Sure, watching gasoline go up like it has been is definitely alarming. But when do we stop and say to ourselves:
"Gee, maybe this 20oz soda for $1.29 is MORE expensive per gallon than gasoline!"
WELL I DO! That would make your 20oz beverage $8.26 per gallon. And you can't tell me that soda is more expensive to produce than gasoline.
Even if you buy a 2 liter for $1.29, that still makes it $2.58 per gallon, which might be less than the price of gas in most markets right now.
So the next time someone starts complaining about the price of gas, set them straight and tell them to look at the big picture!
Posts: 1870 | Registered: Mar 2003
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posted
Yeah, but soda is something that I rarely buy. Gasoline is much more of a necessity for me. When I'm low on money (which is all the time), it's pretty easy to cut out soda and stuff like that, but I still need to buy gasoline, no matter how much it costs.
Posts: 486 | Registered: Feb 2005
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posted
They talked about this on a local radio station this morning. Calculated the cost of a gallon of Scope, Evian, Nyquil, and a couple other things. Pretty ridiculous, when you think about it.
Posts: 32919 | Registered: Mar 2003
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posted
Dude, soda is on sale a lot here for .99 or .89 cents. Which makes it mega cheap just to buy a big thing of soda instead of a little bottle. But, screw soda... It's bad for you. Orange juice is like freaking 3.49 for a half gallon! 3.49!!!
Posts: 9942 | Registered: Mar 2003
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posted
DWP? Hmmm... I don't know. We have DPW, which is Dog Pee Water, which they tell you to be careful not to drink, but that's about it.
Posts: 285 | Registered: Apr 2005
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posted
Blood costs between $800 and $1,500 a gallon, I think.
I suppose you could find a river or pond and drink out of that. Or water fountains in public places. But everywhere else, I think, the money coming into your house costs money.
posted
And while I am complaining, I do not understand those who insist on buying a hybrid SUV like the Ford Escape. I have a friend who had to have one as soon as they came out. They didn't even haggle on the price and paid around $32,000 for the thing.
Now in doing some quick and dirty math:
A "normal" Escape might average 17MPG lets say.
An Hybrid Escape averages between 30-38MPH, so lets pick 34MPG for some easy math.
Lets then assume that they drive an average of 12,000 miles per year.
Let's also assume that gas averages $2.19 per gallon.
The Hybrid expense is $773 per year on gas.
The expense for gasoline for the normal Escape would be double: $1,546.
So, there might be a savings of $773 per year with the Hybrid.
But the cost of the Hybrid is about $6,000-8,000 more than a normal Escape. In the above scenario, a person would need to drive the Hybrid for about 9 years to break even.
Sure, if someone drives a lot of miles, OR if the the price of gasoline escalates over $3 a gallon, then a Hybrid might seem more appealing, but at this point, the Hybrid Escape is not very practical in my opinion.
At least I would have some comfort knowing I was wasting less fossil fuels than a traditional car, and that helps the world to be a better place. But I just slap my forehead when my buddy tells me how much money he will be saving on gas in his new Escape.
Beep! Beep!
Shoot me now, please.
Posts: 1870 | Registered: Mar 2003
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posted
Hey! I know you can buy pop on sale. But the knuckle-dragging idiots that are sipping a Red Bull energy drink while complaining about the price of gas are the ones that slay me.
(BTW, all of our 20oz sodas are $1.29 with the exception of RC cola products, which are $1.09 for 20oz...)
Posts: 1870 | Registered: Mar 2003
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Hmm... we had a novel synthetically constructed radiolabelled peptide that we had made out of house because we couldn't devote the manpower to the project that ran us ~$3000 Cdn/500 uL. Let's see, that's 6 million dollars/litre which is about $22.7 million/gallon. In Canadian dollars, mind.
Anyway, I know what you mean, Alucard. It's funny seeing people anally making sure every drop of gasoline that they've paid for winds up in the sink, but poor half a glass of milk down the sink.
Posts: 3243 | Registered: Apr 2002
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Screech,I agree that a Hybrid is a great vehicle for the environmentally-conscious consumer, and I respect someone who pays more for a vehicle than they need to in order to save the planet. That is commendable. My friend, though, is a gearhead, tech junkie, who bought this car because of its novel appeal. That's my gripe.
I was hoping I had acknowledged the environmentally-friendly aspect of Hybrids in my earlier posts. One other point is that the Hybrid Escape gets nowhere near the mileage of a Toyota Prius or a Honda Hybrid...
P.S. This guys' wifes' partner has had a Prius for a while, too. Gotta keep up with the Joneses...
Posts: 1870 | Registered: Mar 2003
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posted
The costs of sodas/waters/etc are advertising, then transportation, then packaging, then shelf-space, then product ingredients.
Depending on the company, transportation (and hence fuel) cost can be the the highest factor, and advertising can drop below the cost of shelf space but still above product ingredients. Then ya gotta figure that packaging also takes a lot of energy/fuel.
posted
Alucard, in Canada the Prius and the Camry cost about the same, and there's a $1,000 tax credit if you buy the Prius. Of course, the Prius is smaller than the Camry...
Posts: 10886 | Registered: Feb 2000
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I agree aspectre, but do you know how much tax you pay on a gallon of gasoline? If the federal and/or state governments wanted to help motorists financially, they could lower gasoline taxes.
I am not 100% sure, but I believe the gasoline tax in PA (federal/state) is approaching 49 cents per gallon.
Posts: 1870 | Registered: Mar 2003
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quote:Alucard, in Canada the Prius and the Camry cost about the same, and there's a $1,000 tax credit if you buy the Prius. Of course, the Prius is smaller than the Camry...
My motorcycle cost $5,400 US dollars and gets 39 miles to the gallon. And I've driven it to work for 3 days in a row now.
I like the Prius a lot! It makes sense, especially if you do a lot of solo driving simply to get from point A to point B. But this is the Hybrid Escape I am ranting about... Posts: 1870 | Registered: Mar 2003
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There are three primary reasons why the US doesn't have as good of a public transportation system as Europe. The first is size, it would be a huge undertaking to make a national transportation (other than just up keeping the highway system, which our federal government does do). The second is population density. Compare Europe and North America . There simply aren't people living as close together, not even in the Eastern part of the states are there people as close together as they are in Europe.
The third reason, is that tax money we might spend on a federal public transportation system, currently goes to subsidize our oil purchases. The US consumer does not pay the full market price for gasoline, the government subsidizes it, which explains why we pay half the price that the Europeans do, their government prefers to pay for public transportation, rather than oil, which makes sense because Europe has a much higher population density than America and public transportation can exist without becoming unwieldly and covering areas without many people (like say Wyoming).
Posts: 349 | Registered: May 2003
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We bought our blood from these guys. They were good about it, taking a full transfusion bag on Monday and shipping it right away and without testing so there'd be minimal degradation when it got to us the next morning.
I don't know if they sell to non researchers, but hey, I'm told you can get anything in the states for money. (Note that it's not a Canadian company because the sale of human organs is prohibited in Canada)
Posts: 3243 | Registered: Apr 2002
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It's illegal for individuals to sell blood or organs in FirstWorld countries. And illegal to purchase blood or organs from FirstWorld citizens and residents.
The US allows monetary compensation for plasma donations: the only FirstWorld nation to do so as far as I am aware. And the only FirstWorld nation in which it is legal to purchase organs harvested from donors in other nonFirstWorld countries.
Australia is luring sperm donors from Canada by offering a free roundtrip flight and lodging to get around the shortage produced by it's strict laws against compensation.
posted
I did not mean to imply that you could buy, say, a human heart in America with no questions asked. Rather that blood is an organ and as such falls under the same rules as all the others up here. (edit: Ok, and maybe a bit of a cheap shot.)
And clearly monetary dispensation is given for whole blood samples as well, there's a large difference between that and plasma. Had I wanted plasma I could have bought that here.
edit:
quote:It's illegal for individuals to sell blood or organs in FirstWorld countries. And illegal to purchase blood or organs from FirstWorld citizens and residents.
The US allows monetary compensation for plasma donations: the only FirstWorld nation to do so as far as I am aware. And the only FirstWorld nation in which it is legal to purchase organs harvested from donors in other/nonFirstWorld countries.
This doesn't make sense. I mean "monetary compensation" for blood is really just buying it, right? And clearly there were no problems with my company buying blood from across the border. Perhaps the rules are different for corporations.
[ April 15, 2005, 11:16 PM: Message edited by: Bob the Lawyer ]
Posts: 3243 | Registered: Apr 2002
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Thank you Alucard. It's pop, not soda, and certainly not Coke.
When I was in Texas last month I kept asking for a regular Pepsi and they NEVER brought be that. I either got diet pepsi, or diet coke, or sprite. I don't get why it's so hard to understand. There is one coke, it's coke! Everything else is different. It's a wonder I can stand working in a restaurant.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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Yep, individuals can neither purchase nor sell whole blood in the US. Individuals are convinced to donate blood to eg the RedCross. (The donor might get a cup of orange juice, and maybe a donut.) The RedCross sells those donations to regional hospitals and clinics, in the amounts which will probably be required for each blood type before the transfusion expiration*date. The hospitals and clinics in turn charge their patients a really hefty amount for that blood.
Then the RedCross sells any excess donation -- ie that which probably** cannot be used by regional hospitals and clinics before the transfusion expiration date -- of each blood type to biomedical firms. The biomedical firms in turn separate&purify&process the whole blood to produce special products such as clotting factor for hemophiliacs, or sell the whole blood to university researchers and private medical research firms.
I think there is some sort of an exception to the "no sales by nor purchases from individuals" rule for extremely rare blood types -- rare enough to be valued at thousands of dollars per pint / half-liter. But I'm not familiar with what the rules are for that type of exceptional transaction.
* Blood has a relatively short shelf-life inregards to safe transfusion into a patient. Plasma lasts a meaningful amount longer.
** Short shelf-life and that "probably be required" conditional on how much bloodbanks store is why the RedCross or area hospitals have to make pleas on news programs whenever there is a major injury-causing accident involving many victims, or a victim with a rarer-than-usual blood-type.
posted
But the individuals *are* selling their blood. The company I linked to and have purchased blood from on multiple occasions does the blood draws themselves, as well as any testing I request and a description of the individual it came from (number of donations, time since last donation, age, gender, etc). As I needed the blood before it became "stale" (ie, in less than 24 hours) they shipped it to me immediately. The Red Cross didn't enter the picture at all. I don't believe people donated it for a cookie and maybe a donut in this case, money must have changed hands. And not a lot if I could buy it for a mere $120.
Posts: 3243 | Registered: Apr 2002
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I wrote "eg the RedCross" to indicate that other organizations can also collect whole blood donations. As for whether the company you are dealing with paid a donor directly for the blood, I couldn't say. As far as I am aware, it would be illegal for them to do so for any common blood-type.
There are work-arounds in the US: eg it is legal to pay volunteers for a medical experiment, and have as a pre-condition of acceptance for the experiment that the volunteers must agree to give blood samples. But if you are saying that you are paying only C$120/US$100 per half-liter, I very much doubt that they did such a thing*. Of course, I may be misinformed inre my assumptions But it seems that only free donations would be able to provide a baseline leading to your purchase price. Unless you are being charged extra for the standard spectrum of whole blood safety tests which are required for transfusable blood. And really not even then.
* At least not ethically&legally. Comparing biomedical firms payments to plasma donors against their charges to plasma purchasers, and knowing that plasma donors can donate (and get paid) twice per week, and knowing that donating whole blood prevents another donation for a long period of time, including plasma donation, I don't see how a fair (plasma-comparable) payment for a whole blood donation would be economicly feasible for your price.
posted
Did some googling and it turns out that whole blood can be legally bought by licensed biomedical firms and legally sold by individuals to those firms, at least in some states of the US.
And from what I've read, the practice seems to be ethically compromised, even where it is legal.
posted
As a honda civic hybrid owner (I'm at the dealer right now even!):
There is a tax deduction (federal), and possible state deductions/credits. There's perks like driving in HOV lanes regardless of number of passengers. There's lower emissions. There's the fewer times that you have to stop at a gas station over the course of any given timeframe. There's the "statement" in saying I am willing to pay to help ease environmental concerns, as well as help forestall gas shortages until we can all figure out what to do about it.
Sure, my individual influence is small, but I can educate and encourage others who might follow... And if not get a hybrid, trade in their jeep for a civic, or camry, which would be an improvement in it's own right.
Averaging 42MPG since last fill up, at 180 miles driven, and ~2/3 of a tank left. This includes driving up Belmont hill every day to work (Belmont hill is the home of the Mormon Temple here in Boston, in case people have visited, and is REALLY FREAKING STEEP). I may not make up the price compared to another Civic, but I'm getting double the mileage compared to my old 1985 Volvo 240!
posted
Alucard, every time I see the title of this thread, I think "I need a Diet Vanilla Coke."
Are you pretending to be outraged by the prices of soda, but being paid in secret by the soda companies?
Posts: 10890 | Registered: May 2003
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quote: Blood costs between $800 and $1,500 a gallon, I think.
Depends where you get it.
WEll, Hobbes had better watch out, we know what SHE likes to drink now....
As far as the whole blood donation thing goes, there are ways that are legal to sell blood and other things...sperm banks pay for donations, or so I have heard.
I also was payed while in the Army for donating blood to medical labs for testing and research programs. They use to bring in all sort of civilians for that as well.
How else would you expect labs and research facilities to be able to run experiments and develop new drugs and treatments? They have to have access to fresh, non-contaminated samples for many reasons, and donations can't cover it.
Also, there are a ton of costs involved in testing, storing, and transporting blood even if it is donated. The Red Cross has to ask for blood on a regular basis because blood doesn't keep well for long periods of time....not because they sell blood off to make a profit. Also, the biggest reason they advertise for increased donations is because there is a HUGE seasonal gap in donations. People are not as likely to donate during the holidays, for instance....but accidents increase during the holidays, so demand is up while supply is down. Also, summer can be hell for collections in some parts of the country.
Over all the Red Cross is a great orginaization, and without them we would be screwed.
Blood isn't an organ, BTW, at least not as far as I know it. That is like saying spit is an organ...it is a bodily substance, but not an organ.
quote:How else would you expect labs and research facilities to be able to run experiments and develop new drugs and treatments? They have to have access to fresh, non-contaminated samples for many reasons, and donations can't cover it.
9 times out of 10 the members of the lab donate their own blood. It's only when you need large volumes of blood that it becomes a problem. Trust me, Kwea, the issue of "How does this research get done in Canada?" came up many, many times. We contacted many companies, Canadian Blood Services, haematologists, anyone we could think of and none of them were able to help us get something within Canada. While this seems to be a problem to me, clearly it isn't one that crops up so often that we've felt the need to change our laws over it.
As to whether or not blood is a tissue, that's an argument of semantics that only really matters to those making laws. If they want to consider it an organ for purposes of buying, selling, harvesting, etc. (as they often do) then so be it. An organ is simply a differentiated part of the body that performs a specific function. Saliva is a secretion, there is no cellular component. Blood has a large, highly differentiated cellular component that enables it to perform a host of different tasks. Although, if you want to define them both as "bodily substances" I guess I can't disagree with you Posts: 3243 | Registered: Apr 2002
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I am very, very familiar with this argument...about the availability of blood for research, not the blood is a secretion/tissue/substance....for very personal reasons.
I was a MRVS at USAMRIID for 3 years.
As a matter or fact, I created and presented the proposal to USAMRIID that is being used for compensation for soldiers to this day. The old policies were not working, and I created a panel of MRVS to discuss the problems and come up with some new solutions. We ended up recommending every one of my ideas, and adding one or two others to the document, which was then presented to the head of USAMRIID.
I left right as the new programs were being implemented, and as far as I know the new program of compensation is still in place today.
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