Maybe this will be the push we need to make our lifestyles sustainable? Probably not, but I can still hope.
You make a good point. It’s true that many people try to live well beyond their means. I shake my head everytime I see a car ad on TV and the only financial costs/incentives they show are for leasing the car. Credit card debt is out of control. Nobody grows old and needs savings to survive. Illusion over reality. Prioritize expenditures to cover expenses like health care? Nah, somebody else will pick up the tab. Lots of fiscal responsibility challenged people out there.
Even so, socking everyone with huge increases in just about every commodity at a time when things are tough most everywhere is a tough pill to swallow.
If we check our garages, it’s amazing the number of gas powered “toys” and necessities that are affected by this increase. But I agree with the previous comments that the biggest influence could be felt in our economy over all with our long haul trucking commitment for just about everything. With prices the way they are, it’s almost not worth it to drive one privately.
His WHOLE generation? Really? My father owned a retail store. He didn’t have any collective bargaining rights, neither did his employees. I could go on, but I have clearly won this round.
You mean your father didn’t have a choice between opening his own business and working in a unionized workplace? You mean his employees didn’t have the freedom to unionize, or go work in a unionized workplace? I had no idea your father and his employees had been enslaved and had their freedom of choice taken away. How does it feel to be the first one in your family to be born into freedom? It must be gratifying.
“You can bet if we had a revolution here in the U.S.A., the Christian Right would make its move to usurp as much power as it could.”
As would any major political bloc.
“I feel our problem is we are as a nation being duped into thinking solutions are where they are not. Had we years ago, increased the tax on gasoline and made demands upon the auto industry that we are reluctantly doing now we would still be paying 3.75 a gallon, but; Our roads would be in much better shape and 40 to 50 mpg in cars and trucks would be the norm with a net gain and the pinch would not be felt.”
The political will to raise taxes was not present then and it does not appear to be present now. Road repair funding problems are compounded with better US fleet mileage. Since we use less gasoline per car than we did even 5 years ago, tax revenues earmarked for road work are down. People want all kinds of tihngs but are unwilling to pay for them. When will we all just start acting like adults? Until citizens act maturely, our elected representatives will not. They are a reflection of society as a whole. If you don’t like how you are represented, look at yourself and your neighbors. We asked for it. I’m in this group as much as anyone, BTW.
It’s not so much HOW much it goes up…but HOW fast. People who are in the lower income brackets have a much harder time to adjust to the fast moving gas prices.
Maybe this will be the push we need to make our lifestyles sustainable? Probably not, but I can still hope.
You can’t “sustainably” keep 6,000,000,000 people alive at once. The best you can hope for is to slow down the rate of resource depletion.
As for “how much is too much?” for me, it’s right now. It costs me roughly 25c (in fuel alone) to move my truck one mile! Thus, when I’m not using it for work, I bicycle/walk/ride the bus. Seems to me, saving money as I work off the beer belly is a “win-win.” (Or “bi-winning,” if you prefer.)
(Of course, I’m not a zealot about it or anything…if it’s raining, etc, I bite the bullet and drive.)
Dude, don’t know why I’m even bothering to answer you, but no, there is not just a simple choice between unions and enslavement. There is a whole world in between What a ridiculous thing to say. Maybe you can’t see from outside your own little world, but in most of the country unionization has not been pervasive, and no I doubt his 3 employees would have wanted to unionize.
Actually, what I had in mind when I mentioned making our lifestyles more sustainable was more than just shorter commutes and less driving. It would involve buying produce grown locally or regionally, instead of imported or trucked across the country. It would mean you can’t get jalape?o peppers on your pizza in New York anymore, but the green and red peppers you get will be fresher than the ones trucked to NY from California. It would also mean no more Italian olive oil, but at least they can dial back the preservatives used in meat if it isn’t shipped as far.
As long as people in Venezuela are paying less than 50 cents per gallon, we are paying too much.
We should be getting free gas from Kuwait for at least 5 years, and Iraq should be supplying us with free fuel also.
We should quit playing around, go in and take over Libya and declare it American territory, as we should have in Iraq and Kuwait.That is the ONLY way that area will be democratic.
I think that was “President” Cheney’s idea behind the Iraq invasion, and see what happened. Most will say that it was not worth over a trillion dollars. One hundred years ago you could send in the Marine Corps into any banana republic or oildom, and get your way. Things have changed, oldwrench.
Some countries take a very long time to become democratic; Haiti threw out the French in 1815! and established an independent REPUBLIC! Nearly one hundred years later they are not there yet.
Venezuela is going broke keeping the crowds under control by subsidizing gasoline; the Romans did it with “Bread and Games (Panum et Circensus)”. The world price of crude oil is set by supply and demand, and at $85 per barrel (excluding the $20 fear factor), it would reflect a fair price, since the marginal cost of producing it from unconventional sources is at least $60 per barrel. If you could turn 75% of that barrel into other liquid fuel, it would cost about $2.13 per gallon to produce the gasoline and diesel/jet fuel, not counting the value of asphalt and heavy bottoms.
As per my previous post, US citizens are paying very little for gasoline compared to other developed countries, where very high taxes are used to reduce consumption and reduce imports. Even Canada, the largest exporter of oil to the US, has gas prices that currently run about $4.30 per gallon. The United Kingdom, self-sufficient in oil, charges about $6-$7 per gallon for automotive use.
It isn’t that simple. Exactly who are we supporting in Libya? Who are the rebels? What are their philosophical beliefs? Will they be our friends or our allys? What types of governments will preside in these coutries? Democracies?
Does our belief in democracy (we are not one, by the way, we’re a republic) justfy our flying onto an autonomous country and attacking their government’s forces to prevent them from flying over their own country? We we tolerate such intervention in our country or coonsider it what it is, an act of war?
Is our president’s function to represent our best interests at the table of the UN in compliance with our laws or to use our troops to move forward the agenda of the UN without regard to our laws? He got the approval of the UN before committing our troops to battle, he got the approval of the Arab League, what about the approval of our own people? Does he represent us first and foremost or the UN?
Isn’t freedom the right of the people to choose their own government even if it isn’t one we’d like to see?
You’re raising issues much more complicated than simply the cost of gas. Regarding the cost of gas, I suggest that we allow the free maarket to determine that. The free market is generally the most efficient determinant long term.
If the market was really free, I’d agree. Now, there are no competing energy sources for transportation other than oil. It’s either use it or shank’s mare. The simple short term solution is to allow the citification of flex fuel cars for all new vehicles and let any small entrepreneur compete as a road side vender. Driving on methanol even with a loss of mileage of 10% or more is worth it if the cost is 30% less. There is no competition of oil products until the ev becomes more viable and energy sources for electricity to power them is more varied. Then the market will be free, and only then.
The free market is not always the most efficient…have you seen drug costs ? Govt. Intervention is often needed to encourage proper marketing practices
The author of this post laughs at those who think the price of gasoline is too high. I hope he puts his wallet where his principals are and buys his gasoline at the most expensive place in town. The high standard of living enjoyed by most Americans is a direct result of comparatively low energy costs. It isn?t a coincidence that our last three recessions coincided with sudden rises in global oil prices. The price of fuel in England is sited as an example of a ?reasonable? gasoline cost. England is the size of Oregon and doesn?t have to transport goods 3000mi overland to supply a population of 400 million. A large part of our fuel costs are directly due to taxes and don?t include the $0.54 a gallon tax credit manufactures get for producing ethanol. If the author wants to pay higher taxes he should take it up with his legislators.
The author suggests that if we had to push our cars we would be happy to pay more for gasoline. In India where gasoline is expensive and labor, mostly non union, is cheap you can hire someone to pedal you around town. Now, there is an economic model we can aspire to. The author would pay more to support democracy in the Middle East? He already has. When the Iraq war cost $2 billon a week Americans were purchasing 2.6 billions of gasoline a week. That works out to $0.76 a gallon and doesn?t include the lives lost and the cost to our veterans and their families. Believing democracy is good is one thing, believing that democratic governments will surely be friendly to the US is silly.
Anyone who doesn?t believe unions are important should read Upton Sinclair?s ?The Jungle?, but unions are like any other human institution. When they become powerful they become more interested in projecting their power than acting on the best interests of their constituents.
While I understand the point you’re making, pharmcuticals are probebly not the best example. The drug market is perhaps the least free market in the country. The products themselves are very highly regulated, creator sof new products are protected from competition for years, and the bulk of the revenue in the market comes from insurance companies paying for product prescribed by physicians actively courted by the drug manufacturers. The consumer neither chooses nor pays for the bulk of the product.
My free market comment was with respect to gas prices. I’ve long been an advocate of investment in development of an alternative infrstructure to support alternative fuel sources for vehicles, my preferred being electricity.
I guess my main point was that the situation in the middle east is far more complex than simply whether we’re willing to pay higher gas prices to support democracy. Paying higher prices, and even intervening in the affairs of other countries, in the quest to create democracies in the middle east may be totally unrelated to whether or not democracies actually develop there. Far too often we’ve supported revolutions only to end up with far more brutal dicattorships than the one overthrown. And of democracies do develop in the middle east, that does not mean we’ll not see rises in gas prices and further erosion of our own economy.
When we intervene militarily in another country we need far better justification than simply a philosophical one. We don’t have such justification in Libya. Our only justification there is that we’ve sent our troops to commit an act of war on another country at the behest of the U.N. That is wrong. Our President, the man who sent the troops, is supposed to be acting in OUR best interestss and in accordance with OUR laws. He isn’t. Mark my words, we will see terrorist attacks on our soil in retaliation for what we’ve done. If Kadaffi should remain in power they’ll be declaration of war, if he’s run out they’ll be more covert and less intense, but they’ll happen. And if he is run out, we hae no idea if Libya will end up with a democratic government of freedom for their people.
Hi
I live in the UK and currently we pay equivalent to $8.30 for gas and $8.40 for Diesel, We are coming to the US this year on holiday and we have deliberately hired V8 engined cars because US fuel is so cheap compared to UK prices… even with a V8 powered car our fuel bill will be cheaper than driving our small engined fuel efficient cars
The author of this post laughs at those who think the price of gasoline is too high.
How do you go from “It amuses me…” to “The author of this post laughs at those…”? That’s quite a stretch. I didn’t use the words “funny” or “humorous,” so I don’t know where you are getting that.
If you don’t know the difference between amusement and humor, it might be best to keep quiet. It’s better to be silent and thought a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt.
I hope he puts his wallet where his principals are and buys his gasoline at the most expensive place in town.
Will you please point out where I said buying more expensive fuel will help the revolutionaries? I said, in a later post, that paying higher fuel prices doesn’t help them, but it is more of a side effect of their struggle.
The price of fuel in England is sited as an example of a ?reasonable? gasoline cost.
Not by me.
In India where gasoline is expensive and labor, mostly non union, is cheap you can hire someone to pedal you around town.
What does that have to do with the price of lipstick in Bermuda? Are you really comparing a rickshaw, which has little room for cargo, and can’t go faster than 6 MPH, to a car, which can hold a lot of cargo and travel 70 MPH? Wow. Talk about a case of apples and oranges!
The author would pay more to support democracy in the Middle East?
Absolutely not. I merely think griping about having to pay high fuel prices, but still support the spread of democracy, is hypocritical.
The tone of your post is quite angry, and I don’t understand why you direct your anger at me. Perhaps it would be wise to stop trying to read between the lines, and switch to decaf.
There is no such amount (short of all I have in the bank). Transportation is a necessary item.
That said - higher fuel prices make EVERYTHING more expensive. Cheap energy drive the US economy. High prices destroy it. And there is NO reason for this whatsoever. Besides developing more domestic energy, we should be using what we already have. Natural Gas.
Without ANY tax subsidies, Methanol made from abundant and cheap Natural Gas is cheaper than Ethanol with tax subsidies, and sustainable (for a LONG time based on known reserves). It requires no major infrastructure changes (a liquid fuel), and can easily be used in any vehicle. Even retrofitting reasonably new vehicles is very inexpensive (basically an ECU update and new fuel injectors).
But our Govt. representatives (a term I use lightly) won’t promote it, because it delivers few votes and election contributions. Another great example of why America is crumbling from within. Rome calling…