Why different prices for cash and credit at gas stations?

Here is a pet peeve of mine.  Why is does it seem like it is only gas stations that make you pay a higher price for using credit cards?  Shouldn't that be true for all retailers? 

What the gas stations are doing here are two things.  One, they are pushing off the fees that the credit card companies charge them onto the consumer.  You didn't think that those reward points you get from your credit card company came out of thin air, did you?  Two, they are also trying to take in more cash. When they take in cash they do not necessarily have to declare the cash on their tax filings.  This is exactly what Richard Kiyosaki states in his "Rich Dad, Poor Dad" book series.  He wants everyone to run a small business, doing as much of it as possible as cash only.  This way you can run your business at a loss on paper, pay no taxes, and maybe even get assistance from the government.  Isn't that great?

I once heard of a take-out restaurant owner in a neighborhood where I worked, that did a cash only business.  A co-worker of mine said that she had seen the owner pay for groceries with food stamps, and then drive away from supermarket in a new Lincoln Continental or similar luxury car.  Anyway, we guessed that she really didn't need to be paying for groceries with food stamps.

I imagine that the gas station owners are doing a similar thing, by pushing customers to pay cash in order to save a buck.  I wonder if the Service Station Association had Kiyosaki as a guest speaker at a national convention or something.  

The bottom line is I hate to be inconvenienced so someone else can pocket more money.  There should be laws that prevent businesses for charging different prices for cash and credit payment.  While some may argue that people who want to pay cash shouldn't be penalized by credit card user's service fees, all I have to say to that is, well maybe we shouldn't have credit cards at all.  I didn't come up with this system, I only use it because it is convenient.

France and Greece: Just say no to austerity!

Wall Street was in an uproar when France and Greece used their right to vote to oust elected government officials that imposed austerity measures causing their economic downturn to be much worse than the one in the United States. Now I believe the same thing is about to happen in Germany.

When businesses will not spend their money and banks will not loan their money, it is up to the government to step in as the big spender. This what happened in the United States with the United States government's bail out of Wall Street. Our recession/depression would have been a lot worse if they did not step in this role. I would even argue that the United States hasn't done enough. If they knew what they were doing they would raise taxes on the top one percent of earners and use the money to create nice government jobs for people out of work, but the right-wing nut jobs corrupting our government will not let that happen.

Right-wingers want to seem the same austerity measures here while sending as many American jobs to overseas as possible. They want small government because big government cost money and the wealthy are the only ones with the money to pay for big government.

Republicans do not want the economy to get better, they want it to get worse. In his book "Greedy Bastards" Daniel Ratigan, quotes minutes from a Dallas Federal Reserve meeting showing that Richard Fisher, its president is very disappointed that more jobs are not going overseas to make American labor costs cheaper.

Europeans seem to know that this is what this recession is all about. The wealthy want to move as many jobs over to Asia as possible to make labor costs as cheap as possible globally. They do not want businesses to create jobs in the West because labor is too expensive here, and the only remedy is to send as many jobs away as possible.

They want us to all be like Foxxcon employees in mainland China. They work in labor camp like conditions for a about $2.00 an hour, and the only recreational outlet they have is to commit suicide. This what the wealthy people want for the entire world.

Thankfully, European voters are not letting the rich pull the wool over their eyes. I hope Americans will follow suit and make sure that Republicans stay out of office.

So much for free trade with South Korea.

South Korea recently banned United States beef with just concern over Mad Cow Disease, but doesn't that violate our free trade agreement? They should only ban beef for sale only if we ban beef for sale in the United States, isn't that how free trade works? I guess not.

Perhaps later the Korean government will deem America cars unsafe and ban them from being bought in Korea as well. I doubt that they will go that far, but if Korean automakers start to feel the pinch from American competition, I bet something like that will arise and Koreans will be "encouraged" to buy Korean automobiles instead of American ones.

I have to say that I totally do not blame the South Koreans for banning American beef. I stopped eating beef around 2003 when their were reports that Canadian beef had been discovered to contain Mad Cow Disease. And I know that unless the American farmer has his armed twisted, he is going to ignore safe feed practice laws if it impacts his bottom line. Therefore beef will never really be safe unless proper feeding guidelines are strictly enforced or that beef sales decline so much that they have to change their ways. Perhaps a ban on beef would be a good thing for everyone, not just South Koreans.

I really miss hamburgers, but I'm not taking any chances and I do not blame the South Koreans for playing it safe either. I just wanted to give you this example of how free trade doesn't really work very well when a government places a ban on imported products.