This is topic Gas prices in your area - Update in forum Film-Yak at Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE.


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Posted by Claude S. Ayakawa (Member # 1401) on 03-05-2011, 01:52 PM:
 
As of Friday, crude oil is now selling for $104.63 a barrel and still rising and a gallon of regular gas here in Honolulu is $3.79 at most stations. On the other islands in Hawaii such as Maui, it could be at about $4.00 now because gas cost more there. I know gas is much cheaper in most states on the mainland but it wont be long when everyone will be paying $4.00 for a gallon of gas. The question now is how long it will be before it reaches $5.00 [Frown]

I still have fond memories when a gallon of gas could be bought for twenty cents or less when service stations competed against each other in the early sixties when I was a photography student in Santa Barbara. [Smile]

-Claude
 
Posted by Steve Guttag (Member # 268) on 03-05-2011, 03:11 PM:
 
The realities are...there is but so much money a worker has and the demand will drop (in fact, I already see a reduced amount of traffic...just like the last time gas prices spiked). If one can not reduce their driving (have to go to work) then other things in the economy will suffer (like cinemas) since after paying for gas, folks have less money for discretionary activities.

-Steve
 
Posted by James Westbrook (Member # 3690) on 03-05-2011, 03:20 PM:
 
It's commodity traders that have brought the price up, both oil and gasoline. It should go down, but when? Who knows?
I understand there is a glut of oil and that the unrest in the Middle East has had minimal effect, so far.
 
Posted by Claude S. Ayakawa (Member # 1401) on 03-05-2011, 03:51 PM:
 
I have been in business for almost forty six years but have been semi retired since 1998 when I closed my studio and started to work from my home as a free lance photographer. I still own and drive a car when I go out on assignments but use public transportation when I do not need to drive such as times when I have to go to my local professional color lab or when I go shopping or to the movies. As a senior citizen, I am very fortunate to be able to purchase a unlimited annual bus pass for thirty dollars and managed to save at least two thousand dollars a year in gas, parking and automotive upkeep by riding a bus. At the way the price of gas is going up, I should be saving even more.

Honolulu's public transportation system is among the best in the country when it won the nation's best public transportation award two years in a row a few years ago. I enjoy commuting on a bus because it gives me a wonderful opportunity to catch up on my reading and listening to classical music on my smart phone and iPod.

-Claude
 
Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 03-05-2011, 04:02 PM:
 
quote: James Westbrook
It's commodity traders that have brought the price up, both oil and gasoline. It should go down, but when? Who knows?
When it wrecks the economy. Again.

I know there was a number of things that pushed the country into a deep recession last time around -the chief reason being countless millions of Americans living beyond their means. Price gouging at the gas pump was the catalyst that pushed the economy over the edge.

Steve is absolutely right. Consumers have only so much money to spend. This current "recovery" has been called a jobless recovery and the middle class has largely been left out of the recovery. The fact remains 70% of the United States economy depends on consumer spending. Buying and selling of goods. Consumers must have enough money left over after paying all their usual monthly bills to be able to buy stuff. Price gouging consumers for gasoline has every bit as harmful an effect as a tax hike. They end up with less money to spend on material goods.
 
Posted by Joe Redifer (Member # 3) on 03-05-2011, 04:45 PM:
 
I don't pay attention to gas prices, never have. Everyone else seems obsessed with them.
 
Posted by Tom Petrov (Member # 1534) on 03-06-2011, 12:46 AM:
 
Where I am, we pay about $4.65 per US Gallon. Works out to about $1.23 a litre right now.
 
Posted by Joe Redifer (Member # 3) on 03-06-2011, 01:23 AM:
 
How is a US gallon different from a Canadian gallon? Are there more or fewer ounces in the Canadian version of the gallon? Also, is that Canadian dollars or US dollars?
 
Posted by Monte L Fullmer (Member # 2797) on 03-06-2011, 01:26 AM:
 
..called "Imperial Gallon"...

1 Imperial gallon = 4.546 liters

One imperial gallon is approximately equal to 1.201 U.S. gallons.

Canada, before they went total metric, used the Imperial Gallon measurement - as with the British Commonwealth.

Thus, a 12oz can of soda was about two inches taller than the U.S. counterparts

$1.00 CAD = $.97 USD .. 40 years ago, One Dollar CAD was only worth $.67 USD (shows how bad our money is nowdays ...)
 
Posted by Alan Plester (Member # 852) on 03-06-2011, 06:01 AM:
 
Dearest so far in this neck of the woods is £1.32 petrol/£1.38diesel p/l on the news the other day some garages were retailing @ £1.43 and higher, in the real northern areas, so glad i got my car converted to lpg, i am now shelling out 0.75 litr.
 
Posted by Paul Mayer (Member # 355) on 03-06-2011, 12:15 PM:
 
Where I was in SoCal last week, regular self-serve gas at places like Chevron or Shell was anywhere from $3.77 to $4.17 per gallon. One Chevron in Pasadena was selling regular at $4.11 per gallon.

Here in Sin City we're averaging around $3.57 for a gallon of self-serve regular.

I think we will see $5.00/gallon at many US locations this summer.
 
Posted by Chase Pickett (Member # 5975) on 03-06-2011, 01:31 PM:
 
So this makes no sense to me at all but gas was at $3.15 when I filled up yesterday. That's only $.20 above the norm around here. You would think gas would hike up here just because of the transportation cost to get it here. I guess not.
 
Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 03-06-2011, 02:01 PM:
 
quote: Paul Mayer
I think we will see $5.00/gallon at many US locations this summer.
I hope not. I don't think the American economy can sustain that.

High fuel prices have already been contributing to a lot of rural towns losing population and put on a seemingly irreversible trend of dying out. The young people leave for the bigger cities and towns with more youthful population. Rising fuel costs make it ever more expensive to run a small town. Many end up without a police or fire dept., the town school closes, streets are too expensive to repair, etc. Of course, it takes a lot of fuel to run agricultural businesses and those costs get passed along to us in the form of higher food prices. Elderly people have have called a certain town home all of their lives may be forced to move to larger cities due to rising insurance costs and closer access to health care and other services.

Long commute distances really take a toll on personal finances. In the past housing bust a lot of "McMansions" built out in ex-hurbs 20, 30 or more miles away from a major city were repossessed by banks and some remain unsold. I've read about some of these housing developments being America's newest form of ghost town.

If gasoline does get up to $5 per gallon here, I'm going to be using my trail bike a lot more. As for trips to Colorado, I may end up flying instead of driving.
 
Posted by Hillary Charles (Member # 769) on 03-06-2011, 02:58 PM:
 
quote: Bobby Henderson
If gasoline does get up to $5 per gallon here, I'm going to be using my trail bike a lot more. As for trips to Colorado, I may end up flying instead of driving.

Might not jet fuel suffer similar price hikes, prompting the increases in air fares? Like you say, fuel prices affect everything. I suppose flying may remain a more attractive option in time saved though.
 
Posted by Tom Petrov (Member # 1534) on 03-06-2011, 03:12 PM:
 
quote: Bobby Henderson
I don't think the American economy can sustain that.

I am going to argue the other way. The American economy can survive or sustain it if the change. Everything and the way everyone lives needs to change.

quote: Bobby Henderson
High fuel prices have already been contributing to a lot of rural towns losing population and put on a seemingly irreversible trend of dying out. The young people leave for the bigger cities and towns with more youthful population. Rising fuel costs make it ever more expensive to run a small town.
I was listening to a Coast to Coast AM show and the guest was arguing that the magic number for change is $6/gallon of fuel. At that price people will be forced to change.

It was also argued and agreed that small towns will thrive if they are located on a railway or abandoned railway line. We will see a return of small town manufacturiing so it was claimed.

I live in the GTA which is 30km from downtown Toronto. I no longer drive into the city (I take the train), I don't go very far on my days off from work, I walk to buy groceries and basic items. I am also looking for a new job which hopefully will be within walking/biking distance.

Producing and making local will be a thing of the future IMO and anything/anyone near a railway line will thrive
 
Posted by Leo Enticknap (Member # 534) on 03-06-2011, 05:29 PM:
 
quote: Alan Plester
Dearest so far in this neck of the woods is £1.32 petrol/£1.38diesel p/l on the news the other day some garages were retailing @ £1.43 and higher, in the real northern areas, so glad i got my car converted to lpg, i am now shelling out 0.75 litr.
It's around £1.28 for petrol in York and Leeds. One of the advantages of living in this neck of the woods is that petrol is a little less than the average; but even so, £1.28 is not nice!

My last car had an LPG system in it, but by the time I got rid of it the saving was marginal at best. At that time (mid-2007), LPG was around 45p a litre and petrol around 80p. Given that you use about a quarter more of the actual substance (so a car that gives you 40mpg on petrol will give you around 30 on LPG), I reckon I was getting the equivalent of petrol at around 65p or so; but when you add on the cost of an annual service for the LPG system, more like 70p. I probably saved around £100 a year on fuel if that. I reckon that you'd have to be driving at least 20k miles a year for LPG to make sense, assuming that you're paying to have the system factory-fitted or aftermarket-installed yourself (I didn't: I bought my LPG car secondhand and already converted); and if you are driving that much, diesel probably makes even more sense.

quote: Steve Guttag
The realities are...there is but so much money a worker has and the demand will drop (in fact, I already see a reduced amount of traffic...just like the last time gas prices spiked). If one can not reduce their driving (have to go to work) then other things in the economy will suffer (like cinemas) since after paying for gas, folks have less money for discretionary activities.
And not only that, but the cost of all goods and services that require road transport to produce are also going to go up. So even if you don't own a car, you will be hit in the wallet by rising fuel costs every time you go to the supermarket, have someone come to your house to fix something, etc. etc.

quote: Hillary Charles
Might not jet fuel suffer similar price hikes, prompting the increases in air fares?
Such a lot of flying is discretionary (i.e. done for leisure purposes, and people can choose not to if the price is too high) that I'd have thought that there's only so far you can put the ticket price up before you start to get demand destruction. Surprisingly, I'm starting to look around for flights for a trip to California in mid-May, and am finding that they're around £200 cheaper than the ticket I bought for the exact same journey in January! Given that May is approaching the peak season and late January should be around the cheapest time of the year to travel, my only guess at a reason is that the airlines are having to lower prices in order to fill seats. I was certainly shocked at how empty the planes in January were: the transatlantic flights in both directions were only a third to half full, and I got a whole row to myself, both ways!
 
Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 03-06-2011, 06:24 PM:
 
quote: Hillary Charles
Might not jet fuel suffer similar price hikes, prompting the increases in air fares?
Probably. Although higher fares on top of the price increases airlines have been delivering already will eventually cause passenger numbers to drop. The airlines have to do what they can keep enough customers going through those gates to maintain a certain amount of cash flow. They have to try to pass along the higher costs of jet fuel, but if the customers can't afford the price they don't fly and then the airline's business goes into the toilet.

The term "stay-cation" has grown more popular lately. I don't think the term has been around very long. The first time I heard it was back when oil was roaring toward $150 per barrel not long ago.

quote: Tom Petrov
I am going to argue the other way. The American economy can survive or sustain it if the change.
Tom, that's wishful thinking. The change or adaptation you're talking about doesn't happen immedately. It certainly doesn't happen as a means of preventing an economic down turn. People only adapt and change when that becomes unavoidably necessary -usually after experiencing serious financial pain and learning the hard way.

Gasoline prices going North of $4.00 per gallon a couple years ago were the very thing that pushed the American economy into a deep recession. The American people were pushing their luck worse and worse living lifestyles they could not afford. Then those gas prices skyrocketed throwing Americans a terrible curve ball that couldn't be hit. They didn't have the extra positive cash flow to be able to afford those higher prices. Many were already way over their heads in debt.

The current economic recovery is shaky at best. Wall Street is doing better, but that's only an indication of how big business is doing in the overall global economy. It is not an indicator of the American economy doing well. Unemployment is still high. The housing market is still in the toilet. The commercial real estate market is not doing well. Incomes in the middle and lower classes are stagnant and not keeping up with inflation.

So if we get hit with $5 per gallon gasoline we can look forward to another recession hitting pretty fast.

Historically, when the price of gasoline hit new record high prices it preceeded a recession in the US. Gasoline isn't the only thing causing the recession but it is a pretty reliable barometer.

quote: Tom Petrov
It was also argued and agreed that small towns will thrive if they are located on a railway or abandoned railway line. We will see a return of small town manufacturiing so it was claimed.
Rail is too expensive and not convenient enough for passenger use in rural and small town areas. When the automobile was invented it spelled the end of the horse and buggy culture and put rail on a downward trend. Rail can only return to certain areas where population density is high enough to support it.

Globalization has killed manufacturing in many areas of the United States. So why bother with building new frieght lines into small towns that are already dying? I don't see a bunch of bolt turner jobs returning to small towns. Factories in developing countries don't have to deal with costs of workers comp insurance, social security, medicare, complying with regulations from OSHA, EPA, DOT, etc. The only thing that can save manufacturing in the United States is shipping costs that rise enough to take away the financial advantage of building so many things overseas.

So many small towns are stuck in a death spiral. The young people are bored, don't have enough job opportunities and don't have enough of a social life. They leave for bigger towns and leave behind an aging population with fewer full time workers and more retirees. The property tax base shrinks. Add to that the inflation costs on so many city services and it just spells long term doom for many small towns.

High fuel prices will result in more development within city centers and less out in suburbs and small towns. Someone looking to build a new factory has to make the choice on where to build a lot more carefully.
 
Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 03-06-2011, 11:35 PM:
 
quote: Tom Petrov
It was also argued and agreed that small towns will thrive if they are located on a railway
Well if you're getting your opinions from Coast to Coast AM then it's not surprising you're off the tracks now and then.

Bobby's got it right. Rail might work in urban areas, but in areas with a lot of space between cities + a small population (i.e. most of the western U.S.) it isn't feasible. There has been talk of restoring passenger service to this region, but most of the talk has service running as far east as Billings but no further. (We are 100 miles east of Billings.) We are located right on the BNSF line and there are no signs of thriving here.
 
Posted by James Westbrook (Member # 3690) on 03-07-2011, 01:12 AM:
 
At $6 a gallon, the elderly would take fewer trips to their favorite cafeteria, their matinee movies, to visit their friends. I know a few of you would argue that you want the elderly off the roads, but without them our matinee business would crash on school days.
For the rest of us, fast food places would take a hit as going through the drive-thru doesn't sound so enticing - assuming all the money wasn't used to fill up the tank so one could get to work and back. Unless they lived within walking distance, but the restaurants can't sustain on just foot traffic.
I, too, am a listener of Coast to Coast AM, but I'm selective in what to believe. I disagree with that guest: $6 a gallon of gas WILL ruin the economy. The logic that we would "be forced to look into alternatives" is , my wording, "pie in the sky." There would not be enough capital to get these alternatives going.
 
Posted by Tom Petrov (Member # 1534) on 03-07-2011, 01:34 AM:
 
quote: James Westbrook
$6 a gallon of gas WILL ruin the economy
yes it would ruin the economy, but it was argued that it would be the driving force that is needed for change. I have already started to change, I stay local as much as can, I made two walking trips today and jumped a few fences to get groceries and beer. I will train it to Toronto on Tuesday for my meeting. I am now looking for a job that is within biking distance or even better, walking distance.

I drove 15km to and from to see a movie was next to two major highways, it had 24 theatres, if gas was $6 a gallon, I wonder if I would of walked to a neighbourhood cinema?
 
Posted by James Westbrook (Member # 3690) on 03-07-2011, 03:45 AM:
 
I am fortunate that I live within walking distance of a grocery store, a mailbox, several fast food restaurants - including a Sonic Drive-in - a chain drug store, a somewhat over-priced hardware store, and a few shops. I did more of this when my main vehicle was a 1982 Chevrolet S-10 pickup, which has over 200,000 miles on it and does 10 MPG. It was unreliable enough that I was mapping a walking route to my theater and back, which is roughly 3 miles one way. I even looked into getting a bicycle.
Instead I got a 2011 Nissan Versa. The base version with automatic transmission. 25mpg in the city. Much more reliable transportation, and cheaper than a hybrid. 4 trips to work and back = 1 gallon of gas. Safer than a bicycle, and I can listen to Coast to Coast AM on the way home at night.
However, most of my coworkers are not as fortunate. They live farther from the theater, and like you would have to look for closer jobs. Some live further away from a grocery store. They have to drive further than I do. Some are already working two jobs, and have to drive their children to school. The way cities and towns are laid out, driving is pretty much the only way to get around.
With the economy in it's current state, cities can not afford to purchase more buses and passenger rail service is not an option.
I'm glad we are both fortunate that we can walk to get some beer, or milk, or bread but most of the people around us aren't.
 
Posted by Tom Petrov (Member # 1534) on 03-07-2011, 03:55 AM:
 
quote: James Westbrook
The way cities and towns are laid out, driving is pretty much the only way to get around.
And that is what needs to change. I hope it gets to $6 because it will force me to change even more and get off the driving addiction. I live in the suburbs of the GTA and I can do some things within walking. I wish I could buy more things locally.

As for the big chains, high fuel prices are going to make them buy local. I mean, why I am buying produce from out of province when it could be grown locally for my local market.

Going to prolly ramp up the bike thing this summer. I should have a job in town by then. I don't even have car payments anymore and I am still looking to change.

I used to drive out of my way to watch movies at different theatres. That is now a thing of the past.
 
Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 03-07-2011, 08:52 AM:
 
quote: Tom Petrov
As for the big chains, high fuel prices are going to make them buy local. I mean, why I am buying produce from out of province when it could be grown locally for my local market.
You can't grow most fruits and vegetables just anywhere, certainly not in the volumes necessary to be competitive in price much less satisfy demand. Same thing goes for livestock. Any sort of agricultural business requires giant amounts of wide open, rural land. That kind of space can't be fit within urban greenhouses on a cost effective basis.

Weather patterns, sunlight amounts, differing soil types and other factors make it necessary for grocery stores to buy many produce items from distant places that can grow a certain item in volume. You're not going to grow Florida oranges and Idaho potatoes next to each other in some city greenhouse without the resulting product costing too much money and probably not being very good at all.

We have a local farmer's market where people sell their home grown produce to others. It's great stuff, a lot better than what you can buy at Wal-Mart. Unfortunately, the range of food products sold is limited to what can be grown locally and the market is only open a limited time of year. Full time grocery stores have to operate year round.

Thanks to companies like Wal-Mart more and more of the produce Americans buy is imported from other countries. A great deal of the beef we buy is produced in Mexico. Lots of American ranchers have been seriously hurt by price speculation on wheat, corn and other produce grown to feed cattle. The price of hay has been brutal to anyone who owns horses (like my parents). Who knows what stocker steers are being fed south of the border? Here in the US the rules are a little more strict.
 
Posted by Louis Bornwasser (Member # 3063) on 03-07-2011, 11:54 AM:
 
fyi: Corn is up because of fuel additives and the partial failure of the rice crop in China. (People work in factories now, making Victoria's Secret and singing bass plaques.) louis
 
Posted by Leo Enticknap (Member # 534) on 03-08-2011, 11:32 AM:
 
quote: Bobby Henderson
Rail is too expensive and not convenient enough for passenger use in rural and small town areas. When the automobile was invented it spelled the end of the horse and buggy culture and put rail on a downward trend. Rail can only return to certain areas where population density is high enough to support it.
As a sidebar, rail transport has not been commercially viable anywhere in Europe for the best part of a century now. For example, Germany's railways were nationalised in 1920, France's in 1938 and ours in 1947. Basically, as soon as cheaper and more flexible alternatives came along (i.e. cars and planes), rail was rendered obsolete. Even though since 1997 we've gone back to a sort of half-public, half-private system (the government owns track and infrastructure, which private, franchise-holding operators run trains on), the bottom line is that without tens of billions of taxpayers' money being pumped into the system each year, there would be no railway. I once heard the staggering figure that without any public subsidy, the true cost of a return ticket from York to London (around 500 miles in total) would be in the region of £1,500 - enough for two return flights to California, or 20,000 miles by air! Defenders of that subsidy claim that you'll get that money back again through economic growth (and thus tax receipts) in the areas served by the trains; opponents say that you can stimulate that growth by much cheaper means, e.g. more roads.

The last time I took a train in Britain was in 2005, and the last time I used them in any way regularly was before I learnt to drive. I know no-one other than London commuters who travel by train regularly.

If the oil price stays high, the alternatives will start to be used on a significant scale. I was reading an article a few months ago about Richard Branson opening up an algal biofuel plant to produce synthetic fuel for his planes. He claims that if the R & D goes well, then in 2-3 years he'll be able to produce jet fuel for an equivalent cost to the conventional stuff with oil at $160 a barrel. So simple economics dictates that if the oil price hits that sort of level and stays there, then this will become viable. It seems to me that no-one has had any incentive to develop serious scale alternatives to oil, because until now oil has always been cheaper (excepting short-term spikes). If that changes, then so will the whole rules of the game.
 
Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 03-08-2011, 02:19 PM:
 
Some countries are already using alternatives in conjunction with oil or cutting oil out of the situation.

In Brazil many cars are powered by alcohol rather than gasoline. Sugar cane is used to create the alcohol. Molasses is a byproduct (and used to make things like Rum). Alcohol powered engines don't work well in cold weather, making fuels like gasoline necessary to get the car up to operational temperature.

Argentina has more than a couple million vehicles powered by compressed natural gas, CNG for short. Certain big wigs like T. Boone Pickens are campaigning for the US to change vehicles over to CNG. Natural gas is plentiful in the United States. Some companies have changed vehicle fleets over to CNG, but hardly any average consumers have CNG powered vehicles. Here in Oklahoma I know of only a few service stations that have CNG pumps. One worry I have about CNG is the drilling process called "fracking" used to get the natural gas out of the ground. The documentary Gasland showed how fracking chemicals can contaminate ground water and make it possible to light running tap water on fire.
[Eek!]

I haven't heard anything lately regarding hydrogen fuel cell based vehicles. I don't know if that technology has hit a developmental brick wall.

Unless there are big improvements in battery technology I don't see 100% electric cars taking over anytime soon. Electric cars don't necessarily have to match speed and horsepower capability of gasoline powered cars, but I think they need a pretty significant driving range -around 600-800 miles on a single charge or have the ability to go at least 200 miles and be re-charged quickly. It would be a no go situation if you drove 3 hours and then had to wait several hours for the car to recharge.
 
Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 03-08-2011, 06:45 PM:
 
I've always wondered what high oil prices might do to WalMart. Around here, the closest WalMart is 45 miles away, but in lots of towns in Montana, the nearest WalMart is over a hundred miles away or even up to 200 sometimes.

Sure WalMart has low prices, but if you're spending alot of gallons of gas to get there, the option of actually staying home and buying groceries at the local store becomes more attractive.

So the next logical step for WalMart, if they want to continue with their plan to destroy all the small businesses in America, is to start building Micro-Super-Centers in small towns. I wouldn't be at all surprised to see this if gas gets high and stays there.
 
Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 03-08-2011, 07:12 PM:
 
According to an article I read on the Bloomberg web site, Wal-Mart hasn't been doing so great lately and the rising gasoline prices has forced the company to downgrade earnings forecasts.

quote: Mike Blakesley
So the next logical step for WalMart, if they want to continue with their plan to destroy all the small businesses in America, is to start building Micro-Super-Centers in small towns.
I'm not sure they'll even have to bother. The bigger plan seems to be destroying all the small towns and pushing those residents into bigger towns and cities where Wal-Mart already has super center locations.

A lot of my dad's family members lived in Temple, OK -a really small town about a 45 minute drive South of Lawton. I have an aunt and uncle who are the only relatives left there now. All of my first cousins from that side of the family live in big cities (Dallas, Colorado Springs, Denver, Minneapolis). My brother lives outside of Atlanta. The situation in Temple hasn't been very good lately. The school there is reeling from budget cuts. The town can hardly to afford to repair any damaged streets, sewers or water mains. They have no police department anymore; the city council let go the last cop they had a couple years ago. Now they have to rely on the Cotton County Sheriff's department, which is already stretched thin. Most of the people who live in Temple are older and on very fixed incomes. They can't afford any hikes on property taxes or sales taxes. The town isn't having much of any luck attracting new businesses which bring along new employees and taxpayers. The town is slowly dying. This same situation is repeating itself in hundreds of other small towns across the country.
 
Posted by Leo Enticknap (Member # 534) on 03-12-2011, 04:50 PM:
 
quote: Mike Blakesley
So the next logical step for WalMart, if they want to continue with their plan to destroy all the small businesses in America, is to start building Micro-Super-Centers in small towns. I wouldn't be at all surprised to see this if gas gets high and stays there.
That's more or less exactly what the supermarket chains in Britain have done. Independently owned 'corner shops' ('mom-and-pop stores') have been closing down, usually when the owners retired and sold up, and then re-opened shortly afterwards as a Sainsbury's Local or a Tesco Extra all over the place.
 




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