7bob7 said:
The price of petrol/gas in the UK is at todays exchange rate about $12 a gallon *
so stop whining about paying 50 bucks for a tank full when we in Europe are paying **
around $140 - 160 per fill also try driving more econmical cars and research ***
how to turn the fat of all those obese people into a viable alternative to gas,
just think you could be self sufficient in fuel and wouldn't have to invade other
countries to steal their oil ****
* Enough already, we know this. We have known this, your governments are inexplicably more insane than ours is, taxing the shit out of fuel so the demand for small efficient vehicles will skyrocket. It worked, tell them to knock it off and quit bothering us.
** $50 for a full tank? That was last week! Get with the times! It's about $86.90 now.
*** More economical cars? Like the ones you guys in Europe already have, and have had for more than a decade? Yeah, we know, we like it if you could send of those over here, but what with European emission and safety standards differing from ours, we're not allowed to have them. However, as a consolation prize, we have the 20 mpg city/highway Chevrolet Tahoe hybrid. (Not to mention all those other expensive hybrids that still pall in comparison to your non-hybrids)
**** Yeah, invading other countries to steal their oil. That's why the price has tripled since that idiotic war started.
Not to pick on you, personally, but that hit all the major points. Now to hit on a few of the other opinions stated here.
(1) Move closer to work. That's all fine and good if you can afford to. I, for one, cannot. I currently pay $0/month, and still barely skid by through life. Moving is clearly not an option. As for finding work closer to home (not mentioned but infinitely more like to work for everyone else), I've been trying that for three years now, and every time I get the old "Thanks, but no thanks"
(2) Buy a hybrid... Well, shit, if I had the money to do that, I wouldn't be complaining, now would I? (Actually, if I had the money, I'd buy a Tesla and have downstate hot rod guru Troy Trepanier make me a new trunk and hood with built-in solar panels wired directly to the battery, but I digress) This is why I'm trying to fix my "more economical than everything else at the house" car, but driving the gas-sucking Explorer to a low-paying job 13 miles out of the way leaves me with both little time and little money to get such a project done.
(3) Public transport... In an ideal world, this would work. This world, however, is far from ideal. I would have to drive further than the 13 miles to work to get to the nearest bus stop (which, amazingly, would get me to work), but the buses around here are notoriously unreliable. Actually, the entirety of the Chicago Transit Authority is notoriously unreliable. Actually again, the entirety of everything in the entire Chicagoland area is notoriously unreliable, so fuck it all.
(4) Stop driving everywhere... In a country with 2 and a quarter centuries of obvious haphazard planning (if any planning occurred at all) of... everything, driving everywhere is the only way to get anything accomplished.
So, what is the problem? Why are gas prices (and therefore the price of everything else) skyrocketing? Simple, someone else on the forums mentioned it, and the facts check out, so i re-iterate them here: speculation. Oil prices rise for every single bad thing that may or may not happen anywhere, and unlike the rest of this post, that is not hyperbole. If anything could
potentially happen that
might in some way disrupt world wide oil flow, prices go up, whether or not bad thing actually happens, or was even remotely possible to happening in the first place. People ***** about it, adjust to the new level, so there it stays. If prices dropped to where they ought to be (accounting for the increased demand by China, India, etc.), we'd probably be paying $2.25, maybe $2.50 a gallon today. Except, of course, in Europe, where new taxes would be levied to jack it up to $14/gallon equivalent.
Drilling in the Alaskan reserves will do exactly what drilling in the 80% protected U.S. coastline would i.e. nothing for about 10 years.
Anyone who actually bothered to look up where the U.S. gets it's oil would note that Mexico and Canada are where the vast majority of it comes from. Roughly 1 out of 8 gallons of gas used in America is European, because they produce far more than they actually use.
So, to actually answer the posed question, and not simply rant, rising prices haven't affected me much. I was always saving for things anyway, now I simply save less.
[EDIT] More ranting. The Tesla is an example of environmentalism done right: showing America it's entirely to have our cake, and eat it too (stupid phrase) (mmm... cake...): a "green" car, check that, a
fun green car without (most of) the drawbacks. It doesn't matter the few can afford it, and it's thoroughly impractical, it's a symbol of what can be done. The Whitestar sedan (half the price of the roadster, twice the seating, currently in progress) is what most people would end up buying. If Honda ever gets around to actually creating that rear-engine Insight concept they had a few years back, I will be pleased with that as well.
