Assuming the position

When I left for work this morning at 6 in the A M, gasoline in my sleepy little town was $4.07. Expensive? Yes. I thought so. We are typically 3-7 cents more expensive than the rest of the area which is notoriously the one of the most expensive in the State. At lunch time I drove into town because it was cold and rainy and the single apple with peanut butter I was planning to eat didn't sound warm enough.

I gasped when I passed the Chevron & Shell stations in town to see gas had gone up again to $4.11 & $4.13 respectively. Outrageous! Highway robbery! Literally.

A mere 3 hours later that same Shell station had changed their price to $4.17. Holy crap! So glad I'm not driving anywhere for the holiday weekend! I toodled slowly back to my town off-the-beaten-path due to downed power lines and a v-e-r-y slow detour. Ack!!! The sign on my gas station read... are you ready for this?...

$4.25 !!!!! And the one across the street was $4.29!!!!!!!!! In case you can't do the math through the fog of confusion, that's am $ 0.18 and $0.22 increase in a mere 9 hours!!!!!

I don't get it. The gasoline the stations are selling this afternoon is the very same gas they had in their tanks this morning. The gas they probably had in those tanks 3 days ago. The gas I know was not previously sold at a loss. Somewhere in my brain (or maybe they exist on a cellular level) are the universal memories from our ancestors about calculating retail markup.

Wholesale price x Markup percentage + State, Federal and Local Taxes = Retail Price

Therefore, gasoline received in a given shipment should always have the same price until another shipment is received.

When exactly did it change to this whacked formula?

Wholesale price x (Markup percentage x percentage of public need)
x journalistic fear mongering + Taxes = Retail Price

Which lasts exactly 1.2 hours.

I heard on the World News last night that price projections by the end of the summer are between $5 and $6.

What are we going to do?

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In other less expensive news...

Here is a video of D for your enjoyment. Please be noting the mad musical skilz of my youngest rug rat. Also the cheeks.