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Tuesday, March 8, 2011

Can people make a difference??


Let me think out loud for a moment. 

 If I own the company that is the sole provider of a product or service then I can just piss the public off at will.
But if I am not the only provider of that product or service then the customer has a little more control over things.  Here look at it like this, a number of the providers begin to price gouge a bit by ramping up their prices when their suppliers jack up the prices but they are very slow about dropping the prices when the price from the supplier comes down and use the excuse that they have to make up profits they lost when their cost went up this is where I throw the bull shit flag.  The public has more control on the market then we give our self credit for.  The consumer has been trained for so long with this surprise butt sex price gouging that it is no longer a surprise. It is kind of like "oh well we have to have food, gas, or whatever it is so we will just pay the price".  And there is a mentality that all the big companies are in concert with each other and that is how they keep the prices inflated and that there is not a damn thing we can do about it as we struggle to get a grip on the concept the it won't hurt near as much if we would just learn to unclench.
Now let's expand on the idea of how the consumer has at least some control over just how deep the providers can push it in before they break it off.  We will keep this simple by using small numbers.
Three stores. Store A, store B, store C.  (Chain stores)
The product cost is two dollars. They sell it at five dollars +/- a few cents of each other.
The product cost goes up to three dollars but only for 5 days and then drop back to two dollars. During this five days the stores raise their price to six dollars but don’t drop the price back down until ten days later.  Each store is selling two hundred unit of this product a day average.
Here is where the consumer can get some control over this price gouging.  Using today's social networks the consumers, in a concerted effort, stop buying this given product for the next thirty days from store A.  That is an average of six thousand units in the thirty days. And at a three dollar profit per unit that is an eighteen thousand dollars loss in one month.  At this point the consumers demand that for the future patronage of store A there should be a reduction in product prices as a general rule throughout the store. If the powers to be of store A do not see fit to cut prices then we, the consumer, continue a complete boycott of not only the one product but the store as a whole for the next 180 days. 
Ok  lets look at just a few of the big numbers just to get a perspective.

A store in a good location, which most chain stores are in prime locations, can sell from three to nine thousand gallons of gas every three to five days. Lets go to the high end. Nine thousand gallons every five days.
6 loads of gas in a month = 54000 gallons @ $2.98 per gal.
Wholesale cost to store for 30 days $160,920.00
The stores say they only make one to two cent per gallon =$1080.00 (profit)
The first eight weeks of 2011, average gross profit for gas was 4.9 percent, according to the Oil Price Information Service.  So this comes out to  $7885.08.(profit)
  And I know a few truck drivers that are dropping eight to ten thousand gallons every other day at a single store.
And the store says the gas is not there profit it is what you buy in the store is where they make their money.  Ok then with that thought, we should not be buying anything there.  We can choose where our dollar is spent.
Can an organized group of people really make a difference??  Let's ask Mr. Walker if he thinks he will have his job next term.
Will this take a lot of people to work?? You damn right it will, but if we don't take back at least some of the control of the supply and demand system we, the consumer, will only get screwed just that much more. 

What is the product you ask, Why its gas. Here is a little background info, through the first eight weeks of 2011, average gross profit for gas was 4.9 percent, according to the Oil Price Information Service. In 2010, it was 6 percent. 

Anybody remember the trickle down Reaganomics from the 80s?? How about lets trickle this shit back up for a change??
Hey, just something to think about.

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