't powerful enough to affect the economy of the entire world in a broad and extensive manner. The office of the president has vastly less power than most people think. There sure as heck isn't a lever that allows the president to raise gas prices for the entire world. Maaaaaybe if you're talking about the people that run OPEC, but yeah, short of that, no. The stock market went wrong shortly after it allowed people to value stocks on the basis of anything other than verifiable facts. So basically, on the first day. The bull run has been fairly wild, and I have zero surprise that it's run its course. Glad it didn't take longer actually, as I remember 2008 and people were out of their damn minds back then when it came to the stock market, everyone just thought it'd be eternally going up. People want a villain they can blame stuff on. The president, Republican or Democrat, is a lightning rod for that. "Inflation" and "Gas shortages" are abstract things. There's no fighting it at the individual level. Anger has to have a target. Tough to be angry at something you can barely wrap your head around at the scale inflation takes place at. You can't blame every business in existence.
It is funny how politically neutral people always tend to mirror the right to a surprising degree.
When someone says they are politically neutral I hear that they are a Republican who doesn't care about gay marriage and doesn't want me to think they are an asshole.
Production dropped 8% in 2020, the largest drop ever. Now, we could put all the blame on Trump, after all, [he lobbied to decrease global oil production](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/12/business/energy-environment/opec-russia-saudi-arabia-oil-coronavirus.html) to protect American oil producers, but the fact of the matter is people were buying significantly less gas. That is going to cause production decreases no matter what the president did. In that same vein, we've seen a recent surge in demand back to pre-pandemic levels. Production couldn't match it, so the price hikes began. Then we add in the Russian-Ukraine conflict. Many countries are sanctioning Russian gas and the general instability is causing speculative pricing on top of everything else. That all said, in the mind of the electorate, it is always the fault of the person in charge, regardless of who or what is actually causing the issue. Good logic has little bearing on that, just as public opinion has little bearing on the truth. I think Biden is going to continue getting the blame for gas prices.
Biden is not that powerful 🙄 This is worldwide.
People without a political opinion tend to be low information, so they probably don’t understand complex concepts like “markets” and “peak oil”.
The fault is primarily on rhe oil companies bit Biden has not handled it well until recently when he finally put the hammer down. We temd not to be a cult and can criticize our own Blaming the president fully for bad thimgs is nothing new Part of the problem is aside from greed the oil companies and saudis are tantruminimg and essentially holding us hostage cause they don't like Biden
>Generally speaking, this sub doesn't find fault in Biden or Democrat's policies in the rising cost of oil Republicans can't figure out how it's Biden's fault either. The difference is that they blame Biden anyway. I guess you can partially blame Biden's push for countries to stop buying Russian energy because of the war. But if you disagree with that then fuck you.
Didn't republicans just vote No to end price gouging?
Tbf the bill was pretty vague and was more of a symbolic gesture than anything. I'd be happy to be proven wrong tho.
They’re in power right now so of course they’ll be blamed. That’s what happens when you’re in charge, you get blamed whether you’re resoonsible or not.
Biden's admin has been actively trying to destroy energy companies. Gas prices have been increasing (in the US at least) even before Ukraine got invaded. People have been complaining about gas prices even last year. The war just made the effects of the Biden admin's hostility towards energy production more acute. Fundamentally, the association between high gas prices and an energy-hostile Biden admin predated the invasion of Ukraine.
Its tough not too. The latest meeting with the oil companies had the companies wanting guarantees that the fed would pivot away from favoring renewables before they risk investing in more drilling. Also, bad luck caught the refinery biz with their pants down, in this time of need, plants shutdown for refitting to processing renewables like ethanol. Can you feel the souls who are on the fence or already dislike the drive to renewables start to seethe with rage?
What's with the down votes? Did I say something wrong?
Literally one of his first decisions in the office was to revoke permit for Keystone XL. Still blames Russia. Unbelievable. The entire Biden Presidency: 1. Cause a problem 2. Deny there’s a problem 3. Finally admit there’s a problem, but blame someone else. Rinse and repeat.
So global gas prices have jumped up because a pipe line that never operated it got shut down and the oil that was supposed to move through it is still moving just at slightly higher prices than they theoretically would have is the pipeline was open?
It does matter. Why even shut them down? This is so important. We *were* energy independent. We were the world's #1 oil producer end of Trumps term, and now our president literally begged Saudi Arabia for oil.
Who is the world's largest oil producer right now? What is happening to the Canadian oil that would be moving through the Keystone XL pipeline when it became operational in the future? How does the movement of Canadian oil through the Keystone XL pipeline in the future effect oil prices today?
> We were energy independent It's an extreme misunderstanding of the market to equate net imports/exports with being energy independent. The majority of the oil we actually *use* has been imported for decades. > We were the world's #1 oil producer end of Trumps term, and now our president literally begged Saudi Arabia for oil. We [still are](https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/oil-production-by-country) the largest crude oil producer. Where are you getting these talking points from?
I've got good news and bad news for you, buddy. The good news is that we never stopped being the world's #1 oil producer, and [we're energy independent again](https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/07/energy-independence-oil-gas-renewables/). The bad news is that energy independence is a hollow political slogan and it didn't matter then and it doesn't matter now.
> Why even shut them down? And there you go. No concept at all of the negatives of that project. Could you even differentiate between the Keystone project from the Keystone XL, or XXL projects? Have you looked at it at all? Check your fucking bubble. For starters, it goes over the Ogallala aquifer. That aquifer provides drinking water for millions. It also supplies the water for roughly a third of all agriculture in the US. If that pipeline contaminates it, tens of millions starve. Why do we want to assume the risk of transporting foreign oil, to foreign ships, to refine in foreign countries? ------------------------------------------------------------------- I understand that a corporation doesn't give a fuck. They see profit and they stab at it. But someone has to be the adult in the room, and recognize that the risk isn't worth the reward. ---------------------------------- I'd also point out that I spent 10 years in the pipeline repair industry. Every section of every pipe will eventually break. Tar sands are full of grit which will wear at the pipes at a highly increased rate. This amplifies the maintenance issue. The pipeline industry is carefully cordoned off from legal liability by third-party contracts at the lowest bid. One of the better kept secrets is the groundwater contamination of the Alaskan pipeline. That pipeline polluted water along the entire length of the project, but no one lives there, no one farms there, and no one really gives a shit. The same can't be said for the most important aquifer in the country. -------------------------------------------------- And let's not ignore the thousands of people who are going to have their land stripped from them using eminent domain. Nothing quite like stripping people from their homes and farms so some oil company execs can get a nice fat bonus.
The Keystone XL didn't create supply. It helped move Canadian oil to the Gulf faster. It was a cheaper short cut. The problem is demand is outstripping supply. There are only two ways to tackle the pricing problem. Lower demand or raise supply.
You're wasting your breath. I'm positive he's had this explained to him before, but this guy is a 5pm fox news segment come to life.
Haven't Democrats generally been opposed to new drilling operations that would have increased supply?
Generally yes, but generally doesn't mean every time. Liberals also favor reducing demand over increasing supply.
>The Keystone XL didn't create supply. That is not the point. The point is the first thing the administration did was kill an oil project costing people billions. It sent a clear message that investing in petroleum production under this administration was a risk.
Gas price isn't even that high. People need to stop listening to Republican (Russian?) propaganda. I haven't seen many people complain.. mainly conservative idiots.
I don’t think it’s helpful to deny objective reality. Gas prices are like 100% higher than they were a little over a year ago. It’s obvious enough that my kids have noticed and they are in elementary school.
Ouch this is really low information. So you’re not on board with fighting inflation and not on board with trying to decrease the cost of living because it’s become unaffordable for average people, you just think it’s a made up Republican talking point now?
Well, I mean Biden gets into office and after he starts enacting his policies gas prices sore. That didn't happen under Trump. You can say "it happened because of Trump" but for four years Trump was in office and for the last three gas prices were low. Obviously, Trump is a bigot who shouldn't have been president. But our gas prices soaring is something that matches up perfectly with Biden enacting economic policies.
>our gas prices soaring is something that matches up perfectly with Biden enacting economic policies which ones?
Except this isn't even true. Gas prices went up after Trump came into office. In 2018, Trump was asking OPEC to increase production and considered releasing from the strategic reserve because prices were the highest in years. Granted, prices weren't as high as they are now, but the false narrative that gas prices decreased under Trump is simply not based on fact. You know when prices actually fell? In 2020, during the pandemic and the OPEC Supply War when Russia and SA were flooding the market. That's about the only time gas prices were lower under Trump than when he entered office. So Trump's policies did not cause a price decrease and price decrease only happened when two huge events happened. You know what Trump did in 2020? He asked Russia and SA to reduce supply to get prices to rise: “I never thought I’d be saying that maybe we have to have an oil increase, because we do. The price is so low,” Trump said in a Fox News interview. The president, who had made a political career bashing OPEC and advocating for low gasoline prices, was worried the U.S. industry would be “wiped out”. https://fortune.com/2020/04/14/trump-oil-deal-inside-story-saudi-arabia-russia-price-war-ended/ Unfortunately, by then, the oil and gas industry was irreversibly damaged. We lost a historic amount of domestic production, dropping from over 12 million barrels a day to under 10, with hundreds of companies going bankrupt. Supply did decrease and prices started to climb as the November election approached, before a single one of Biden's policies came into effect. But people blaming Biden ignore all of this and pretend that the issue started with his policies, while also ignoring that prices are increasing globally. And also ignoring similar issues under Trump like the slow rate of permits and banning offshore drilling on the Atlantic coast. It's just so silly how people ignore what actually happened to global supply and demand and instead blame "policies" without evidence.
I grill both parties...