If gas went up. say 10%, Then would not the price of plastic also rise?

Think of this. Interesting as it may seem, if the price of gasoline rose, then would not, by default, the price of gas by-products also rise? The cost of gasoline at the pumps has risen almost 200% since 2000, when 'Dimson' first became 'president'. Since then, the cost of plastic bags, a gasoline by-product, have not seem to rise as much as to see the match with gasoline. Why is that? Is this the evidence of price gouging from the gas companies? Tell me why gasoline by-products are not costing more in comparison to actual gasoline at the pumps.

If the price of plastic bags goes up folks will just start bringing cloth bags to the grocery store. No big deal and it's actually easier to carry your groceries home that way.

Most people would starve if they couldn't use their cars to get to the grocery stores though.

So I only kinda sorta think that it's gouging. Most folks do have a certain amount of flexibility when it comes to choosing how far away they live from a store. They just choose to live far away for a variety of good and not very good reasons.

Why haven't the price of these items, by-products of gasoline, gone up along with the price of gas itself?

Most things that we're addicted to have obvious negative consequences so we fight the addiction.

There are just enough benefits to gas that we stay hooked.

Why does the price of gas keep raising while the price of gas by-products don't raise so fast?

Producers charge as much as the market will allow for a given product.

is charged as much as the market will allow? Then why do not the by-products of gasoline follow suite? I find this a delimia.

Because there are only a small number of suppliers and the cost to enter the market is prohibitive, the price isn't truly set by the demand of the market, but is fixed by the suppliers. They each have a finite number of gas pumps and a finite amount of gas to sell each week. The demand for the product is such that they are all selling all they have at a profit, so there is no competitive force upon one supplier to lower his price to "undercut" his competition. He is already selling all he's got, lowering his price would just mean he would sell it faster, but at less profit. If there were say 15 oil companies competing in the gasoline business instead of 4 or 5 in collusion, you might see the price set by the market.

plastic is a derivative of oil.

I believe that the costs have gone up and been worked into the price structure of pretty much everything we buy. I don't have data on plastic bags as an individual item, but I do know that I was handed 12 pages of price advances to put up in the grocery store where I work last Sunday morning. That is the most I have seen in awhile (usually 1-2 pages with usually about 30 - 50 tags on a page). I didn't get anywhere near done so, I don't know if the plastic bags went up as they would be on the last pages.

while the cost of a gallon of gas for the car has almost tripled. Since the garbage bag is made of a by-product of gasoline, I can only guess that the cost of gas is artificially inflated.

but it doesn't.

eom

What about asphalt and other 'direct' petroleum products?

There have been various reports on energybulliten.com about the price of asphalt going up and towns having to cut new deals with paving contractors to keep ahead of their city budgets.

I work in a plastics plant. We finish and laminate goods. When oil goes up, price of our plastic film goes up, as well as the price of plastic wrap, and banding.

that some companies are taking the hits to their bottom lines and it is hardly noticeable.

If your profit stream has been:
$4 billion in 2003, then
$5 billion in 2004, then
$7 billion in 2005, followed by
$9 billion in 2006...

is it that big of a deal if instead of those numbers you get
$4.0 billion in 2003
$4.9 billion in 2004,
$6.8 billion in 2005 and
$8.7 billion in 2006?

You also have to take into account that even if you make a plastic product, that is not all of your expenses. You have other costs like employee salary & benefits, the cost of either making it here, or having it shipped from China, etc, etc.