Subject: Eggs and Fuel
A man eats two eggs each morning for breakfast. When he goes to the grocery
store he pays 60 cents a dozen. Since a dozen eggs won’t last a week he
normally buys two dozens at a time.
One day while buying eggs he notices that the price has risen to 72 cents.
The next time he buys groceries, eggs are 76 cents a dozen.
When asked to explain the price of eggs the store owner says, "The price has
gone up and I have to raise my price accordingly".
These store buys 100 dozen eggs a day. He checked around for a better price
and all the distributors have raised their prices.
The distributors have begun to buy from the huge egg farms. The small egg
farms have been driven out of business.
The huge egg farms sell 100,000 dozen eggs a day to distributors. With no
competition, they can set the price as they see fit. The distributors then
have to raise their prices to the grocery stores. And on and on and on.
As the man kept buying eggs the price kept going up. He saw the big egg
trucks delivering 100 dozen eggs each day. Nothing changed there.
He checked out the huge egg farms and found they were selling 100,000 dozen
eggs to the distributors daily. Nothing had changed but the price of eggs.
Then week before Thanksgiving the price of eggs shot up to $1.00 a dozen.
Again he asked the grocery owner why and was told, "Cakes and baking for the
holiday".
The huge egg farmers know there will be a lot of baking going on and more
eggs will be used. Hence, the price of eggs goes up.
Expect the same thing at Christmas and other times when family cooking,
baking, etc. happen.
This pattern continues until the price of eggs is 2.00 a dozen. The man
says," There must be something we can do about the price of eggs".
He starts talking to all the people in his town and they decide to stop
buying eggs. This didn’t work because everyone needed eggs.
Finally, the man suggested only buying what you need. He ate 2 eggs a day.
On the way home from work he would stop at the grocery and buy
two eggs. Everyone in town started buying 2 or 3 eggs a day.
The grocery store owner began complaining that he had too many eggs in his
cooler. He told the distributor that he didn’t need any eggs.
Maybe wouldn’t need any all week.
The distributor had eggs piling up at his warehouse. He told the huge egg
farms that he didn’t have any room for eggs would not need any for at least
two weeks.
At the egg farm, the chickens just kept on laying eggs.
To relieve the pressure, the huge egg farm told the distributor that they
could buy the eggs at a lower price. The distributor said, " I don’t have
the room for the %$&^*&% eggs even if they were free".
The distributor told the grocery store owner that he would lower the price
of the eggs if the store would start buying again.
The grocery store owner said, "I don’t have room for more eggs. The
customers are only buying 2 or 3 eggs at a time".
"Now if you were to drop the price of eggs back down to the original price,
the customers would start buying by the dozen again".
The distributors sent that proposal to the huge egg farmers. They liked the
price they were getting for their eggs but, those chickens just kept on
laying.
Finally, the egg farmers lowered the price of their eggs. But only a few
cents.
The customers still bought 2 or 3 eggs at a time. They said, "When the price
of eggs gets down to where it was before, we will start buying by the
dozen."
Slowly the price of eggs started dropping. The distributors had to slash
their prices to make room for the eggs coming from the egg farmers.
The egg farmers cut their prices because the distributors wouldn’t buy at a
higher price than they were selling eggs for.
Anyway, they had full warehouses and wouldn’t need eggs for quite a while.
And those chickens kept on laying.
Eventually, the egg farmers cut their prices because they were throwing away
eggs they couldn’t sell.
The distributors started buying again because the eggs were priced to where
the stores could afford to sell them at the lower price.
And the customers starting buying by the dozen again.
Now, transpose this analogy to the gasoline industry.
What if everyone only bought $10.00 worth of gas each time they pulled to
the pump? The dealer’s tanks would stay semi full all the time. The dealers
wouldn’t have room for the gas coming from the huge tank farms.
The tank farms wouldn’t have room for the gas coming from the refining
plants. And the refining plants wouldn’t have room for the oil being off
loaded from the huge tankers coming from the Middle East.
Just $10.00 each time you buy gas. Don’t fill it up.
You may have to stop for gas twice a week but, the price should come down.
Think about it.
As an added note…When I buy $10.00 worth of gas that leaves my tank a
little under half full. The way prices are jumping around, you can buy gas
for $2.65 a gallon and then the next morning it can be $2.15. If you have
your tank full of $2.65 gas you don’t have room for the $2.15 gas. You
Might not understand the economics of only buying two eggs at a time but,
you can’t buy cheaper gas if your tank is full of the high priced stuff.
Also, don’t buy anything else at the gas station; don’t give them any more
of your hard earned money than what you spend on gas, until the prices come
down…"
