Slashdot Mirror
Much Ado About Gas Prices
markmcb writes "It seems that a week cannot pass without finding big news about gas prices. They're up, they're down ... but why do we care so much? OmniNerd posted an article that aims to put gas prices in perspective. The author takes a look at other commodities and their price variances and applies some simple math in order to make the claim that best-gas-price-hunting is an effort that could be better used on other products. From the article, 'Why the disproportionate emphasis on gas prices in our culture, then? Although some cite a failure of politicians or media populists to account for inflation and purchasing power changes, I think it is simply because gas prices are in your face.'" IMO, the other side to the price of gas is that, especially in developed countries, it has a pervasive effect throughout all layers of the economy — food prices (because of the trucking), schools (busing), etc., etc.
Perhaps the size of the price sign is what matters. Gas prices are shown in large high contrast fonts on every street corner. The price sticker on a bottle of shampoo is less noticeable or sometimes not noticeable at all. You just pick it up and put it in your cart.
In mathmatical terms, figuring that the price sign at a gas station is about 6 feet by 4 feet, and the price sticker on a shelf for a bottle of shampoo is 2 inches by 1 inch, the gas station sign is about 1,728 times larger and thus more emphasis is placed on the price of gas.
The average price for a gallon of gas in that article was about $2.90, give or take a few cents.
Here in Finland a litre of 95 octane gas costs about 1.263e (1.295 for 98 octane and 1.008 for diesel).
1.263e / litre = 4.7809751e / gallon = $6.04697 / gallon
And you are complaining that gas prices are high? Well, at least these prices are a good incentive for me to use public transport..
Follow your Euro bills at EBT
This article is just a very vigorous proof that you're an idiot if you spend any time at all searching for the cheapest gas. We all know that some gas stations don't follow the unspoken price rule where you don't undercut your competitors and they won't undercut you. Some people must feel very smart finding those gas stations. How much gas they waste getting to them might be interesting to compute also. Oh well, as long as it makes you feel good inside.
I remember when Exxon Mobile reported the largest profits ever received by a company in a single quarter. While they were raking in that dough, they were telling me that hurricane Katrina and the war had left them with no oil at all. They warned me gas prices were going to go up. Then why the hell did they make record profits?
What I would like to read an article about what the hell happened with the congressional hearing that was supposed to investigate Exxon Mobile? And we're subsidizing gasoline companies through preferential tax codes? Am I the only person wondering what is going on here?
My work here is dung.
Come over here to sunny Britan and experence some real 'gas' prices!
The other main reason for the focus on gas prices: the short-term demand is not affected substantially by changes in price. Thus, these changes must simply be absorbed until technology or capital investments can catch up with the changes. Price volitility further compounds the problem because of the high capital costs of changing behaviors to converse gas, meaning those investments are unlikely to be made unless the price variations are percevied as indicitive of lenger term trends.
The point that wasn't put forward so well in the article is that the Gas price can change everything.
Your shopping for example will go up in price as it costs more to transport it. Your electricity/gas at home can go up in price too.
Gas prices is one of those easily understood metrics that happens to affect everything we do (in developed countries).
--Rob
Towards the Singularity.
Because pointing out a 40% jump in gas prices is startling to people who are bad at math and don't track their expenses very well?
Maybe if they made headlines like "gas prices jump enough to force you to cut back on 1 Starbucks grande per week to break even!" people would understand the implications a little better?
TFA is noting a behavior of looking around for the cheapest gas station. That is, driving 10 miles to save a nickel a gallon on gas.
It's not talking about how gas went from $1.50 a gallon to $3.20 a gallon in the span of two years or so, and how that has impacted people's decisions.
The reason we care so much is that many of us spend more on gas than any other commodity. We consider it as essential as food. And its price varies wildly from season to season. I spend roughly $300 US each month on gas currently, and when it was higher you bet your ass I cared that I was spending an extra $50 a month.
Expect gas prices to continue to decline up to the November elections. Oil companies will forgo the profits short-term in order to give oil-friendly Republicans a better shot at the polls.
After the election, look for a price spike, probably blamed on increased heating demand and Middle East instability.
And no, you can't have my tinfoil hat.
It seems to me that the only thing he proved was that shopping at Wal-Mart instead of buying all your "pharmacy items" at the local pharmacy will save you more money than finding the cheapest gas station.
This is neither a surprise nor relevant.
Sure, some people go overboard by going out of their way for a station that's 2 cents cheaper, but in my area, a 1/2 mile drive up the road to Valero saves me an average of 10 cents per gallon over the Mobil and Citgo stations next to my house. $3-$5 a month isn't super-significant, but it does matter, so I do the drive.
Many of the assumptions made in the article are not valid for many people. For example, I know that the gas station two blocks from my house, in the center of town, is at least 25 cents more expensive per gallon (and has been as high as 32!) than the one 2 miles outside of town. This is enough of a price disparity that I will always go to the cheaper station. Additionally, since I know that the other station is always going to be cheaper, I don't really spend any time searching for it; I know its there, and exactly how long and how much gas it will take to get there. Unless my car runs out of gas in my driveway, it's just not worth it for me to go to the closer station with its premium price (for convenience, I suppose).
As Americans, we are spoiled!
We are accustomed to cheap gas and all its by-products (heating oil, propane, electricity, etc.) for some time now. So much so, that we take it for granted. On top of that we extend ourselves to the max, getting credit cards and running up debt like crazy. So, when all of sudden this cheap energy source doubles in price and now stresses everyones budget, we scream foul. That is why gas prices are so closely watched and such a hot topic. We can afford the spike. Other countries have dealt with high energy prices by promoting mass transit, build more efficient cars, etc. But we just can't relate.
The same ridiculous politicians who whine about gas prices are the same ones who allow it to be priced in tenths of a cent. I just find that rather humorous. Maybe because it is also the same politicians who are crying to get the penny taken out of currency circulation.
Anyway, all the space on those gas station billboards being take up by "9/10s" could be put to much better use advertising cigarettes.
To sort of answer the question, though, rising gasoline prices act like a tax in the economy, not inflation. Inflation is defined as an increase in available cash in the economy, usually as the result of the govermnet putting more of it there to cover rising prices. Gas is a rare economic beast because it is involved in the price of EVERYTHING you pay for due to transportation costs. And also it is non-elastic in a major way.
"If you want to improve, be content to be thought foolish and stupid." - Epictetus
Please, someone actually went thru all this trouble, and their conclusion is that gas prices are in your face and the larger price signs makes the avg person _think_ it's more expensive. I mean come on, there are some obvious differences in _how_ one purchases gas vs other items. The most obvious is quantity, you will typically purchase 8-20 gallons of gas per fillup, so even small differences can add up. If you were purchasing 50 apples, you'd be much more price sensitive than if you were buying 2. Then you factor in that while product A may be much cheaper at store B, you typically will want to make a single trip and so the savings is then averaged in with your other purchases. When you go get gas, you are mostly just getting gas, so there aren't other price factors. Then one of the most obvious issues is simply that gas is significantly more expensive now than it was a year or two ago, it's that sudden increase and high volatility that makes it more obvious. And lastly is the issue of options, it is the rare grocery item that doesn't have myriad substitutes or that can't be lived without if need be, however, with gas, you are pretty much stuck. You have to either spend a lot of money (purchase more fuel eff. vehicle, hybrid, etc) or make major lifestyle changes (use public transport, ride a bike) or both to work around purchasing gasoline. Typically the variances in gas prices is not that great within a given area, so it basically is what it is.
init 11 - for when you need that edge.
Gas prices are driven because of the spot market on oil, and the way it's basically a "futures market".
American consumers don't have to deal with the extreme volatility that is involved with such a rampantly speculative market on a day to day basis, EXCEPT when it comes to gas prices. This makes them a lot more visible than other speculative swings.
I'm a fiscal conservative, it's a pity we don't have a political party anymore
The high price is based on fear mongering by oil speculators over unrealized future events. The price isn't based on fact, it's based on fear. The fluctuating oil prices have made many rich, buy low today, raise the price out of fear of some tragic future event then sell. Billions and billions have been realized by the conglomerate's over fear mongering regarding Iran alone. The price should never have gone over $50.00 a barrel the last six years, because none of the fear driving the price up was real.
I thought the article would recommend a new air filter, or some great fuel efficiency boosting fuel additive.
Instead it was about saving money on peppers, the kind you eat, at Kroger... Damn, why did I waste time I could have used hunting for cheaper gas to RTFA!
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
It's not so bad, prices are set to decline and stay 'lower' for a while... like until November.
Nothing like an election year to get incumbents to make hot ticket issues temporarily disappear. Also, expect a sharp rise in fuel costs come December due to a "heating oil usage spike" and "conversion to winter fuels" coupled with the "winter travel season" and rise in demand from "winter recreation vehicles". You likely won't see "lack of political pressure" as a reason for higher prices though.
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
I can't believe people aren't figuring this out.
It's election season, dumbasses, they're lowering prices to help out their buddies in Washington.
how much gas did he waste by driving around to different stores to do this article? It's rather simple: 1. Combine trips to stores. 2. Use the bus/public transit for work commutes. 3. Use something like pittsburghgasprices.com (my area) to find the cheapest gas within a 5 miles radius. Check frequently. 4. Don't drive your car like you stole it. See a red light far up ahead? Coast into it. I have two vehicles, use the bus to commute to work, and consolidate my trips as much as possible. I fill up each vehicle every month and 1/2. Gas prices stopped bothering me once I got these habits down.
http://www.CelloFourteGroupie.net
All of the items I listed are driving up the price of oil and the only situation that seems to be improving a little is that some Americans are buying vehicles that get better gas mileage.
The article basically says that if you put effort into comparing prices of every other purchase, you could save a lot more money. Here are some of the reasons why people shop for good gas prices and not other things:
1). Everyone needs gas. A lot of it. Sure we all need red peppers, but not $50 a week in red peppers. The more money something costs and the more frequently we buy it, the more inclined we are to want to save money on it. And the more value. If you save $1 every time you buy 3 red peppers, is that really going to add up? You'd have to be a red-pepper fiend...
2). Convenience. If Shaws, Stop n Shop and Market basket all posted the price of the items I typically buy on GIANT SIGNS I CAN READ FROM THE ROAD, I'd be much more likely to pick one store over another for that product. As it stands, by the time I get out of my car, get into the store, get a cart and go up and down the aisles to find what I need to buy, there's no way I'm going to go to another store to save 10 cents, or even a dollar. If I'd known before going in, I might have, though. I personally spend more money on gas than groceries, so it still makes sense.
3). Free Money!. Cashback bonus cards give you money. It's free. Why wouldn't you want free money?
Some years ago, I remember a widely quoted congressman who was arguing against raising the US postage rate from $.25 to $.30 (they ended up raising it to $.29.) My belief was that it would be sensible to have $.30 postage, with $.25/additional ounce, to make the computations easy, and that it was ridiculous to have a $.29 postage rate with a $.23 marginal rate beyond the first ounce (how many people know their multiples of 23 and want to add them to 29?) The argument was the congressman made, which apparently resonated well, was that "people will drive halfway across town to save a penny on a gallon of gas (it was the late 80s or so) so we should do the same with postage." This pointed out several things vividly to a young me:
This is true. One thing I notice when I visit my parents is that the price of gas is mentioned every day. Whenever one of them passes the gas stations on their way home, they report the price to everyone else.
Translation:
People gotta get to work. They aren't going to buy a smaller car or move closer unless they think prices are going to stay high.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
Strong words...... but there is a grain of truth in them. Price fixing is not the only scam. Apparently some gasstation owners advertise lower prices on gasoline than average and then short change bargain hunters at the pump. The customer thinks he is paying a bargain price for a gallon of gas but in reality the pump only spews out a portion of a gallon and with fuel level indicators in cars being as inaccurate as they are most people don't notice they are getting ripped off. The only thing these guys have to watch out for while they rake in the money is the odd customer who has come to fill their Jerrycans and 'Dept. of weights and measures' inspectors.
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
He left out health issues with car exhaust and the staggering impact that has on the economy (urban air is now colorful chunky style, there IS a health cost there), current and future impacts on the planet with a possible global warming tie-in (note-I am not maintaining that is the only reason, but it is certainly one of them) and he also left out the humongous war and military costs to keep the US in the mid east for generations now. I don't know how much more expensive gasoline would be in the figures then, but leaving that out (Trillions of dollars? Who knows?) makes all the charts and analysis in the article bogus. You can't analyse costs unless you add in *all the costs*.
normally when doing shopping for things (read: not gasoline), even though we tend to want the cheaper prices we also usually feel a bit more geared towards a particular brand and will lean towards it over the non-favored brand so long as the price difference isn't too high.
however, when it comes to guzzoline, most people I think simply go for the cheapest price and/or convenience of being close to where they happen to be when the Empty mark is reached. It is my belief that for the most part brand has almost nothing to do with gas, with only few exceptions.
I believe it is the law (i.e. state law, but similar in most states) that gas stations post prices.
We have an unusual situation here in that we have a commodity product--despite advertising efforts to the contrary, few motorists truly believe that it matters whether they buy Shell or Exxon--whose price is very easily compared.
One of the odd features of life in the last few decades is that it is now apparently relatively cheap for companies to launch new products and product variations, and the result is that it is fairly hard to compare prices because it is fairly hard to find exactly _the same_ product in two different stores. The stores that promise to match other stores' advertised price on "the same" product are on fairly safe ground. Two supermarkets may both carry Jif peanut butter, but store A may carry Jif Peanut Butter and Honey but not Simply Jif while store B may carry Simply Jif but not Jif Peanut Butter and Honey. If they both carry the same product, they may not carry it in the same size; store A may carry Jif Crunchy Peanut Butter in the 18 oz and 40 oz size, while store B may carry only the 28 oz size, and so forth.
My state requires unit prices to be posted on shelf labels, and even here the waters are muddied because it is very common to find that adjacent products on the shelf are unit-priced using _different units_ (fluid ounces vs. gallons, etc.)
Generally speaking, it appears as if companies fight commoditization tooth and nail by doing everything they can to withhold real information from consumers and sell "the sizzle" instead. Whether the proliferation of huge numbers of product variations is a deliberate strategy to avoid price comparison I don't know, but it has that effect and I'm sure that corporations find it to be beneficial.
Gasoline prices are one arena where information is available--as a result of government regulation, I believe--and you have something approaching a free market.
Even here, of course, deception is possible. The Boston Globe recently reported that a number of gas stations have taken to calling 89-octane gasoline "regular" and 87-octane gasoline "economy" in hopes that inattentive consumers will inadvertently purchase a more expensive grade of gasoline than they meant to.
(I say "something approaching" because, at least where I live, the number of brands of gasoline has dropped dramatically in the last twenty years, the number of independent stations relative to company-owned stations has dropped, and the percentage price difference between the cheapest and most expensive gasoline in the stations I drive by regularly has narrowed very considerably).
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
and the average gas mileage of a new, light-duty vehicle was 21 mpg.
Clearly no one in the US really cares about gas prices that much.
with facts.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
I'm not married to gasoline or other petroleum products as a long term transportation fuel source but I don't think the goal should be to shunt everyone onto public transport. The rich are always going to be able to pay for the convenience of private transport. Therefore, progressives should be working towards developing cheap energy sources that allow for the same thing for lower income folks. The value of personal transport for lower income folks is that it enables more means of self sufficiency. Here's an example: gardeners. My gardener is a recent immigrant who can just barely afford fuel and a used pick up truck to run his business. Do you want to force him onto a bus? How will he move is gardening gear?
There I was thinking this was about the stuff I run my central heating and hob with, until I got to the part about 'trucking prices'. :)
Also explains my wondering why I'd not seen any of these news articles about it
// cinn
Bitching about gas prices is like bitching about the weather. It's just a common topic for discussion that isn't likely to offend anyone.
Wax-Museum Fire Results In Hundreds Of New Danny DeVito Statues
And somebody has to pay to keep you safe with the CCTV cameras.
If the Saudi claims are debunked sufficiently to affect the general consensus, there will be a panic that will send prices through the roof. Let us hope the worst does not happen.
Why the disproportionate emphasis on gas prices in our culture, then?
The American psyche is centered on the idea (illusory or not) of freedom. And we have attached to that idea the symbol of the automobile. We have, as a culture, over the last 50 years or so, begun defining people by the car they drive. Men in minivans are whipped. Women in SUVs are lesbians. Everyone in a sports car is either wealthy or glamorous (depending on their state of obesity) or both. Big comfortable cars are called "luxury" cars (and have luxury prices). The prius is the end all be all of environmental conservatism now. But we have the car fixed in our collective psyche as a must have of american culture, and necessity of any life (and in cities with rotten public transport systems, it is). That necessity status that cars have is what makes gas prices so ubiquitous in our world. Higher gas prices are big oil attacking our freedoms, limiting our range and mobility, and status. Lower gas prices widen these things.
The reason that gas prices are such a big deal is that automobiles have been the symbol of American freedom and prosperity for 100 years. The bigger the automobile, the more important and prosperous one is assumed to be. Prior to the auto, a big sign of conspicuous consumption was a bicycle, and prior to that the horse. Money rides in style, everybody else walks.
When the price of gas goes up, Americans feel that their freedom is being threatened. Our cars provide us with the illusion of control and independence. Riding the bus is seen, by most Americans, as somehow declassé and a sign of personal economic inadequacy. Many feel that high gas prices force them in the direction of riding public transportation, and that creates a cognitive dissonance with their conception of themselves as independent and in control.
It never ceases to amaze me that people think that the U.S. government, which can't get out of its own way, can manipulate world-wide oil prices which are subject to markets with active buyers and sellers. With oh-so-friendly-to-the-US countries like Venezuela and Iran producing large amounts of oil.
But if you believe that I guess you are probably the type to chalk up failings of government (which happens all the time) to the President intentionally having it out for the people of New Orleans or some other type of theory.
So if you are that type just keep the following in mind:
1) Supply & Demand
2) Government is very inefficient and beaurecratic.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
For the past two years the story has been the rapid unprecidented explosion of prices and the unprecidented profit (not gross revenue, PROFIT) of the "Big Five" oil companies.
Now all of a sudden in one month alone the prices have dropped nearly one dollar. This in the face of the news that BP grossly mismanaged the maintenance of their Alaskan pipeline and SHUT IT DOWN, thus reducing supply to the pac northwest and west coast.
Why are prices going down, in such a short period? And don't spout crap about "the end of the summer driving season." Demand has never been higher. Violence in the middle east is at a peak. What could make the prices go DOWN?
Just ask the question to yourself, and try to reasonbly answer it. Consider that elections are coming up, and the party in power may lose control of congress. Just consider that that two observations may be connected.
...Yes.
One of them is mentioned by the editor who posted the story - the rising price of gasoline figures into the price of that shampoo (not to mention the price Average Consumer pays to drive to and from Cost Co).
The other is that this article measures variation within different outlets in the same market, as opposed to in the same market over time (which is what people care about.) Since Gasoline is not regulated - but the prices *are* controlled by a ologopolistic cartel - you see more variation over time and less variation within a market than you would for other products. It's not generally possible to "shop around" for electricity, but I think electricity - which is regulated, and of similar overall economic importance - is a much better comparison commodity than gasoline.
Finally, I find this is cute - this is a chart showing gas prices in the congressional district wherein my aunt is running for Congress against a Republican in the national leadership. If anyone knows enough about the oil industry to explain to me in detail how they are mucking about with prices in this way, please contact me (despam address above, it works.)
Columbus Gas Prices.
(to see the interesting results, set Area 1 to Columbus, OH, Area 2 to Albany, NY and Area 3 to Boise, ID).
It's pretty clear that the oil companies are plotting to help their good friend Deborah Pryce (and the Republicans generally) in Ohio, but I don't quite follow how they arrange that.
The good and new comes from no quarter where it is looked for, and is always something different from what is expected.
the post was a follow up to the gas company net connection article of a few weeks ago... picture the newspaper headlines:"america invades [insert gas rich country name] as bandwidth slows to a crawl....NYSE crashes as tubes fail to maintain pressure...." oh well...RTFA i spose:)
Oil still costs about $12:bbl to extract from the ground, and deliver to the refinery as it did in 2001. It still costs the same to refine it to gas and deliver it to your pump. But oil costs about $75 now, not $25. That means that we're not looking at just a tripling of price in 5 years, but rather almost five times the profit. While the rest of the country's economy, except for these energy corporations and banks, is stagnant or shrinking.
When the biggest corporations are having the best years of their lives at the expense of the people having some of their worst years, we should be hearing about it. We should be hearing about it even more. Speaking of hearings, when Congress has hearings on the subject, they should put these oil corporation tycoons under oath, but they don't. The CEO of Exxon/Mobil who was given the photo op for lying to the Senate was then given a $400 million bonus when he retired.
Oh yeah, people talk about that, especially when they get laid off. In a decent country, people would be talking about how those abuses led to the American oil/gas cartel getting broken up and reined in.
--
make install -not war
Exxon Mobil made record profits because of record oil prices. Their profit margin has stayed the same. This is a simple case of raw numbers. Exxon Mobil does not set the price of oil, OPEC and the free market do that. Speculators analyze factors (Katrina was but one of many) and set futures on the price they expect to pay. What would a hearing accomplish? To prove that Exxon Mobil's business strategy is exactly the same as it was in the 90s when gas was less than $1/gal and Exxon Mobile was losing money? Oil prices shot up, some refinery capacity was lost, etc, and thus the price of gasoline goes up. The supply and demand are stabilizing now and it's back under $2/gal in some parts of the country. Conspiracy theorists are disappointed I'm sure.
Here's a tidbit to chew on: The government profited more via gas taxes than Exxon Mobil did from their end. This is even more true in Europe where taxes drive the price several dollars per gallon higher.
One reason we're all obsessed with gas prices might be because it's a common thread amongst everyone- almost everyone in this country relies upon oil (with a large portion of those using gasoline)...it's a conversation topic somewhere between "how about that weather?" and "how about them Yankees?"
you mean petrol ?
Companies set prices by margins. You pay X for your supply, mark it up Y% margin, and profit Z when you sell it. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that when the price of X goes through the roof, Y% stays the same (which it did in the oil business, margin was around 10% which is actually lower than many industries), then Z goes up as well.
People who complain about this are either ignorant or anti-capitalist. Just be honest about which one it is.
Gas is my 2nd highest expense, so I pay lots of attention to the prices. I drive 80 miles a day round trip, to work and back home. But yeah, I can understand why the average consumer should care less about gas prices than I. I spend over 3X as much as the average consumer on gasoline.
.60 cents/gallon. Currently for instance, gas right down the road from my work here is $1.98/gallon. In Batesville, a small town that's about 20 miles from where I live, gas is currently averaging like $2.46/gallon. I can often watch prices go up drastically in one town, and down in another. Then a month later, vice-versa. This seems to me like a good way to appease the consumer, making them less suspicious when prices dip below the national average periodically; while still maintaining the high profit margin that we all know the oil companines love. Lower prices here... raise prices there to pick up the slack.
One thing I've noticed in my long commutes. It seems like oil companies play a shell game. I've seen price differences between towns upwards of
Price per barrel of crude oil affects the price of virtually everything, not only gas! People seem to forget that many things besides gasoline, like plastics, are manufactured from crude oil as well, and all of these things are transported with oil-burning machines. Face it, our economy is driven by oil.
grep -iw skynet
The September unleaded futures gas contract settled at $1.55 Sept. 15. To that amount add state and federal taxes plus 15 cents trasnportation and dealers profit to estimate a reasonable retail price. Thats about $2.10 in most states.
"with my curiosity peeked"
Not written by an English major.
Anyway, his analysis is also flawed. I don't spend $1500/year on bell peppers, so I don't worry about one costing an extra $1 once in a while. I also don't fight wars and hide half the cost of bell peppers in the Defense budget and casualty figures.
by a dubiously offensive yet honest assessment of the history of the link between violence and their religion. Rioting, burning, and murders ensue. The rest of the world cowers in fear at their irrational and animalistic response and bows in submission.
It doesn't matter what you do, any decrease in oil prices is going to be temporary. Crude oil is neither reusable nor indefinitely reusable. Supply is going to decrease irreversibly, and the general trend of prices will be upwards. As long as they go up, everything else goes up, until it becomes economically viable to drop oil for whatever's available. If there's nothing else available, you go broke.
Whenever we talk about "reducing oil prices" by this or that, we're just kidding ourselves.
IANAE(conomist), but here's my take:
The US economy went in the dumper in mid-2000, before the presidential election, after many years of high times. Now, there were a lot of factors in play, of course, but I have always felt that the markets were preparing for a Republican presidency. As soon as it became feasible for Bush to win that election, the markets started turning down.
Now, we're about to have a mid-term election where it's feasible that the Dems could gain control of one or both houses of Congress. And gas prices fall.
I'm sure someone who's paid more attention than I have will dispute that theory, and I welcome it. Still, I think that world investors and markets are proactive more than reactive, and that the world oil prices are reacting to the possibility that the Bush administration will be put in check to some degree this November.
Web 2.0 == Giant Blogspam Circle Jerk
The difference in energy costs is a significant factor in why a tropical jungle, a temperate forest and the Antarctic look so different.
If you have low energy costs (and other resource costs) you end up with a diverse ecosystem filled with weird creatures (e.g. peacocks) that wouldn't survive in less lenient places.
Cut the amount of sunlight to a jungle and you'd start to see a lot of stuff die off. May not be immediate of course.
Cut the supply of cheap fuel/energy and a similar thing will happen.
A lot of things have their parts made in various places, then sent to some far away point to be assembled and packaged, and then there's the various transport stages to the final buyer.
If transportation costs were very high, there would not be huge farms far from the consumers - since distributing the produce would cost too much.
Well although you're all talking about "gas" I presuming this is the Amercianism for "petrol" and hence oil.
All I can contribute is that I bought a small can of oil for use on my bicycle in 1979. Sadly it ran out early this year and I had to replace it. But the difference in price was simply horrendous as whilst the original cost something like 30p the new one was nearly 4 pounds (£ 3.99) !
And, apart from the petrol I've used as a result of using public transport, that about sums up my involvment in the oil economy.
Ho hum.
When you buy gas, you have to stop the car, get out and pump*, pay, and leave. You have to do that at any and all stations, and you rarely combine that with other shopping (maybe some convenince shopping, but not likely).
When you buy groceries, hygene products, or other consumables, you rarely shop for the single item. You don't drive to the red pepper store, then the shampoo store, then the Tylenol store. I think this is another reason why people price shop for gas, but aren't as sensitive to the price of red peppers. They're not going to drive to Save-a-lot to get out of their cars, walk to the produce section, find the red peppers, check out, and get back in their car, since that's a whole lot of non-laziness. Since the process for shopping for gas can't be merged with other items, price is the only comparison. For other items, price and laziness factors are both relevant.
* Excepting NJ, where you aren't allowed to pump your own gas.
Support a few technologists in Washington.
Hi, I'm only replying to your comments since you're one of my Finnish brothers... I was just in Finland in April and I saw the gas prices. What I continue to say is that people in other countries with higher gas prices DON'T understand is that the gas price is relavent to the cost of living in a particular society. I'm not saying gas isn't expensive in Finland, but considering the majority of the population lives in Metropolitan areas - you do at least have access to public transportation. Please read on... People around the world think americans are so wealthy. Well the upper 5% of the population are, and they getting even richer! Unfortunately the majority of everyday average Americans make even less than the average wages in Finland. With the exception of about 7 of our wealthier states (California, Connecticut, New York, ect..) the rest of the other 40 states are lucky if a person could even make $35,000/yr and many make way less! Say you make $30,000/yr Take $10,000 out for the gov't, left with $20,000 - small rent/mortgage $1000/month, minus another $12,000. Your left with $8,000/yr - Guess what $800/month for Family health care. Hey wait - Does Family healthcare in Finland cost you $9600 per year? Woops! Now your at Negative $1600/yr without even talking about childcare, car payment, insurance, food, clothing. Guess what? In states like Ohio the average working class American is now receiving LESS than they did in 1995! Don't forget that we also have 10 million illegal aliens flooding our country every year SUPRESSING Americans wages. Do you think Americans that work in Coffee houses, restaurants, supermarkets will every see a pay increase well the cost of living around them triples! Illegals don't pay taxes, receive free health care and schooling, while my fellow average American is getting SCREWED! We have no control over all this BS! So back to the GAS prices. I don't know if you know but only Major metropolitan areas have decent public transportation. Some of our states are bigger than all of Scandinavia put together. Don't blame the regular American for having to live in a society where the only available housing is 30, 40, 50, 60 miles away from the nearest job. The developers are the ones creating housing so far away that our entire life is consumed by commuting a long distance to work in CARS (Because 85% of the US doesn't have good public transportation). So with that said, Yes, raising the gas prices $1+ per gallon is killing the average people, not the wealthy upper crust that non-americans believe is the whole population. Did the millions of people in the Hurricane Katrina video look like they can afford to pay $100/ week for gas just to have transportation. Other people on this board also refer to gas relative to shampoo? Well I'm sorry but I wouldn't be buying 60 gallons of shampoo/week!
For gas... I'm now "well off" in the sense that I can afford to pay $3 for peppers if I want a pepper; however, when I was in college, and the first 5 years or so out of college I darn well shopped around. I would go to 3 grocery stores (all within 2 miles, me living in a pretty populated area) and get different things at different places depending what was on sale that week, after the first month or so I knew which stores were likely to be cheaper on which items. I would guess this saved me 30% or so on my average food bill. With gas there is no shopping around. Gas prices are all within 5% of each other for the most part. A nickle a gallon isn't a big deal, $2 a gallon is. Also I think it burns when we see Exxon make record profits while I can't afford to take a nice road trip vacation that I wanted since it would now cost hundreds of dollars in fuel. Just my 2 cents
When gas prices are up, it's Bush's fault.
When gas prices are down, it's a Halliburtion/Cheney conspiracy.
We must be alert to the danger that public policy could become captive to a scientific-technological elite. - Eisenhower
If I have to drive somewhere between zero and five miles out of my way to find the cheapest price - then I have to drive between zero and ten miles more. If my car manages 21mpg - then I'll use between zero and half a gallon of gas in seeking that lowest price (assuming I actually KNOW the cheapest price - which is unlikely).
Using the numbers from TFA: If gas is costing me the lowest amount ($2.82) then I could expend as much as $1.41 if I drive 10 miles in order to save 17c per gallon. In that worst case, I need to be sure that I purchase at least 8 gallons just to break even! Of course 5 miles is on the outer limits - but remember that the number of gas stations goes up as the square of the distance you are prepared to drive - so the odds are high that the best prices are towards the outer limit of your tolerance for driving.
In actuality, gas is not the largest cost in operating a car - depreciation, maintenance, etc can easily overwhelm the actual gas prices. So if you drive even a few miles out of your way to get better gas prices, you'll almost certainly lose money unless you have a REALLY big gas tank.
Worse still: Suppose you have to drive an extra 10 miles because you use a gas station that's 5 miles away - then at typical in-town
speeds of around 30mph, it'll take you 20 minutes. If you pay yourself minimum wage for undertaking this task (say $7 per hour)
then you need to earn a savings of at least $2.33 just to pay yourself minimum wage. Add in the $1.41 in gas and $1.50 or so in additional depreciation and servicing - and you now need to save $5.24 in order to make it worth your while. At 17c/gallon savings, you now need to buy 31 gallons - just to earn minimum wage! There aren't many cars out there that have 31 gallon gas tanks! (And those that do don't get 21mpg!)
So even in the absence of better ways to spend your TIME (eg hunting for lower prices on Tylanol) - you're probably not saving money by shopping around for gas - but if you figure in your time and the costs in fuel and depreciation...it's NEVER worth shopping around
for gas.
It's instructive to apply the 'minimum wage' argument to the annual cost of speeding tickets!
Would you pay the taxes to subsidize the petroleum indestry, so they only have to charge you $3/gallon at the pump?
...I think there's some jerk, or possibly multiple jerks, who make it a point to use all their mod points to downmod people.
Slashdot should have some kind of negative karma kickback, so if you always downmod people then your own karma begins to get affected.
Or maybe 1 downmod point and 4 upmod points, or something.
At $2.9 a gallon that gives 103.45 gallons a month, with a "decent" MPG car you get over 3000 miles (100 miles a day) from that amount of Gas.
Hint of the day: If it worries you, get a more fuel efficent car, or live closer to work.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
I'd say not so much "drop-in", as "push-in-and-give-a-twist".
TFA: According to the Energy Information Administration, the average cost of gas in the U.S. that year was $1.85 per gallon of regular grade4 and the average gas mileage of a new, light-duty vehicle was 21 mpg
Okay, forget the rest of the damn article. Amercia, your problem is right there: MPG.
Whilst American cars struggle to reach 25MPG, the average MPG of a European car is over 40MPG (source).
How can the country that has MIT have such crappy MPG? I mean, aren't you chaps utterly ashamed of your engineers? Forget saving money, just bring it down to technical prowess. Why aren't American engineering nerds hanging their head in shame?
I have a 4x4 SUV that does better than 25MPG, not just on the motorway and country lanes, but on crowded higgledy-piggledy British towns. And it's a stupid 4x4 that I only really need in the winter! My mother's sporty saloon car does 45MPG. My wife's Volvo (read: APC with upholstery) does 35MPG. What the hell are you Yanks driving to need that much fuel per mile? Do you just grab a fire truck and bolt a couch to it, or what?
(Even given 1 Imperial gallon = 1.2 US Gallons, your MPG still sucks, Amercia)
Andrew Oakley - www.aoakley.com
The reason we focus on a society so much on gas prices is that of all the commodies, gasoline is the only one that has its price advertised on nearly every street corner. How many signs do you see driving around with: Corn $$$ per bushel or Gold $$$ per troy ounce?
Like the used vegitable oil I get from Denny's every couple days...
Well, I just wanted to point something out. They say you shouldn't get hyped about fuel prices... it used to cost about $12/acre to put wheat into the ground, spray it, and then harvest it. Now, it costs $60 / acre to do the same. However, farmers don't get paid more, so before you start groping about high gas prices because it costs more to go to the lake for the weekend, think about the food you eat.
"Free software" is a matter of liberty, not price.
...that it's because one of the historic "good things" about America in the early to mid 20th century was the very low cost of transportation. Anyone who had a car (definitely fewer people back then, which is important if you think about the demand element of supply and demand) could go anywhere they wanted to at any time for very little cost. If you wanted to drive from New York city to Los Angeles in the 50s or 60s, the only thing that really had a higher cost was your time. Today, that's a very different picture in all respects. There are tons more cars on the road, meaning much higher demand. With all those cars, there's more crowding which means that driving is no longer as pleasurable as it once was. So not only is it far more expensive, but it's also far less convenient. What does that mean society-wide? It means that driving is no longer the good thing it used to be. That's why the prices matter. If anything, the prices should have gone down to account for how much less convenient driving is. That is... if the consumer actually mattered. But since the stockholders are the only thing that matters, the prices continue to go up. Add to that the matter of being near or possibly having passed peak oil, and you can see why there's a HUGE money grab for the end of the gasoline powered automobile era.
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
I don't much like Starbucks but a good cup of coffee (maybe from an independent coffee shop)
is much better that a bad cup of coffee. With gas, all the gas stations are selling the same thing.
In other words, you generally get what you pay for in coffee.
Yes, aside from the falling price of crude, the change from the more expensive 'summer' blends, and the large drop-off in consumption that follows Labor day, there's no apparent reason for the price to be falling.
- Tash
What about the price of Audio CDs?
Compressed music services?
How about cell phone prices?
Cable/Modem T.V.?
Fed up.
I've already got a smaller car. I would like to get one of the hybrids, but I just can't afford them yet.
In the meantime, as you say, I've still "gotta get to work."
Edward Burr
Having a smoking section in a restaurant is like having a peeing section in a swimming pool.
The funniest thing about this article is how much effort the author has made to reach obvious conclusions but still won't benefit. Where effort should be placed is obvious from the household spending graph he cites. There we see that vehicle purchase is twice as important as gasoline and that household purchases (combine food, operations, shelter and apparel) are more important than transportation. While gasoline is the one commodity purchased more than any other on the chart, it should be obvious that savings in all of the hundreds of other commodities will outweigh gasoline savings. (not mentioned is that the best gasoline strategies are long term: living close to work, having a modest priced and fuel efficient vehicle, carpooling the kids etc.) The kicker is hinted at by his opening statements. He can't win unless he remembers the approximate price of all the hundreds of commodities he purchases. If you don't remember that bell peppers should not cost three dollars and purchase a jar of banana peppers instead, all your hard won savings go away quickly. A general perception of value a misleading. You have to have memory, imagination and flexibility to live well.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Although a bad cup of coffee does set the equation to coffee = gas.
Here in Finland a litre of 95 octane gas costs about 1.263e (1.295 for 98 octane and 1.008 for diesel).
Baahhh, baaahhhhh!
How much of the price you pay in Finland for gas goes to taxes?
One of the most effective ways to bring down gas prices in the U.S. would be for dealers to post just the price they charge per gallon with a "*" next to it, followed by an explanatory note: "(*) The federal, state, and local taxes on each gallon total $ -- blame your government for that!"
That signage would be particularly effective in your country, if it was allowed by your government.
Note that I said "your government", not "the government". Here in the states, the People do retain some modicum of control over their government, but our government is always working to make us forget that fact. The People are a major inconvenience to government, except when it comes time to pay up.
Finland is disgustingly socialist by U.S. standards, although we are letting our government slide in that direction. Right now, raising gas taxes to Finnish rates would be one of the few things that might inspire real political revolution in the U.S. There is no valid justification for such high taxes as you pay for gasoline...or many other things.
"You're young, you're drunk, you're in bed, you have knives; shit happens." -- Angelina Jolie
Is this how we got the Iraq War? The war instantly took Iraq's oil off the market and kept it off. That's about 15-20% of total world production.
Cetainly sounds like a very successful monopoly supply restriction against inelastic demand. If it is, it's no wonder Bush/Cheney won't release the minutes of the 2000-2001 Energy Policy meetings with oil company execs.
I'm not a 'whiney apologist' in fact, I'm the opposite. It was a self fulfilling prophecy that gas would reach $5 a gallon so that when it jumped another dollar or two we kept our mouths shut and were thankful it never did hit $5 a gallon. I don't understand why the oil industry told us to prepare for the worst and then posted record profits. That's all my original post is about, no apologizing for anyone.
My work here is dung.
Gas is a big deal because for a long time, the prices didn't change that much day-to-day. Now we are getting swings weekly of 25 to 50 cents or more, which is like a 20% swing. If milk or bread suddenly went up 20% in a week, people would completely freak out!
stuff |
People want the following two things:
1. They want the government to do something to discourage the use of gasoline in order to help the enviornment.
2. They want the government to make sure gas prices are low, so they don't have to conserve on gas.
It could also be put another way:
1. Most Americans wish the government would spend more on public transit.
2. Most Americans would not take public transit, even if the government spent more on it.
Basicly, when it comes to energy, everyone wants their cake and to eat it too!
Yes, I'm aware of our high tax level for fuel, in this case it's 64.557%
Well, at least the money collected with that tax lets us have lower taxes elsewhere, such as lower income tax.. Oh wait..
Follow your Euro bills at EBT
The article proves that you could better spend your time going to a cheaper grocery store, rather than hunting for the cheapest gas.
However, it seems to me that complaints about gas prices are not regarding the relative prices between gas stations, but rather the inflation of gas prices as a whole. No matter how much time I spend looking for the cheapest grocery store and the best discounts, if gas prices go up then I spend more on gas than I did before. A rise in gas prices of 10% means I have (0.1 * money spent on gas) less to spend on other things.
So if you devote your time to finding the cheapest gas station and you complain that it takes you too great an effort to find a cheaper one, then yes, please stop doing that and go find a cheaper grocery store instead. But if you like to complain about gas prices being high _in general_, then that doesn't depend on which grocery store you go to.
But it's a nice article anyway.
"We live in our minds, and existance is the attempt to bring that life into physical reality" Ayn Rand
I think it's the (sometimes daily) change in prices of 5-10% that hurts more than the price. Sure, $3 a gallon sucks, but if it's always roughly that price you would get used to it. Instead we have gas for $2.70, then a week later it's down to $2.38. Or in the morning it's 2.65, that afternoon it's $2.80. What other necessary commodity item has prices that jump around so much? Blaming economics and supply and demand on rapid price jumps is bullshit.
That reminds me of the traffic jam I had to sit through on my way home from work because a new gas station had opened up on my route home. There were people lined up at the pumps, and into the street, effectively stopping all traffic. Why? Because the gas station had a "Grand Opening Sale" and was about $0.20/gallon cheaper than the gas station down the street. My neighbor apparently patronized the new store, and claimed they had very efficient traffic direction in the lot and moved people through fairly quickly - it only took him 20-30 minutes to get in and out.
I was incredulous! 20-30 minutes!! For $0.20!! Lets see, I usually fill up with about 15 gallons or so when I let it get *really* empty. So that's a maximum $3.00 savings on the entire tank, in exchange for a half-hour wait. No thank you. I'll gladly spend much more time for much less savings if it is something I enjoy, but my time waiting in line for gas is certainly worth more than $6.00/hour. I have precious little time as it is; in fact, I wouldn't have had time for this post had I waited in line for gas today!
Since most Americans tend to take short trips, such as a few blocks to the grocery store, a lot of gas is wasted
You've got a very good point there. It has been quite noticable on my half a dozen or so trips to the US, that Americans drive really short distances where a European would walk. There are exceptions (New York city, for example, where there seemed to be fewer cars than my local town let alone London- I found NYC comparatively quiet) but generally this rule holds. I certainly wouldn't drive any distance less than one and a half miles, unless I was carrying significant cargo.
I think a lot of this isn't so much down to laziness, obesity or convenience, but personal safety. Several times in the USA, I've tried to walk from my hotel to a supermarket (grocery store), and found... I couldn't. The pavements (sidewalks) and zebra crossings just didn't exist. I'd have to walk out into the main road to get there. And, IIRC, in the USA that's illegal- jaywalking- an offence that simply doesn't exist in the UK, where pedestrians have absolute priority over vehicles except on motorways (interstates). For example, there is no pavement (sidewalk) outside my house in the UK - I just walk in the road, and the traffic has to give way (this is unusual, but by no means rare). The Highway Code (government road safety rules) recommend that I should walk facing oncoming traffic, but even if I don't, traffic still has to give way to me.
So maybe part of the answer is that America just needs to build more sidewalks and zebra crossings, and turn more carparks (parking lots) into skateparks. Or get rid of jaywalking as an offence.
(OT: What is the en:US for "zebra crossing"? The black and white stripes on a road that indicate a safe[r] place for pedestrians to cross the road. Sometimes there are just white stripes and the black is assumed to be the tarmac colour.)
Andrew Oakley - www.aoakley.com
"(OT: What is the en:US for "zebra crossing"? The black and white stripes on a road that indicate a safe[r] place for pedestrians to cross the road. Sometimes there are just white stripes and the black is assumed to be the tarmac colour.)"
We call it a "crosswalk".
$pharm = $7.11 I suddenly feel like a Slurpee.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
All of the US is addicted and wants their gas cheap.
Your experience is quite normal and it explains why 90% of journeys continue to be by means other than conventional public transport.
e.g.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/actionnetwork/A3896409
Of course with a Brompton foldup bicycle you could do the 2 miles to the bus stop in about 8 mins.
Deleted
Not that I expect an American to understand basic economics. America is, after all, a nation that thinks that a president who vastly increases government spending and runs massive deficits is somehow going to bring about a decrease in taxation "any day now". A people who respond to increasing fuel prices by buying larger, less efficient vehicles. Truly, a people whose stupidity is rivalled only by their adiposity and belligerence.
Gas prices have gone nowhere but up since Bush took office. They might fall a couple cents here and there but we are nowhere near the $1 a gallon days of Clinton.
> IMO, the other side to the price of gas is that, especially in developed countries,
> it has a pervasive effect throughout all layers of the economy -- food prices (because of the trucking),
> schools (busing), etc., etc.
School buses in developing counties?! Bugaga!!!:)
The spot market is the market for immediate delivery. The futures market is for delivery sometime in the future.
This is why big brand gas is often cheaper than the local independant station gas after big negative events -- the big brand gas is pretty much tied to the somewhat more stable futures market, but the little guy runs out of gas and is forced to buy on the spot market at the scare based price.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
Do you think roads are free? Do you think your gas taxes go anywhere close to paying the price for the roads you use? Road that costs thousands of dollars per foot to build? You talk about public transit as if it's some sort of nasty socialist alternative to the one you've already got when the reality is that roads are the most socialist thing that exist in this country.
Do you think the rest of enjoy our hard earned money being forcefully removed from us to subsidize your laziness?
No bill has been passed. But if you were a senator on the energy committee, and you were talking to an oil/fuel company and said something like "These high fuel prices sure are a hot ticket. If the people keep getting upset about it, they may vote me out of office for someone who will legislate your profits."
IOW: Keep your prices low until after I'm re-elected, and I'll keep the committee from pushing out any new bills on fuel cost reform.
I agree that a lot of the effect is supply/demand and the volatility of the market, but there is a large amount of both gouging and price suppression that has been going on for years. The only thing that has changed remarkably in the last five years is that the vendors have discovered that the US economy can stay operate successfully at $3/gal instead of $1/gal.
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
Right, but a smaller increase might push you to more aggressively seek a new living situation, i.e. a new job in a city with more affordable housing. You might not end up changing anything at all, but if you looked at a sample of several thousand people who have similar commutes and whatnot, there would probably be a noticible shift in behavior.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
The price of petrol in England recently hit £1/litre, which according to your friendly neighbourhood Google is: (UK£ 1) / l = 7.12944458 US$ / US gallon
Last time I filled I paid around 98p/litre, which is almost exactly $7/gallon.
Don't complain about $6/gallon, we're even worse off than you. Of course, our little country is so small that it's possible to drive from one end to the other and back on one tank (more exactly London to Edinburgh, as recently demonstrated on BBC's Top Gear). So I guess we use less fuel than most places.
I'll just add that because of "white flight" from the cities that the best education for our children is in the suburbs or private schools in/near the cities. Sorry to say but I have made a personal choice that my 90 minutes of commuting each day and approx. $9,000 in local taxes are necessary for my kids to go to school in a safe, consistent and academically rewarding environment. The tax dollars have followed those with money, out to the burbs. This has left our cities with very poor schools and it will take very exorbitant commuting prices to drive those with money back into the cities.
p.s. Most gentrification in the cities is being driven by empty-nesters. Exactly the wrong type of people to drive any increase in school funding.
This post brought to you by your friendly neighborhood MBA.
"Gas prices are driven because of the spot market on oil"
Well true to an extent. It is also a commodity subject to extreme price manipulation because there are relatively few suppliers of both oil and refined products from oil, and they do cooperate to manipulate prices, OPEC is a cartel afterall which does regulate production to manipulate oil prices.
In the movie Syriana there is an interesting point that one wonders why we do have oil commodity markets and why they are based in London and New York. The answer is the U.S. and Britain have historically used every political, military and economic tool at their disposal to try to control the oil market.
One wonders if the system would be more stable if oil providers sold their own oil through contracts to customers directly and cut the price speculators out of the loop. There are a LOT of people who gamble on commodity markets, they provide no real economic value other than liquidity, and they frequently reap large profit in short periods by exploiting turmoil. It is money that goes out of prdocuer's and consumer's pockets and in to theirs for really no reason. They don't produce anything, all they do is buy low and sell high.
Also when Reagan deregulated refining in the 80's there was surplus refining capacity in the U.S., it was a bit inefficient but it helped assure there wasn't a shortage of refining capacity. Once deregulation happened a lot of consolidation occurred and a lot of refineries disappeared. Now refining capacity operates on a razor's edge and it is relatively easy to get price spikes when refining capacity goes off line. Refineries go offline due to maintenance, accidents and weather events like Katrina. It is also VERY easy for big oil companies to intentionally take refineries off line for "maintenance" if they want to spike gasoline prices and improve profit margins.
The interesting thing about gas prices in recent months is their is a HIGH probability oil companies are intentionally driving down prices in the run up to the November elections. Having oil friendly Republican control government has been a windfall for big oil companies and they have a big incentive to keep them in power. High gas prices were fueling antipathy towards Republicans on top of all the rest of their incompetence and corruption. It is a pretty cynical manipulation of the electorate that the Republicans and their friends in big oil will probably drive down gas prices every week until the election and then they will spike back up at the first excuse immediately thereafter.
@de_machina
(OT: What is the en:US for "zebra crossing"? The black and white stripes on a road that indicate a safe[r] place for pedestrians to cross the road. Sometimes there are just white stripes and the black is assumed to be the tarmac colour.) The short answer is "crosswalk", but unfortunately the stripes have a different meaning depending on what state you are in. In Massachusetts, drivers are required to stop for pedestrians in crosswalks. In Pennsylvania, where I just moved, noone will ever stop. You are risking life and limb stepping foot in a crosswalk.
The site also has a wealth of historical data that will allow people to test out their favorite economic conspiracy theory. Of course, no one actually ever wants to test their economic conspiracy theories. Their faith-based nature is what makes them so fun in the first place.
That signage would be particularly effective in your country, if it was allowed by your government.
Are you implying that such a signage wouldn't be allowed?
You seem to have bought too much propaganda about the evils of Socialism (which, by the way, isn't practised in the Nordic countries). There is absolutely no truth what so ever in this hypothesis of yours.
May we live long and die out
What if the car dealership was owned by a manufacturer, and the dealership said "We decided to charge ourselves [dealers] 3 times as much for cars as we used to. Therefore you have to pay more to get a car.
Who would stand for this? Yet the oil companies are not "losing money" buying oil at the higher price.
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
Ocne upon a time in a town in Belgium, instead of striking, the bus drivers and collectors taped over their fare boxes as soon as they got on the road. Bus service was free! The customers were pleased!
The company was not: they weren't making any money, but they were paying for all the gasoline and maintenance... So it is now supposedly illegal to refuse to collect fares in that country (;-))
--dave
davecb@spamcop.net
Suburbs are where the meth labs and grow-ops are, they're where everyone is becoming obese and asthmatic and placing strain on the health system, they're where no one walks, no one knows each other, there is a belligerent and fearful monoculture that breaks the spirit of the young while stupifying the old, and economic stagnation (why do you think people in suburbs drive to the real city to work?)
The consumer display of gas prices with large signs is certainly not warranted given the minute differences in cost savings.
However, the price of gas/diesel/oil does matter for an important backbone to the US economy: the ability to transport goods produced in one location to another location for sale.
The products - imported at ports from Long Beach, CA to New Jersey, produced on midwest farms for export and sale, etc across the nation - all need to get to their point of sale. And the US has built a national economy behind the efficient tranportation of these goods by rail, 18-wheeler trucks, and cargo planes. All of these tranportation mechanisms involve the use of fuel. Increase the price of fuel, and you increase the cost of production that is typically passed down to the consumer in the form of inflation.
Some that has flown recently has received "gas fees" on airline tickets or some-such to cover the extra costs of airline fuel. It's not just the price of gas you pump into your car that is affected by the price of gas. It trickles down to the red peppers you buy at a grocery store, since to get there they had to be shipped halfway across the nation.
I think I spend less on gas than most people. I've got a fairly fuel efficient car, I commute no more than 10 miles to work (Minneapolis to Saint Paul, believe me, I've tried to find work in Minneapolis) and I try not to drive more than that. Yet, I spend about $120 per month on gas (or about 6% of my income). I could take the bus, but that would double or triple my commute time (from about 20 minutes to nearly an hour) and I'd still be paying over $80 in bus fare per month. 6% doesn't seem like much, but that's about equal to what I spend on groceries. It's about a quarter of what I spend on rent. It's more than all of my utilities combined. A difference of $1 in gas price per gallon amounts to $40 per month, money I could be spending on beer. For all those assholes who drive Escalades 40 miles each way every day, it's their own damned fault. But what can I do? I could move nearer to work, but then I end up driving longer to visit my girlfriend in Minneapolis (and all of my favorite places are in Minneapolis as well). I could take the bus, but the inconvenience and time involved outweigh the meager savings. I could buy a hybrid car, but even with tax breaks, I'm still paying more (and I can't afford a new car). Even doing what I can to reduce what I spend on gas, I'm still spending a significant fraction of my income. And when you take into account the effect of gas prices on commodities like food and goods and services like the bus, it DOES have an effect. So, yeah, unless you're lucky enough to be able to bike or walk to work, and you don't buy anything, gas prices matter.
Diesel angines actually have a much flatter torque curve than gas engines. The reason they have always had more gears is because their RPM range is more limited.
Listen bub. try for a week, doing all your normal day to day crap, withOUT using anything powered or brought to you via gas or diesel.
There. See how difficult life is and why people care?
FTFA: ... I would save enough money to fill up my Accord with premium (instead of regular) ...
Ack. Why would you want to do that? According to Honda's specifications the Accord uses regular. Why would you want to put premium in a car that runs on regular?
The price difference between types of fuels (regular, premium, diesel) isn't something you should consider at the pump, only when buying a vehicle.
I seriously question the sanity of people who want to live in the suburbs, away from all the amenities cities offer, where the crime rate is significantly higher, the asses fatter (and who wants to see and/or have fat asses?), travel more expensive, and for culture you have to choose between bible study and a movie theatre that only shows Hollywood's most lackluster, big-budget flops. And all so that you can have some grass to mow. I hate to throw around the word stupid ... actually that's not true. I use the word stupid rather liberally. But in this case, I think it's warranted.
Of course, if you want to talk about actual small towns (as opposed to suburbs of real cities), that's a slightly different story, and a much more positive one. But I digress.
"Why the disproportionate emphasis on gas prices in our culture, then?"
The emphasis is not "disproportionate", it is just right.
Most Americans depend on their "shiny metal boxes" to earn a living.
Have you read a job application lately? Yeah the part that reads:
"reliable transportation"
US not to long ago gave up on National mass transit scheme
and opted for the Highway.
Now we all dream of 3 cylinder Geo Metro 50 MPG.
- these are not the droids you are looking for -
There is absolutely no truth what so ever in this hypothesis of yours.
And what hypothesis might that be?
People don't complain (or do anything to reduce) excessive taxes they don't know about. In the U.S., most people subject to ordinary sales taxes are aware of those taxes, the rate(s), and what they apply to, at least in their hometowns.
Taxes on fuel (gasoline) are typically hidden (buried). Occasionally I will see a sign that at least partially describes the real situation, that federal, state, and local taxes make up a large fraction of what consumers pay at the gas pump -- but that sign is usually small and unobtrusive, if it is there at all.
I go into a local restaurant and I know that I will pay an extra 10% of the bill to the government. For what is not clear. There is no reason food should be taxed at a much higher rate in restaurants than it is at the grocery store.
When I went to look up what gas taxes are these days, I found a site which lists gasoline tax information on a state by state basis. The list does NOT include the federal tax of 18.4 cents per gallon, nor does it emphasis the fact that in most places, sales taxes also apply. A great way to reduce the cost of gas at the pump would be to eliminate all federal gas taxes. That would save around twenty cents (remember, it costs the government money to collect gas taxes) per gallon right off the bat and also put pressure on the various states to do away with their outrageous gas taxes if they already impose onerous sales taxes.
"You're young, you're drunk, you're in bed, you have knives; shit happens." -- Angelina Jolie
The answer should be obvious: tax gas to cover the cost of roads and their management, privatize transit, and let the transit company control the land surrounding bus stops and rail stations. This gives the transit company motivation to build lots of access points in convenient areas, develop the land in those areas to provide amenities to commuters as well as a healthy revenue stream. You turn transit from an inconvenient burden on the public into a tax-paying, job-creating, economy-building way of getting around cheaply.
The standard supermarket chains carefully tune pricing to maximize profits from those that ignore prices while also luring the bargain shoppers. The warehouse stores are in the middle; you can beat them at a standard supermarket. You can do better than cutting your grocery bill in half, which, according to the Slashdot article government stats, would save about as much the average annual budget for gas in 2004.
If determined to shop gas prices, don't bother driving around. Use the AAA website: AAA Gas Price Finder
I guess the problem in the end is that so many Americans are fond of driving cars with such poor fuel economy. Two weeks ago I did a 600 mile road trip, we got 49.8 mpg out of a 1.6l Ford Focus. I have personally seen Americans claiming that 25mpg is very good mileage... I know the gallon is smaller in the USA (3.8l instead of 4.5l), but even that "good mileage" is rubbish by European standards.
Maybe they dont want to drive cars that amount to being not much larger than coffins - before they're crushed by that semi they eventually run into on the crowded highway. I'll take a 3.8l powered car from GM any day with some actual performance in it versus something that just is merely "fuel efficient". A road trip for some might just be getting there, but there is a very large segment that will not give up tons in performance just to obtain efficiency.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
> > > That signage would be particularly effective in your country, if it was allowed by your government.
> > Are you implying that such a signage wouldn't be allowed? [...] There is absolutely no truth what so ever in this hypothesis of yours.
> And what hypothesis might that be?
In your first post you implied that one would in some way be prevented by the government from detailing how much of the price is tax, or not. That's the "hypothesis" I was referring to.
It's possible that this is illegal in some states in the US - you guys do seem to have a lot of strange laws - but in the Nordic countries (and since you were speaking about Finland, I thought you were actually referring to said country) it most certainly is not.
May we live long and die out
1. higher fuel prices = higher prices on everything else
2. fuel prices have been rising faster (much faster) than inflation
Of course it's on people's minds!
Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind. - Dr. Seuss
Gas prices are being obsessed over because they impact the prices of many other things. If the price of shampoo rises, it doesn't change the price of shoes or milk. If the price of gas rises, it raises the price of airline tickets, milk, shoes, electricity, and just about everything else that depends on transportation.
The only incompatibily is natural rubber fuel hoses (phased out 20 years ago for economic, not green reasons), which biodiesel tends to eat away.
In hot climates, B100 is pretty much a drop-in replacement, with one catch: it'll eat away built up corrosion from years of petrodiesel, causing your fuel filter to clog up initially.
Straight vegetable oil (SVO) works as a fuel, but needs to be at high temperature to have the necessary viscosity, and engines need to be modified with heaters. We fix that by transesterifying it with methanol and turning it into biodiesel. This still doesn't have the cold weather ease of use of petrodiesel, though.
The only major issue with pure biodiesel is that its gel point is in the neighborhood of 25-30F, resulting in fuel lines that clog. For people who will be operating in subfreezing weather for significant amounts of time, various additives are available, including basic petrodiesel (this is why B20 is so much more prevalent in the US than B100). For subfreezing weather over an entire season, an electric heater system is highly recommended - there are already products available tailored to extreme low temperature petrodiesel use.
People in Soviet Russia, however, appear to be afflicted with amusing juxtapositions of the aforementioned situation
We should all be in favor of using significantly higher gas and road toll taxes to discourage people from driving. It would save fuel, reduce traffic, cut pollution and global warming, and reduce the wear and tear on the roads. As a side benefit reducing the number of poor people on the roads will make driving much more enjoyable for those us who can afford it. It's a win/win all around!
Whilst American cars struggle to reach 25MPG, the average MPG of a European car is over 40MPG
This statement is a misnomer. The volvo's, Toyotas, Honda, etc are all available in North America, it's a problem with the people who prefer to drive their nasty gas-guzzling SUV's (and to add to that, I've seen a whole lot of people driving the massively-consuming motorhomes this summer as well, WTF).
Because gas prices are In Your Face. It's not like you drive down the street and see 2 foot tall prices of milk and bread on the outside of every supermarket.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
It's the record profits being reaped on the other side of the transaction.
there is a very large segment that will not give up tons in performance just to obtain efficiency.
I'm really tired of people in the "performance" cars driving like maniacs. The Ford Focus will go the speed limit and is perfectly OK to drive so long as you aren't trying to out accelerate everyone on the road and drive like an asshat. I am so fucking sick of speeders and people that just drive like jerks. Pretty soon there will be cameras everywhere and you won't be able to drive like that. Then tell me how great having a "performance" vehicle is.
Avoid Missing Ball for High Score
according to some guy i heard interviewed on NPR a few months ago, US citizens have always paid more like (on average) $6-$8/gallon. maybe it was more? i don't remember the guy's name or which show he was even on, but his reasoning was based on hidden expenses. one of the big hidden costs was the money spent for the US military to protect the ports where oil comes from, as well as the shipping channels and whatever else. i guess the US is so paranoid about the oil protection that our military provides protection all over the place, and the rest of the world gets that protection for free. there were some other expenses too. basically his point was that the rest of the world passes those fees on to the purchases of the gallon of fuel, where the USA has everyone pitch in. in the end it may be the same net effect... i don't know. even people who won't drive probably somehow benefit from stuff being transported by trucks or cars.
just an interesting point.....
Maybe they dont want to drive cars that amount to being not much larger than coffins - before they're crushed by that semi they eventually run into on the crowded highway.
I guess the Europeans solve this problem by simply being better drivers and not "running into a semi on a crowded highway."
I'll take a 3.8l powered car from GM any day with some actual performance in it
GM makes cars with performance in them? OK, I'll give you this one, but the rest of their lineup is utter crap. Why would anyone buy a GM for any reason other than the fact that they can't afford a better car?
People justify driving huge SUVs because of "safety." By driving the bigger, heavier vehicle, then when they screw up and run a red light because they were on their cell phone and weren't paying attention, they ensure that the poor, innocent victims in the reasonably-sized, efficient vehicle they crushed will bear the lion's share of the energy of the ensuing collision. They get to walk away from their Ford Excursion and say, "Oops," while the family in the Toyota Yaris that had the green light is dead.
I resent SUVs because I find this line of thinking selfish and elitist.
Like woodworking? Build your own picture frames.
The reality for more of us is that we can only afford a 10 year old car...and guess what was most popular 10 years ago? Gas guzzling SUVs.
Are you seriously saying that the reason so many people are driving 10-year old SUVs is because they can't find any 10-year old cars for sale? Do you realize how stupid that sounds?
There are plenty of 10-year old cars and SUVs for sale. And the 10-year old cars are a lot cheaper than the 10-year old SUVs.
Like woodworking? Build your own picture frames.
1. What kind of fairy dust are you filling up your tank with in order to get 26 mpg out of an Element? The highway EPA is only 25, and practical use from almost all real owners shows it more like 19-21 mpg (although it sounds like you are mostly highway miles).
2. How can a daily commute that takes you over the Sagamore Bridge be considered "no traffic"? This is probably one of the worst traffic corridors in MA, at least during summer. I'm sure during the winter it's fine, but in the summer - does that Element come with pontoons as an option?
-BbT
And someone wasted their points modding down your off topic anon comment- it would have been invisibile to most anyway.
Don't really care myself- you can only go so negative and you can only go so positive. And slashdot isn't the be-all, end-all of existence. In 24 hours none of this will be ready by anyone any more anyway.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Page 64 shows the average cost of premium unleaded in various countries. "Normal sales price" (including cost of oil, processing, industry margin, and distribution) comes to just 44 cents per liter. The rest is taxes. Just eyballing the distribution, you can see the U.S. falls towards the lower end of the middle third. On the other hand, countries like Austria, Belgium, Sweden, the UK, and Netherlands are clearly at the extreme high end.
Page 78 lists fuel taxes as % of state revenue. The U.S. gets 12% of its revenue from fuel taxes. This is on par with the revenue of European states with high taxes (probably because their overall taxation rate is higher). U.S. tax revenue in 2005 was $2.15 trillion. 12% of that is $258 billion. This is on the order of the few federal figures I was able to find ($140 billion) plus state taxes. Greenpeace estimates the oil industry receives only $15-$35 billion in subsidies per year. In other words, the taxes are much more than the subsidies. Note that even the motor vehicle fuel taxes imposed by the states , not the federal government, exceeds the high end of Greenpeace's estimate.
$6/gal is not the normal or even market price for gasoline. You could argue the U.S. is slightly subsidizing gasoline prices (since it falls at the lower end of the middle third). But to argue that $6/gal is the "actual cost" is to argue that every country in the world is subsidizing gasoline except those in the EU with high fuel taxes.
Our dependence on oil is bad enough as it is. There's plenty to argue against it without makign stuff up. If you bring bogus figures to the table, it just makes it easier for the nay-sayers to discredit everyone advocating conservation and minimizing environmental impact.
I for the most part drive the speed that is safe for the area (road, road conditions, traffic)....that's regardless of the posted speed. I have had performance cars all my life, and I know how to drive them.
I hope to God we don't get cameras everywhere...I'm just not ready for an Orwellian state where my every move is watched...on or off road. If by some chance we do go that way...I'm hoping by then we'll have modern tech that will allow us to 'disable' those cameras....kind of like an optical radar jammer.
Anyway, someone going faster than you or the posted limit isn't an asshat or jerk. Speed doesn't cause accidents, differential in speed does. I'll look out for you, but, you should look out for me too in that rear view mirror...yield and let the faster car by.
At the very least...you'll be letting him pass and hit the radar trap faster than you...
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Just FYI, most states in the US have crosswalks ("zebra crossings") at intersections whether they happen to be painted on the ground or not. That said, you don't know whether the driver going 45 in the rightmost lane is aware of that, or even if they are aware that they are driving at all while so busy talking on their cellphone and putting on makeup.
But, my point is, in every state I've lived in, it's perfectly legal to walk across a street at an intersection whether there are lines painted on the road or not.
Comment of the year
Is it just me, or does it seem very convenient that gas prices are dropping, by huge margins, just before the mid-term elections..almost as if it were planned out, like they were trying to..I don't know..make it seem like a certain party's strategies finally payed off, and that a certain party's elected officials should stay in the house of representatives.
Because nothing in the world that I can find could possibly account for such a decline in prices recently, unless the oil companies started selling the oil back to themselves at a less than 400% markup. Seriously, is it just me, or does nobody else seem to see it?
Between this and the story on mini-frige keys opening voting machines, I really am starting to wonder if the whole 'election' thing is just a formality at this point.
This is all of course just my opinion formulated from what I have observed, I don't mean to offend anybody, but..from where I'm sitting.. I no longer think there's any possibility of it being coincidence that many of these things have happened. Ok, I suppose it IS technically possible that it's a coincidence, just as it's technically possible that, due to the properties of quantum mechanics, while I'm typing this my finger might simply pass through the keys, but the odds are extrordinary.
If gas prices drop to about a buck eighty six, then after mid term elections skyrocket again, don't say I never told you so.
You may have seen or heard of add amounts of gas being dispensed, but it most likely wasn't because the gas pump was tampered with.
Modern gas pumps in the US are quite fairly complex and dificult to tamper with--besides the fact that they are tamper-tagged by the US dept of agriculture. Do a Google search on the subject in your state; gas pump tampering is far more of a rumor than it ever is found to be true, and the penalties for short-changing the metering are so severe that most pumps dispense slightly more than they really should, just to provide a margin of error.
If the matter deeply worries you, then you can always just buy your gasoline in only 1-, 5- or 10-gallon amounts, because that's what the dept pf ag. checks and so (in past cases) scammers made certain that those amounts dispensed correctly.
Lastly, a car's fuel gauge is not normally intended to be absolutely accurate.
~
Putting aside the obvious emotional reasons for gas bargain hunting, there is at least one practical consideration that the article doesn't fully explore. When shopping for gas, you're only dealing with one item, whereas in grocery shopping you're looking for a range of items on any given trip. It's much easier to determine the consistent best-price location for one item than it is for a dozen or more items in even a modest grocery basket.
And the fact is, most stores have a mixture of "loss-leader" bargains, normal prices, and sucker prices on different items, even in the same general product category. So if you base your shopping habits on, say, the best price for milk, you're likely to get shafted on the price of bread or meat or whatever. Overall it tends to balance out so that you spend roughly the same amount on a diverse grocery basket no matter which store you go to (at least within the same "tier" of stores).
The only way to get the best price on everything is to stop at several different stores, maybe even returning to an earlier store to get what turns out to be the best price that week on a particular item. And that's far too tedious and time(+gas!)-consuming for most people.
You can buy bulk fuel(gas and diesel road/off road), but you need to live rural like on a farm and have it delivered to a bulk tank. But ya, most people don't and at most might have an extra can or two (5 or ten gallons) in the garage.
I have often wondered why we can have an OPEC for the sellers, but not the opposite for the consumers. We get shafted because we all buy tiny amounts, and have no pull. Look at walmart, they get good prices because they agree to purchase in huge quantities. So why can't our politicians do the same for us peons with fuel? The government should step in an say "OK, we offer such and such reasonable for a gigantonormous amount of fuel, the US is a huge market, you want to sell to us, OK, but no gouging, this is the price we offer for this year",along those lines anyway, then we could have stabler prices. And get rid of that middleman skimming commodities BS, that's ridiculous. We could start with all the oil that comes off of public land or public "economic zone" offshore leases, there's no reason this couldn't be earmarked for domestic consumption at a stable and reasonable and long term price structure. If some oil company don't like that, tough noogies, some other company would like to make some profit, as opposed to no profit. What we don't need are the mega profit gougers and the middleman skimmers.
To carry this a little further, I have been in food co-ops before, the working members got dang close to wholesale food prices. We should have fuel co-ops as well, negotiate our own large bulk purchases, because I answered my own question, I know the government will never do anything like that for joe middle class, it would cut into the millionaires profits too much.
At one point recently I decided I wanted an "alternate means" to get around town if my (fuel-hog) SUV was in the shop or otherwise unavailable. I also decided that for maximum versatility, I wanted the "alternate means" to be transportable in my SUV as well as in the trunk of another car, if need be. That second requirement ruled out motorcycles and scooters. That left mopeds and motorized bicycles, and I decided against a moped because (aside from being roughly twice as heavy as the motor-bicycle) if the engine quits, the moped is basically not usable at all. With the engine dead (and the drive disconnected), the motor-bicycle can still be pedalled as well as normal.
Motorized bicycles frequently average over 200 MPG; I worked up a spreadsheet that showed that I would have to use this thing an awful lot before it would save the engine kit's purchase price--about 4,300 miles, with gasoline at $2.75 a gallon. I asked around online if anyone knew for sure that they were saving money by riding one and most people said basically not, they had them for recreational reasons. Only two or three people said they were saving money for certain, and they all gave basically the same reasons.
The reason that they saved money riding them was that they lived or worked inside big cities, and that they could pull over anywhere they wanted and lock the motor-bicycle to any lamp-post to park it--the main reason they saved money was that they didn't have to pay for parking. The fuel economy had pretty much nothing to do with it; if they could have gotten away with parking a motorcycle or scooter on the sidewalk they would have, but that wasn't permissible. Also they noted that it was an enormous convenience factor to be able to ride directly to wherever you wanted to go and park right in front--and that in an urban area, especially during rush hours--you could get around on a 30-mph motorized bicycle about as fast as you could in a car anyway.
~
OMFG! Now it makes sense! That's why New York always votes democrat.. they're all mutherfocking socialists!
Attitudes like yours sadden me deeply. Why should I pay any taxes cause all that money just helps some lazy drug addict who doesn't look like me. All those lazy drug addicts are too stupid, especially when they don't look like me, to work hard, get health insurance and be productive members of society. And they're likely to turn into child-molesting terrorists, too. I'd rather give it to some charity run by a guy in my church that helps kids with repetative stress thumb injuries cause then at least I know where the money goes instead of some crypto-liberal government subsidization of gay porn, equal opportunity bullshit and public transport.
America, land of the "Hey that's mine".
No, it wont. It will only be available in 45 states, the ones that don't use California ARB standards.
http://www.google.com/search?q=Mercedes+bluetec+c
That's a great article and all, but....People are more interested in the change in gas prices over time. If the article had taken all those other consumer products (milk, soda, water, etc.) and their prices relative to time, it would be much more applicable. Gas prices shoot up and fall down like no other in a given timeframe. The other consumer products do vary, but much of that variation can be attributed to...You guessed it, Gas Prices! Compared to gas prices, they're not volatile at all.
What's really funny about your comment is that the majority of US highways are a 55MPH limit, while most of Europe is 70MPH and up. So what good does that 3.7l engine do you, pootling along at 55?
Which came first, a country who gutted it's public transportation system, or long commuting times when using public transportation?
I ditched my car two years ago, with the intention of moving back into the city, and relying upon public transportation. Two thing I have noticed are: when I do drive -- borrow a car -- traffic seems to be getting much, much worse. And secondly, public transportation slows everything down. It takes a hell of a lot longer to live my old life!
Your experiences match with mine, and I have really tried to make accomodations to ensure that I can get things done, But damn, do I miss driving sometimes. I have been considering a "car rental" program to supplement this need. It is very hard in todays society to function without a car, though we have only ourselves to blame. Europe functions much differently on a personal scale.
I donot however miss the car costs, or frankly sitting in traffic. Damn that is stressful.
I have to buy gas at least once a week. I don't go grocery shopping more than once every two weeks, usually once every three weeks. So, I buy gas more often, and thus I can pay more attention to the change in price each week.
Three days from now?? Thats tomorrow!! ~Peter Griffin
Why the disproportionate emphasis on gas prices in our culture, then?
Because we're not Europe and we "need" cars to get us to were we want to go. We don't have that great of a busing, rail, or subway system in the US. We also set up cities in a way that you can't get to the nearest grocery store with out driving or walking at least 2-5 miles. Our jobs are typically even further away, just guessing here but closer to 5-15 miles away. Some people even commute an hour daily just to get to work.
We use a lot of gas why wouldn't we put emphasis on it?
"To be is to do." --Socrates
"To do is to be." -- Aristotle
"Do-Be-Do-Be-Do..." --Sinatra
...if it had a lightbar on top of it, and fire gear in the back. You should join the volunteer fire department in the area so that you can justify the existence of that escape.
Sig: I stole this sig.
...our fire trucks are bigger than yours too. American Fire Truck. England fire truck. We have raised air-conditioned cabs that you can stand up in, Q-Sirens, Air Horns, and 1500GPM pumps.
Sig: I stole this sig.
This is going to disappear in the flood of responses but... Earlier this year i calculated a back-of-envolope value... a 1 penny/gallon increase in gas price for a year is _about_ $1 Billion dollars per year unavailable for US consumer spending. It's actually a little higher, but close enough. FYI. .max
Ok so they need money to do R&D. I understand that.. But if the oil companies were nationalized, then exploration could be funded by the government. But i guess thats where my argument must stop as (if I will assume your american), "the government" equals the misguided belief that it would be more expensive to do it this way rather than in a for profit corporation. I have never really understood this core belief but I am sure someone will bring it against me.
I'll just use my special getting high powers one more time...
http://www.time.com/time/cartoons/20060917/3.html
spoonerize "magic trackpad"
Gasoline is one of the only commodities consumers actually buy.
For the most part, people buy brand names. Companies buy wheat, sugar, steel, and cotton. Consumers buy Wonderbread, M&Ms, Chevrolets, and Levis. But petroleum is practically the only commodity that consumers buy based on price, not brand.
The US free market: two halves of a government-granted duopoly are free to set the market price.
Cars with 14 secs 0-60 don't sell in the US.
u el_co.html there)
It's more about what people buy than what can be engineered.
And don't get too excited about your SUV. Your SUV getting 25mpg (Imperial) is only 21.2mpg US.
So you're only the same as the US average you crap on. Well, if the average really were 21mpg. Which apparently it is (see updated link http://www.greencarcongress.com/2004/11/average_f
I do think Americans should value mpg more. But we don't require it in this country, so people don't.
When I needed an AWD car (so I wouldn't have to chain up in Tahoe), I could have bought an SUV cheap. I would have gotten 30% worse mpg, but even at $2.50 a gallon, I'll never get back the extra $15K I spent to avoid that. I can afford to spend more to get better mpg, but I can't expect all Americans to do it. They aren't in the financial position I am.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
what a crack pot or crack and pot.
Housing costs certainly vary a lot in cities, but there's always something one can afford. Cities wouldn't function if they didn't provide enough affordable housing for service-industry employees and other minimum wage earners. Of course, in areas that have embraced suburban sprawl, it's much harder to afford a home in the city. Sadly, this does represent a great deal of the USA. But cities than apply even a modicum of planning to their design can accomodate basically anyone who doesn't have a hard-on for lawn-mowing.
The author of the article is deliberately mis-framing the question: he presumes - and asks us to share his tunnel vision - that gas prices are the ONLY recurring expense about which people worry. I can't honestly speak for anyone else, but I'm constantly vigilant with the prices of virtually everything I buy frequently, whether it's gasoline or milk or toilet paper.
His tunnel vision sets the stage for a fun article, but it's a fantasy and doesn't reflect human reality.
I guess you forgot about that whole USSR thing.
We believe in freedom here; The freedom to own the fruits of your labor without it being stolen at gunpoint.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
I used to drive a VW New Beetle TDI, which (at least in the '98 model) didn't have any badging on it at all as to whether it was diesel or gasoline.
More than once when I was filling it up, I had some helpful person, including in more than one case, the gas-station attendant, come running at me in order to stop me from "accidentally" putting diesel in my car.
I got quite used to giving a little explanation/demonstration of it, where I'd start it up and then let people listen to it and put their hand in front of the exhaust ("look, ma, no smoke!") and then look at the engine to convince them that it was actually a diesel.
Once you've been around them for a while, though, you can hear the difference in the sound of the engine from a ways off, but to a lot of people since it doesn't sound like a Mack truck, it's not a diesel.
Just as an aside, I had that car throughout several winters in Central Maine, and with regular (petroleum) diesel and standard anti-gel, I never had a problem getting it started in the winter. Its main problem, and the reason I eventually replaced it, was due to the low ground clearance and a tendency to get hung up on snowbanks and poorly-plowed parking lots. Aside from that, it was a great car, and I thought the diesel engine was a significant upgrade.
Whether or not buying a diesel (or a hybrid) makes sense for you, depends a lot on how long you think you'll keep a car. You can get a simple estimate of how many miles you need to keep it in order to pay the initial investment off, just by drawing two lines on a graph, where the y-intercept is the vehicle's cost, and the slope is the cost of fuel per mile. For the VW diesel, which cost about $1500 more, I want to say that it was around 100,000 miles to pay off. (This was using fuel prices in 2000 or so.) For me, that's only about 3-4 years of driving, so it made sense. If you sell your cars before 100k mi, you'd probably be better off not buying either a diesel or a hybrid, and just pocketing the extra money. Of course, this doesn't take into account the future price of fuels, or the time value of the money spent initially, but you could include all that if you wanted to do the math.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
- regional (in)stability of oil exporting countries
- price fixing, by organizations like OPEC or (illegally) by domestic oil companies
- value of the dollar compared with currencies abroad (an under-reported, but significant reason for high gas prices)
- supply and demand (Americans tend to drive gas-inefficient vehicles, raising demand; emerging markets like China and India have been rapidly increasing their energy consumption as their economies have rapidly expanded... think that could affect the price of gas? Yep.)
- taxes
- costs associated with refining oil into gas (which vary by state, raising costs for consumers)
I'm sure there are other economic factors, but those are the most prominent. In the end, other sources of liquid fuel will become more prevalent when oil extraction becomes more costly. I'm not a big fan of the "peak oil" idea, since there's still a lot of oil, but as that oil becomes more difficult to extract or refine, other energy sources (as well as old-fashioned Carter-era conservation) will become more economically attractive.Chugger: I can't believe lattees cost $4!
Observer: You know, you don't have to drink it. Control yourself.
Chugger: Oh, I suppose you're right.
Demand for gas is much less elastic. People need to get someplace. In the US, that normally means traveling by car. There is much less control over the gas expense. "Not drinking 3 lattees" is an option for even the most die-hard caffeine addict. "Not filling the car with gas" is not an option for most Americans. (Don't bitch at me, I take public transport to work.)
They don't grade fathers, but if your daughter's a stripper, you fucked up. --Chris Rock