At what gas price would you telecommute?
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How? (Score:5, Insightful)
There is no good fix for the sprawl. The other two are at least somewhat addressable by some means of legislation or industry curtailing.
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Re:How? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:How? (Score:4, Interesting)
It's nice to see when someone really gets it. Gasoline, around the globe, isn't a supply and demand-priced commodity. Demand will always be there and as the worldwide population increases, it will only continue to rise. I give it about 20 years before we see a paradigm shift to alternative fuels like hydrogen really take hold. Even then, US corporations will prevent adoption until the last drop of oil is extracted from a previously protected wildlife reserve. NOW is the time that major infrastructure changes should be made, but instead of spending record profits on upgrading infrastructure, it's just going straight into the bank.
Don't be fooled by what CNN, Fox News, Wall Street Journal or anyone else tells you about the cause of oil prices. There are a hundred excuses at any given time and they are all lies. During Katrina, when we saw a huge spike, it was because Gulf refineries were damaged. Another week and it's trouble in Venezuela or Nigeria. Another week and it's failures in Iraq. None of it has any direct implications for Exxon and friends, because if it did, then they wouldn't be making huge profits...profits would be flat. The opposite is actually true and the current US administration is complacent on letting big oil do their thing.
However there has to be a limit. The more people spend on fuel, the less disposable income they have for other goods and services or even mortgages. Gas prices simply cannot continue to skyrocket while the economy limps along with GDP increases of 1.5% or less annually. Eventually it will become so expensive that people will trade in their Hummers for a Prius or start taking advantage of public transport (where available).
I really hate to even think of the US economy and fuel prices because the system is so corrupt there's not much you can do to influence change at this point. Just pray that we get a better administration in 2008.
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My idea to fix everything, 4/5 vote to pass an
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Because realistically the federal government should only be involved in those things that nearly everyone agrees it should be involved in, otherwise leave it up to local
That was the thought behind the 9th and 10th Amendments which sought to limit the rights and powers of the federal government to a small, and explicit, set of duties and, in doing so, prevent the runaway abuse of government by the established gentry such as they had in England.
We're so far away from that now that nothing short of a revolution of monumental proportions could ever set the record straight.
Re:How? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:How? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:How? (Score:5, Funny)
So... you're telling me, there are other countries in the world? And that these other countries have economies? And these economies change, which, in turn, requires a shift in the required natural resources, including the amount of oil they require?
I'm sorry, but I find that a little hard to believe.
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Re:How? (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:How? (Score:5, Insightful)
The other two are at least somewhat addressable by some means of legislation or industry curtailing.
A more sane way of solving the problem is to have the consumer pay the true cost of energy. Does the gasoline you buy require us to import from unstable governments, resulting in a higher defense bill when we are in more conflicts over it? Put a tax on gas to foot the bill. Does gasoline hurt the environment? Put a tax on it to cover the cost.
Worried about tax payer backlash? Give out a refund check to cover the average cost. Those who buy the fuel efficient car or choose not to live an hour from work will make a killing. Those who don't will get killed. I bet you'd see habits change REAL quick.
In
Re:How? (Score:5, Insightful)
- Having it cost twice as much at the pump, or
- Having the cost of the increase added to your other taxes?
If petrol cost the same in the USA as it does in much of the rest of the world (well over $5/gallon), then you would almost certainly see a drop in demand.Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
A tax of 38-60 cents per gallon is clearly tied to the amount consumed. (A gallon is 3.78 litres.)
Worse, a lot of the cost of using petrol isn't even being paid at the moment, it's being deferred.
This assertion is unsupported and seems false. I assert the contrary.
If petrol cost the same in the USA as it does in much of the rest of the world...
...that would be bad for the USA. We have our own problems. We don't need to add more problems and make eve
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Distance to drive USA vs Europe (Score:3, Interesting)
The average commute in the USA is around 20 miles. That's 2.5x what most europeans see that do drive and not use public transportation. So, europe I'm showing at around US$6.72 a gallon.
Re:Distance to drive USA vs Europe (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:How? (Score:4, Insightful)
Gas Price in Europe is $10 Per Gallon (Score:5, Insightful)
Such high prices in Europe does not hurt the European standard of living because many Europeans use public transportation; bus and trains are relatively cheap to ride. In the USA, many Americans refuse to use public transportation due to class snobbery. In my neck of the woods, about 80% of the passengers on the bus is either impoverished Americans (from ghetto neighborhoods) or illegal aliens from Mexico. The occupancy of the buses is about 50% during most of the day. Meanwhile, the freeways are packed with late-model cars driven by the wealthier class.
Frankly, even if gas prices increased to $10 per gallon in the USA, Americans would not necessarily experience a decline in their standard of living -- if they use public transportation. It is cheap although it may be slighly inconvenient because you must time your life according to the bus or train schedule.
Note that American politicians never compare European gas prices to American gas prices. The politicians just tell Americans what they want to hear: "Gas at $3.50 is too expensive. We Americans are a sad, pathetic victim of the greedy oil companies. We should force them to lower gas prices back to $1.50 per gallon so we can enjoy your monster SUV."
These are the same Americans who overwhelmingly supported the invasion and occupation of Iraq.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Bob
Re:Gas Price in Europe is $10 Per Gallon (Score:5, Interesting)
Why do you live 100 miles from where you work? (Score:3, Insightful)
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OK, so what happens when you move 100 miles towards your workplace, then you're fired? Or what if your wife works 100 miles in the other direction, now she has to commute 200 miles to work. You haven't really thought this through. Maybe you're single and are willing to live like a gypsy moving around following work, other people would rather have more stability in their lives.
Re:Gas Price in Europe is $10 Per Gallon (Score:4, Insightful)
As for public transportation, it's feasible -- in the metropolitan areas. Out here in farm country, it's a lost cause (and the lower property taxes and intangibles like better schools probably make up for the extra money spent on fuel).
Bushian fantasies (Score:3, Insightful)
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Also, for a lot of people there is no viable alternative. The US style of sprawling out towns into miles and miles of suburbs means that you HAVE to have a car, often there isn't even a public trans system.
Public transport here is subsidized. Heavily subsidized. I get the whole town for 500 bucks a year, almost round the clock with 3-15 minutes wait time, tops. In clean, safe and reliable trains and
Re:Gas Price in Europe is $10 Per Gallon (Score:5, Informative)
If only our government would spend more of the money they take from us, and spend it back on us. Instead, what I see is them taking my money so they can go bomb some people. The worst part is? I have to live with the knowledge, that I, for my part, am working hard every day to help pay for those weapons.
Gas is too expensive at $3? HA! Lower the damn income tax rate, and tax the gas consumption. A responsible government would do this. Unfortunately, if there are heavier taxes brought on gas, our income tax wont fall to compensate, we'll just be paying for more missiles, and guns.
Just imagine. For a minute.. impossible as it may seem. If $6/gallon were levied as a gas tax in all counties with a population density over a certain threshold, to pay for a public transport system for that county. To make it faster, cleaner, safer and more convenient. I'd gladly pay $9 a gallon to gas my car up then.
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What planet are you from, dreaming about anything that is efficiently operated by a government, that is faster, cleaner and convenient??? If you get your wish you'd be paying $9/gal and your money will be wasted, misdirected, and otherwise lost
Chicken and the egg (Score:4, Interesting)
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Yes, we paid more ba
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I think you've hit the nail on the head here. The road system in America is significantly subsidized, yet the rail system and public transportation systems are expected to make a profit! What. The. Fuck?!
Make all public roads toll roads (Score:3, Interesting)
I think you've hit the nail on the head here. The road system in America is significantly subsidized, yet the rail system and public transportation systems are expected to make a profit! What. The. Fuck?!
Which is why I personally believe all public roads should be toll roads. Repeal the tax on gasoline entirly, and all other taxes that go into keeping up the roads. Use the tolls that are generated to fix the roads. Hell, Roads could even be entirely private, and *gasp* could be made to be profitable! (I know, asserting that profit making is good is blasphemy in slashdot's eyes).
If Americans had to pay for the use of the roads, explicitly, they may turn to public transportation. At least pay per use w
Re:Make all public roads toll roads (Score:4, Insightful)
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Its non-existence in most places is a pretty good deterrent. I would much rather use public transportation than own my own vehicle. I hate driving, dealing with other drivers, paying for insurance & vehicle maintenance & gasoline, making the yearly donation to the DMV to keep it registered, and still having it break down from time to time. A lot of people consider the automobile as symbol
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Amen. I considered the bus schedules (there are trains but none useful to my needs) and I came up with the result that with two bicycles, one at each end, I could actually manage to be at home for a total eight hours a day if I had to rely on public transportation. If there were a bus that ran between my city and the one I work in, and buses that came within half a mile of either from the central locations, I still would spend four hours a day in transit. I would not be willing to give up that time with my
Re:Gas Price in Europe is $10 Per Gallon (Score:4, Insightful)
On top of all that, once I already have a car, it's cheaper to use it drive myself to work than to pay for the bus fare. (It's about $3 for a day's driving, $4 for a day's busing -- $6 for the bus if I pay for each ride individually)
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I live around Scranton PA - it's known as the electric city because it had the first successful electric trolley system in the U.S.. You could go pretty much anywhere using public transportation. Stops were frequent and the grid reached just about everywhere. Today the trolley system is no more. It was replaced by buses for a time, which worked pretty well, but is now reduced to about 8 bus ro
The comparison don't hold (Score:2)
Here are some link about this tax rate on fuel in europe :
About.com on fuel gas price (first paragraph) [about.com]
US reluctant to match Europe Gas price taxation [signonsandiego.com]
Quote :
For decades, European countries have imposed high taxes on fuel to encourage conservation and fuel-efficient technologies while funding publ
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The bus service is only available in the morning and evening hours on weekdays and no bus service on weekends.
On top of that the bus drivers don't stick to schedule sometimes its 15 minutes early or an 1/2 hour late.
Re:Gas Price in Europe is $10 Per Gallon (Score:5, Informative)
In much the USA, many Americans refuse to use public transportation because they want to get to work in a half-hour rather than spending four hours hopping from bus to bus to train to bus. That is certainly the situation in the San Francisco Bay Area. I am not exaggerating those times, either; a few years ago, I had a contract in Pleasanton, about 35 minutes by car from my home in Sunnyvale. My car needed to be in the shop for a few days so I decided to take public transit. How bad could it be, right? Pretty damned bad, [511.org] is the answer. (The bus stop at the start of that route is about a 10-minute walk from my house; there are none closer. And note the price, too, though a monthly transit pass would cut that way down for a regular user.)
Who I was sitting next to was not the issue; the issue was that it took so damned long to get to the office that, if I had to do that every day, I'd be doing literally nothing but riding the bus/train, working, and sleeping. That's why you mostly see poor people on the bus: people with enough money to buy and operate a car would rather spend several extra hours a day with their families.
One root cause, in this area at least, is idiotic zoning policy that makes it illegal for most people to live close to where they work. The cities around here are divided into residential areas with the occasional convenience store or restaurant, and industrial/commercial areas with no housing other than the occasional programmer sleeping under his desk after an all-nighter. As a result, there is very little of interest within walking distance from most people's homes. And since those same zoning laws generally prohibit buildings more than a couple floors high even in the commercial areas, everything is spread out so far and wide that it's utterly impossible to design good public transit systems like those of higher-density cities. (Well, you *could* design one, but it would cost so much to operate that people would find it cheaper to drive their own cars.)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
A good point; don't forget that the zoning policies are constantly being maintained by NIMBY homeowners who dread the consequences of higher density close to their neighborhoods, for example in Menlo Park recently [yahoo.com], a plan to build high density housing near the Caltrain was shot down by the wealthy NIMBY homeowners who would like to preserve the suburban character of their ne
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You're not exaggerating for the Minneapolis metro area either. We own one car and my wife takes public transportation daily (we both rode the train downtown from another suburb 15 mins away last night -- the nearest st
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Nonsense. For a large percentage of Americans, mass transit is simply not an option. For example, there is no mass transit between my home and my job ... period. Secondarily, it is obviously much more convenient and comfortable to drive your own vehicle rather than adapting your schedule and personal comforts to public/mass transit. It has nothing to do with snobbery and everything to do with convenience and comfort.
Buses don't go to where I work (Score:3, Interesting)
I don't think so. Here (Minneapolis, MN) many people do use the bus to commute, and I'd think a lot more would if only the buses would go to their workplaces at the times they work. You see, the transit system here assumes that everyone works from 9 a.m to 5 p.m. in downtown. Work in another suburb? You're outta luck. Don't hold to the traditional 9-5 schedule? Again, no buses for you.
I'm a student living at home.
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So no, not $10 per gallon, but well over twice the price of the US.
Bob
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The city planning was carried out fairly well and the suburbs aren't too sprawled compared to other US cities and everything's pretty decent.
You can thank Brigham Young for that one. Not only to he plan the city on a grid, but also made it so you could do a U turn with a team of oxen with out having to back up.
From the transit plan I have seen for the wasatch mountain area, they plan on eventually having commuter rail going from Provo to Ogden, starting in Ogden first. They are also planning on expanding light rail out to west valley and other 'suburbs'.
I served an LDS mission in SLC (from 1999-2001) and would always use the light rail to
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For going to the shops it might make more sense to use a car, carry the shopping in the boot and not try and carry stuff on and off busses or trains.
And the biggest thing of all, congestion. If i wanted to drive to Uni from home it's
There is no good fix for the sprawl. (Score:5, Interesting)
http://www.personalrapidtransit.com/ [personalrapidtransit.com]
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I take the Chicago L for twenty minutes a day so I can... sit at a desk for eight hours and code or manage databases through our VPN.
It's this pointless adherence to 1980's methodology t
Re:How? (Score:4, Insightful)
Rapidly growing teleworkers. (Score:3, Funny)
Yep, now I never have to leave my Mom's basement except for trips to 7-11 to restock the fridge.
Ohhh! You meant the number of teleworkers?? Oops. Never mind.
I've been riding my bike (Score:4, Insightful)
I blame a lot of the fuel efficiency problems on city planers. The layouts of our cities are really bad for fuel economy, especially place like San Francisco and Los Angeles. California also suffers badly from a lack of a good public transit system. We have buses but it's not good enough.
Part of the problem is also social. People want their big tanks (Hummer, Suburban etc) because they feel safe in them. For whatever reason people equate size with safety even though it's not the actual case.
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In my opinion, it's a bit of an arms race. People are less safe in small cars because of all the large cars.
(and btw, don't think I'm defending SUV drivers. I drive an old Vespa as well as a bicycle here in San Francisco, so I'm no fan of SUVs )
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Why would they compensate more than the amount of increased danger?
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The SUV carries a great deal more mass, which makes collisions with it more energetic. Now, the SUV can expend some of that mass as extra "armor", which makes them safer for their occupants.
If everyone drove the modern day equivalent of the bubble car [wikipedia.org], with modern materials they'd be very safe - and the pedestrians, cyclists, motorcyclists, etc, would be much safer too. Oh, and they'd save craploads of gas. Of course, this is impractical for everyone
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I think they should create a NASCAR-like race using SUVs. Then people would really see the difference in handling between them and a low-slung car.
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There's this article about how unsafe SUVs are for their occupants [gladwell.com] and there was a whole thing about how much better it is to be in an accident in a (tiny, by American standards) BMW Mini vs a huge Ford F-150 [google.com].
Pure size does not equal safety the same way that raw megahertz don't equal performance.
Of course (Score:2)
California has one of the most benign and hospitable climates on Earth, and can't be used as an example.
I love public transporation and am all for it, but it sickens me t
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Congress! (Score:3, Insightful)
Congress!
Let's see what congress HASN'T done...
What, exactly HAS congress done to lower gas prices? Ethanol subsidies? Hydrogen research? Those haven't done much, have they? I remember 7 years ago when I saw a station out of town with gas for 99 cents a gallon. I'd be very surprised to find a station right now in my area at triple that. Ok, I know, they passed tax rebates when you buy a hybrid. But they passed them when hybrids were very hard to get and the expire this year as hybrids are getting easier to get. Oops.
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Re:Congress! (Score:5, Informative)
The big problem this summer is refining capacity. We've already seen the spike in oil prices into the $60/bbl range caused by increased Chinese demand for oil, and that hasn't really budged a whole lot since last year. Oil inventories have been good since then. The reason prices are so high right now is because of gasoline supply concerns, i.e., post-refining, and while I'm in favor of expanding drilling operations into both the eastern Gulf of Mexico and ANWR to offset worldwide demand increases (and thereby obtain price relief from increases over the last couple of years), this year's gasoline increases have nothing to do with that.
There were already a number of scheduled refinery maintenance shutdowns, and then BP had a major refinery go down for "unscheduled maintenance". Personally, I'm a bit suspicious of any unscheduled refinery maintenance. One of Enron's tactics to manipulate the electricity market was to create artificial shortages by calling up power plants and asking them to shut down temporarily. Hopefully, that's what Congressional hearings will be looking into. If there are no shenanigans going on at that level, then really there's nothing punitive they can do about it. What you're seeing is simple supply and demand combined with smart moves by speculators who bought gasoline low and are now selling it high. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if some gasoline retailers are buying a small portion of their supply at higher-than-retail just to keep their gas stations in stock.
Refiners are stuck with expanding current operations, which is generally limited to technology updates and expanding into whatever surrounding land they have available. Unfortunately, it's late enough in the game now that refiners are going to resist the urge to build new large-scale refining capacity even if they could get a license to, because ethanol is starting to gear up, and by the time the refiners could actually get a new plant built (including the years upon years of environmental impact studies), the demand for gasoline will already be dropping in favor of alternative fuels (probably increased ethanol-gasoline blends, but that's still less gasoline being needed).
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Industry also had little incentive or desire to build refineries. And it's
better to use less gasoline as well. And refineries have had capacity
expansion equivalent to 10 new refineries.
There are some annoying problems with clean air standards raising prices,
but one of the principal ones comes from Federal political interference.
In California, the refiners are FORCED, against their desire, to use
ethanol imported expensively (and not compatible with cheap pipelines)
from politically po
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So here we are with a very predictable rise in gasoline. Do people take responsiblity for thier choices? No they complain that the government is not giving handouts
Drilling in ANWR? You're kidding, right? (Score:3, Informative)
According to the CIA World Factbook of 2007 [nationmaster.com], the US is currently consuming 20.7 million barrels of oil per day. Let's suppose that "the amount of technically recoverable oil in the ANWR 1002 area 'is estimated to be between 4.3 and 11.8 billion barrels ... with a mean value of 7.7 billion barrels.'" [mediamatters.org]
Quick, do the math. 7.7 billion divided by 20.7 million per day gives us ... 371 days -- just over a year's worth. And it will take about 10 years [nrdc.org] for the drilling to come online.
Personally, I don't think
Leave Oil Reserves Untapped for Strategic Reasons (Score:3, Insightful)
# Allow drilling off the continental shelf in the gulf
Not a good idea.
Oil pulled out of there now would probably simply go on the global market. Since it's not a particularly huge amount in comparison to what's out there, it probably wouldn't depress prices significantly. Especially since competition for industrial resources is getting steeper as China, India, and some third-world countries enter the game.
At some point, it seems likely the peak oil shinola really will splatter upon
We were warned. (Score:5, Insightful)
We were given a whack in the head about thirty years ago. We got up, dusted ourselves off and carried on as if nothing had happened.
Re:We were warned. (Score:5, Informative)
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Good premise, but (Score:2)
Congress got us into this mess... (Score:2)
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How did we get into this mess? (Score:2)
-Environmental regulation have gone out of control. The regs are to the point that no one has the $$$ to build any new plants
- NIMBY - Not In My BackYard - Not one wants to live by a stinky, noisy refinery. I know, I've lived next to one my whole life; it isn't pleasant.
-Each state has at least 50 cents of tax that gets directly added to the gas at the pump in addition the other taxes the companies have to pay (import tax, environmental and safety fees)
- There been 3 major refinery fires within a fi
Refinery capacity has increased significantly (Score:2)
existing refineries have had their capacity increased very
significantly over a couple of decades, equivalent of
10 new refineries.
And, yes, old refineries were really big sources of nasty
air pollution. Stop knocking the environmentalists---they've
made life much nicer in many ways. There are kooks, of course, but
air pollution restrictions on refineries are not kooky.
Gasoline is expensive, overall, because we're using fossil fuel
which is reaching in
It's not because of crude oil prices (Score:2)
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Lol, you betcha. Bless your naivety.
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Anyways the $3 is half of what several Europeans and Asian countries are paying for gasoline so its not that bad.
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here [economist.com] you go. It doesn't actually support your point of view; gasoline prices are set by supply & demand, and as the article says, we actually ship gasoline from Europe because of our shortage in refinery capacity.
And the rest of the world asks... (Score:4, Interesting)
Why is tax on gasoline in the USA so ridiculously low?
Either that or our (UK here, but I'm sure it applies elsewhere in Europe) tax is ridiculously high. Hmmmmm.
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Why is tax on gasoline in the USA so ridiculously low [compared with Europe]?
The problem is that unlike Europe, most of the United States doesn't have a viable public transportation system. Unless you live in a major city, you're pretty much stuck driving - the closest bus stop to my house is about 10 miles away, and I live in one of the more densely populated suburban areas in the country.
In Europe, driving is a luxury, but in most of the US, it's a necessity. I could understand places like NYC imposing a high gasoline tax, but in much of the country, it would be an unfair burden
Re:And the rest of the world asks... (Score:4, Insightful)
Because, unlike in Europe, our cities are new enough to have been (stupidly) designed for cars instead of people. Now we're screwed, and have to have artificially low prices on gas to compensate.
Uh, only because of reduced price (Score:2)
My only reason (because we know how great cable tv is) was one year internet at $19.95, total $29.95 w/analog cable, not the regular price like $59/mo, which was a non-starter for me for many, many years (though I previosly while living in a big city).
When this is pricing is over I will look for other options; wireless is becoming widespread even in rural areas.
How did we get into this mess? (Score:3, Insightful)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commo
This is why socialism doesn't work and why market economics does.
socialism, good and bad (Score:3, Insightful)
This is why socialism doesn't work and why market economics does.
So, you're saying that we should
- cut back on corporate welfare,
- stop subsidizing oil companies, and
- let gasoline prices rise to their true market value?
Sounds good to me!Re:How did we get into this mess? (Score:4, Informative)
Dude, go take Economics 101 before you spout off nonsense in public, it might save you the embarassment.
The Tragedy of the Commons is a problem with a free market system, because the Commons is an externality: the users of the Commons don't pay the cost of the maintenance equally to the profit they gain from exploiting it, therefore they have an incentive to exhaust the Commons.
Collective action, either by taxation (so that the externality is reflected in the costs) or by outright rationing access to the Commons is the only thing that can stop the Tragedy occuring. And collective action to regulate access to a Commons is one of the defining characteristics of Socialism. Depending on how this is implemented it may be either old-fashioned authoritarian Socialism, Libertarian Socalism, or a mixed model like European-style Social Democracy, but the free market is definitely no solution here.
MartPositive change (Score:5, Insightful)
I hope soestion (Score:3, Interesting)
I don't even drive.. I have a 50 mile train journey each day, which takes 2 hours either way (if I'm lucky). I could obviously drive that distance much faster if it wasn't for the ludicrous congestion at either end of the trip. I did the math and even with my teensy little 796cc engine it still costs me less on the train (even if they did raise the fare by a full 13% this year), what with parking. And on the train I can read, or even work sometimes.
But even so, I'd prefer to be able to get up an hour later in the morning, I'd even work an extra hour! A nice comfy purpose-built office space at home would be infinitely superior to the ridiculous battery-hen office where everyone gabbles and cackles and holds meetings around my desk. I can't be expected to perform duties that are based on the conjunction of creativity and focus in that environment. Even cubes would be preferable to a totally open-plan office... thank heavens for my Etymotic earplug-phones or I'd never get anything done at all.
So anyway, my point is, that the public transport in this country sucks. The typical response of the rail company to an increase in passenger numbers is to raise prices. If the price of fuel drives people off the roads (and our fuel taxes here make our gasoline roughly double the price it is in 'merca), then the trains simultaneously get more crowded, late, and expensive. The last remaining palatable option is teleworking - may everyone embrace it.
Not only that, it's the most environmentally friendly option.
I love high gas prices! (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah, and I'm sure your profit margin has absolutely nothing to do with it.
As an environment-conscious individual, I relish higher gas prices. $3 a gallon? Why not $5 or $10? I truly believe hitting people in the wallet is the *only* way to incite change in habits as deeply-rooted as our gasoline addiction. People need to realize that carpooling, investing in very fuel-efficient vehicles (for example, I drive a manual transmission Saturn--I average 30mpg city) or looking toward hybrid/bio-diesel options is not just a fanciful dream but a necessary reality. Alternative fuel vehicles are a reality, but the only way we will leverage them into the mainstream is through the power of our collective consumer's almighty dollar (and pound, and yen...
Teleworkers are growing (Score:4, Funny)
I guess that walk to the car and back each day was keeping them slim.
How much do you all really spend on gas? (Score:4, Interesting)
In the past 12 months, gas has constituted 0.81% of our family spending. For the 12 months before that, it was 0.66%. A good-sized bump in relative terms, I suppose, but one that can be absorbed without pain in relative terms because the number was so small to begin with.
My wife's office is only about five miles away from our house, but on the other hand, she does have to do a fair amount of driving for work-related reasons during the day, so I imagine her work-related driving isn't terribly outside the norm. I do work at home, though for non-gas-related reasons, but even if you double our gas spending to get to the more typical two-commute family, we'd still be at less than 2 percent of our family budget -- certainly not something that would put us in the poorhouse. And while we're not hurting for cash, we're certainly not wealthy -- between the two of us we make less than $100K a year, less than a lot of IT folks make with one salary.
My question is, are we some kind of freaks when it comes to gas use compared to most Americans? We live in a city neighborhood where we can walk to places for some basic errands and our grocery store is two-minute drive away; on the other hand, the city we live has a pretty lousy public transit system, so if we're doing things outside our neighborhood, we invariably drive. We don't drive a big SUV, but we don't drive a hybrid either: and our sedan is 13 years old, so I imagine it's not particularly fuel efficient when compared to new cars of the same size. Yet I feel like gas prices would have to triple before we'd be really forced to reorder our priorities to feed our car. Are we really so far outside the American norm when it comes to gas use? Or are gas prices just one of those things that you see two or three times a month and so you really notice when they go up, but it doesn't realy have as much of an impact on your life as you think?
Re:How much do you all really spend on gas? (Score:5, Insightful)
This is a much larger issue than your monthly gasoline bill.
Size does matter! (Score:4, Interesting)
I found the public transportation system of Europe to be wonderful.
But the US is just bigger and that means its more difficult to create and maintain a public transportation system.
I live in Atlanta GA close to I-285 which is 60 miles full circle.
As slow as traffic can be, I'd prefer public transportation, if it only existed close enough to where I work, but it doesn't.
Perhaps the real problem is that of figuring out a better public transportation system. One that can handle the size problem yet help to keep traffic congestion to a minimum whele itself having low fuel cost.
Oh I know.....Teleportation........ hmmmm.... of work, not people (until that gets figured out....)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
$80 a month will break a lot of middle class families, or at least make life a lot more uncomfortable. Remember how we've been hearing about record levels of consumer spending, record levels of consumer debt, and a savings rate of about 0% among working families?
At some point, the American consumer breaks. When that happens, the whole world's economy will feel it.
(That said, I t
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
It's not rocket science.
I was at the store this week and there was a huge ass pickup truck, towing a boat with a 4 wheeler in the bed of the pickup. Almost everyone around here drives a pickup or some giant SUV because they "need" a vehicle that big to tow their boat, camper, 4 wheeler, motorcycles or whatever. They'll drive a vehicle that gets 9 miles to a gallon all the time so they can get 5 mpg towing their boat to the lake and burning gas all day water skiing once or twice a month during the summe