$5 a gallon of gas rant

[Dunkopf]

Quote:
Cheapest I remember it was .18. gas stations used to have gas wars and this was at an old station that you put tokens in the pump. I was about 10. So that would've been about 42 years ago. Never paid less than .38 per gallon. It was 1.00 a gallon in 1978 during the oil embargo and never came down.

Of course back in 68 we had nothing but American made cars that averaged about 14 miles per gallon provided you didn't have a 400 or 454 under the hood. Even the slant six Dodges only got 17 or 18 mpg and were underpowered. Datsun and Toyotas got popular around 1970. I think we had an oil shortage then too. I remember going with my friends Dad to a Datsun dealer for a test drive. The guy weighed about 350. He made good money but was conservative and felt that he should be saving money. He ended up buying a brand new Lincoln Town Car. 10 mpg but mighty comfortable. naturally prices came down some and people went back to the hogs just like they did 2 years ago when prices came back down.

 

[Dunkopf]

Quote:
You guys have had expensive gas for years. I was in Germany in 81-83. I was military and we got coupons for gas. Cost was around 1.20 per gallon. The Germans paid 5.50 a gallon. As a result they had a lot of high mileage cars and a lot of people rode motorbikes and bicycles. In Amsterdam it's hard to drive a car because of the number of bicycles on the streets. People in that city are a lot healthier than here. Even in Germany the people tend to be fat because of the high fat food and carbs along with the beer. However they are healthier because they walk a lot.

American metro areas have been very poorly planned. Everything is too spread out. We have a hard time building rapid transit because the up front cost is so expensive and short sighted people raise too many objections. They would rather have people riding one to an SUV wasting millions of barrels of gas. When the gas is 12.00 a gallon then they will say why didn't we do something to save it and then build rapid transit for 10 times what it cost now.

If I had any money I would be buying real estate in areas close to the downtown areas of cities. That's the stuff that's that's going to be high priced in 20 years. The middle class neighborhoods 20 miles from work locations are going to keep going down in value and turn in to section 8 housing for people that don't need to go to work. Of course the nice areas will still be ok because the people in those houses will be able to pay 12.00 a gallon to get to work.

It's a good time to be 52. I feel bad for my kids though.

 

[vfem]

Quote:
Yep... I paid $3.06 yesterday!

My husband spent $65 on gas last week to get to some potential jobs... after doing some work, and driving around he only made $105. He had to tell the guy sorry, but we can't afford to pay him to work any longer. So sad....

If we weren't so country, I'd get a bike or walk.

 

[Dunkopf]

Quote:
That was obvious, please read:


December 26, 2010
The Finite World
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Oil is back above $90 a barrel. Copper and cotton have hit record highs. Wheat and corn prices are way up. Over all, world commodity prices have risen by a quarter in the past six months.
So what’s the meaning of this surge?
Is it speculation run amok? Is it the result of excessive money creation, a harbinger of runaway inflation just around the corner? No and no.
What the commodity markets are telling us is that we’re living in a finite world, in which the rapid growth of emerging economies is placing pressure on limited supplies of raw materials, pushing up their prices. And America is, for the most part, just a bystander in this story.
Some background: The last time the prices of oil and other commodities were this high, two and a half years ago, many commentators dismissed the price spike as an aberration driven by speculators. And they claimed vindication when commodity prices plunged in the second half of 2008.
But that price collapse coincided with a severe global recession, which led to a sharp fall in demand for raw materials. The big test would come when the world economy recovered. Would raw materials once again become expensive?
Well, it still feels like a recession in America. But thanks to growth in developing nations, world industrial production recently passed its previous peak — and, sure enough, commodity prices are surging again.
This doesn’t necessarily mean that speculation played no role in 2007-2008. Nor should we reject the notion that speculation is playing some role in current prices; for example, who is that mystery investor who has bought up much of the world’s copper supply? But the fact that world economic recovery has also brought a recovery in commodity prices strongly suggests that recent price fluctuations mainly reflect fundamental factors.
What about commodity prices as a harbinger of inflation? Many commentators on the right have been predicting for years that the Federal Reserve, by printing lots of money — it’s not actually doing that, but that’s the accusation — is setting us up for severe inflation. Stagflation is coming, declared Representative Paul Ryan in February 2009; Glenn Beck has been warning about imminent hyperinflation since 2008.
Yet inflation has remained low. What’s an inflation worrier to do?
One response has been a proliferation of conspiracy theories, of claims that the government is suppressing the truth about rising prices. But lately many on the right have seized on rising commodity prices as proof that they were right all along, as a sign of high overall inflation just around the corner.
You do have to wonder what these people were thinking two years ago, when raw material prices were plunging. If the commodity-price rise of the past six months heralds runaway inflation, why didn’t the 50 percent decline in the second half of 2008 herald runaway deflation?
Inconsistency aside, however, the big problem with those blaming the Fed for rising commodity prices is that they’re suffering from delusions of U.S. economic grandeur. For commodity prices are set globally, and what America does just isn’t that important a factor.
In particular, today, as in 2007-2008, the primary driving force behind rising commodity prices isn’t demand from the United States. It’s demand from China and other emerging economies. As more and more people in formerly poor nations are entering the global middle class, they’re beginning to drive cars and eat meat, placing growing pressure on world oil and food supplies.
And those supplies aren’t keeping pace. Conventional oil production has been flat for four years; in that sense, at least, peak oil has arrived. True, alternative sources, like oil from Canada’s tar sands, have continued to grow. But these alternative sources come at relatively high cost, both monetary and environmental.
Also, over the past year, extreme weather — especially severe heat and drought in some important agricultural regions — played an important role in driving up food prices. And, yes, there’s every reason to believe that climate change is making such weather episodes more common.
So what are the implications of the recent rise in commodity prices? It is, as I said, a sign that we’re living in a finite world, one in which resource constraints are becoming increasingly binding. This won’t bring an end to economic growth, let alone a descent into Mad Max-style collapse. It will require that we gradually change the way we live, adapting our economy and our lifestyles to the reality of more expensive resources.
But that’s for the future. Right now, rising commodity prices are basically the result of global recovery. They have no bearing, one way or another, on U.S. monetary policy. For this is a global story; at a fundamental level, it’s not about us.

Good post. Krugman is a smart dude. Too bad that there are so many economist's have so many different opinions out there. If more of them agreed we might actually get somewhere. What Krugman said makes a lot of sense though. So many people don't realize that there are other countries out there that actually matter. That actually affect us. They think America is an entity all to itself that can exist independently of the rest of the world. Sure we can suck the oil out of Alaska. We can fill the horizon of the California coast with oil platforms and put so many oil platforms in the Gulf that the Coast Guard will have a full time job keeping ships from hitting them. What's that going to give us? Maybe 10 more years. People need to wake up. I know it's tough. Those gas sucking trucks actually get used to haul things for a lot of people and who wants to drive around in a car where you touch elbows with the passenger? It's coming though. Europeans have been driving cars like that for years. Coming to America soon.

 

[FourPawz]

I've been using this website for a few years now to find the best gas prices in my locality:

http://gasbuddy.com/

The site comes in really handy if I have to travel. I can scope out a better price to save a few bucks for the return trip.

 

[Dunkopf]

Quote:
Yep... I paid $3.06 yesterday!

My husband spent $65 on gas last week to get to some potential jobs... after doing some work, and driving around he only made $105. He had to tell the guy sorry, but we can't afford to pay him to work any longer. So sad....

If we weren't so country, I'd get a bike or walk.

I finally passed the 50.00 mark again for a tank of gas. In 2007 I got up to 65.00. We live 20 miles from the nearest city and bicycling isn't an option. Our house is about 100k underwater and like Royd pointed out. Motorcycles actually end up costing quite a bit and they are a lot more dangerous. Fortunately I have a company car. They will probably start charging more for personal use or make us start leaving the cars at the office and drive our own cars in.

 

[swift4me]

It is interesting to see what happens when gas gets high. People start to make choices. I'm sure other posters here have said about everything, but here in France, we pay 1.48 Euros ($1.95) per liter or roughly $7 a gallon. People drive small cars and don't seem to be the least bothered by it. I know that many in America really use their 4wd trucks and Suburbans, but most of the big trucks and SUV's in America don't carry anything other than kids and groceries.

I drive a Renault vehicle called a Kangoo, that is a small box van with twin back doors and a side door slider. I get around 45 mpg, drive at freeway speeds no problem and haul as much weight in it as I used to in a small pickup. I've hauled 50 chestnut fenceposts, stacks of subflooring and many loads of clay roofing tiles. No full sheets of plywood, but that's about the only thing I miss out on.

I agree that gas is going to get worse, and you'll no doubt be making changes in habits.

Pete

 

[I have WHAT in my yard?]

Abiotic oil is a fantasy.

All oil is not from dinosaurs it is from other animals and plants. The deep levels of the ocean have not always been either deep or ocean.

Listen to real scientists on abiotic oil.

http://www.theoildrum.com/story/2005/11/4/15537/8056

If you don't get this or believe it, click on the link in the story The Truth About Abiotic Oil. Some of it is heavy on the science so harder to read. But isn't that what you want? Science? Not science fiction?

 

[knjinnm]

Quote:
T. Boone Pickins has been talking up NG for some time. But there are problems:
1) We can't walk into a dealer and easily buy a CNG car or truck.
2) Converting existing cars or pickup trucks is expensive.
3) Even though the country is crisscrossed with NG pipelines there are not enough stations capable of refilling a CNG tank.

As for higher taxes, the U.S. has some of the lowest taxes of all industrialized nations.

Americans have been convinced they can everything ... two wars, agriculture subsidies, oil subsidies, prescription drug plans ... and they don't have to pay for them.

But try to give Americans affordable health care and suddenly we can't afford to keep Americans healthy.
The new congresses push is that U.S. can't afford Social Security or Medicare even though both are self-funding but we can afford to develop a anti-missile defense system to protect the country from OBL's flying carpet air force.

"Remember that too the next time you vote."

Joe

 

[mgw]

Well, sadly gas is going to keep going up in price, nothing we can do about it but use less. We are not drilling enough of our own oil here however. we really do have alot of oil in this country, sadly even if we drilled it all the price would not come down. But it would make us less dependent on Mid East oil Which would be a huge good thing for the U.S. Also we are the Mid East of natural gas and coal we need to start utilizing these resources ASAP. Q E 2 will drive the price of everything up by a large margin. QE2 is designed to devalue the dollar Which means it will take more of them to buy anything, SCARY THOUGHT. We are going to have to start being more self reliant, im talking each person individually. Hey we need to grow gardens, raise chickens, and be more independant that is a fact.