By the way, there is a concept called "price elasticity of demand", which I was actually discussing with another member a while back.
Basically what this says is that with a price change comes a change in demand. If demand does not change with a change in price, it is called inelastic. If demand increases or decreases with a drop/rise in prices, it is elastic.
The demand for fuel is relatively inelastic, because consumers will rarely reduce their fuel consumption because of an increase in price. Personally with rising fuel costs I arranged things to eliminate by daily commute. I changed my demand and did my thing to make that demand just a tiny little more elastic.
That's right - not only are you as a consumer driving the profits, you are also driving the price at the pump!
By the way, has anyone looked at the Shell profits by Line of Business? It's entirely possible that they lost money in their B2C divisions, but made money B2B. Ergo it's not the consumer they "screwed" but other businesses.
Jan 31, 2008 @ 16:15:16
