US gas prices, 45th cheapest of 155 countries

abbycats

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The gas prices are killing me. I live in a rural area in Nebraska and I travel 80 miles round trip to work. We do not have public transportation here. I have no choice but to drive. My job is starting to cost me more money than it's worth. Somebody is getting filty rich in the scheme of things while the little guy suffers. It makes me so mad!
 

ryn

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Here gas costs over $8 a gallon. I think it's still way too little, considering the enviromental effects of that vile goo.
 

theimp98

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so your saying, let a few people keep getting richer?
even if, and i wish they would put more public transportation in place here. Mass public transportation would never really work here, the way it does in many other places.

but still when there is enough gas, the gas prices are being kept high.
people want to go green. Well you have to pay the price.

i can get some good prices on Scooters if people want hehe.
 

siggav

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I just calculated up the average cost of petrol in the UK (there's a neat price comparison site) and it's currently sitting at 8.12$ a gallon (or 110p a litre)

There is a considerable difference in that a lot of people here are not dependent on cars. I haven't driven a car myself in probably around 6-7 years now. I don't own one and I tend to take buses or trains when I need to travel with the occasional taxi hop as well if I need to gete somewhere quickly.

Even using a taxi a few times a month it's a lot cheaper than keeping my own car.

Back home in Iceland there's been a lot of unrest over petrol prices. Truckers went on strike and parked their trucks right in the middle of busy roads etc.
 

essayons89

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All of the environmental bull aside (as in red tape) about not building new refineries the oil companies don't want them either. New, more efficient refineries means more fuel production which means lower fuel prices which means less money for the oil companies. We all know they can't have that. It is greed that makes the world the go 'round.
 

carolpetunia

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Originally Posted by abbycats

Somebody is getting filty rich in the scheme of things while the little guy suffers. It makes me so mad!
Amen, sister! But nothing ever changes, because the little man has to work so hard to stay afloat that he doesn't have the time or energy to march on Washington and demand fairness... and that's if he even understands the situation well enough to know that he needs to.

Originally Posted by Ryn

Here gas costs over $8 a gallon. I think it's still way too little, considering the enviromental effects of that vile goo.
I understand that feeling -- but if you try to enforce environmental responsibility by overpricing something that's still an absolute necessity for so many people, you're only penalizing the lower classes and putting a lot of them out of work... while the wealthy who can pay the inflated price continue to cruise around in Hummers.

Originally Posted by Siggav

...I haven't driven a car myself in probably around 6-7 years now. I don't own one and I tend to take buses or trains when I need to travel with the occasional taxi hop as well...
That sounds like heaven. And you're living in my favorite place in the world, too. Why can't Texas be more like Scotland?


Originally Posted by Essayons89

It is greed that makes the world the go 'round.
Yes, it is. I'll never understand how the 2% who have so much more than they will ever use can enjoy any of it, when they see people going hungry, patients dying for lack of insurance, families living in their cars...

But to be fair, I have to acknowledge that disdain for the lower classes is not limited to the rich. There's a library just down the street from me with a huge parking lot, well-screened with trees, and several people who've lost their homes had been working during the day and then parking in that lot at night to sleep in their cars.

The surrounding neighborhood is middle-class. It's exactly the kind of neighborhood these homeless people came from -- people of the same general character, probably working in some of the same companies. "There but for grace," y'know?

Yet some neighbors filed a complaint with the police, saying it made them nervous to have those people sleeping in their cars. They admitted there had been no trouble, no noise, no anything -- but it was unseemly, and they wanted those people out.

Well, they're right -- it is unseemly that working people have to sleep in their cars! But making it even harder for them to pull their lives back together is not the solution.

It's as if there's this little club we all belong to, and as long as we can pay the dues, we're accepted. But fail to make that payment one month, and all of a sudden people don't know you, and don't want to know you. You are defined by your three-bedroom-two-bath-two-car lifestyle, and if that lifestyle is lost, then your value as a human being is lost too.

 

theimp98

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Originally Posted by Essayons89

All of the environmental bull aside (as in red tape) about not building new refineries the oil companies don't want them either. New, more efficient refineries means more fuel production which means lower fuel prices which means less money for the oil companies. We all know they can't have that. It is greed that makes the world the go 'round.
gotta stay green. if a few american lose jobs and homes, due to high price of fuel. well its the price that gotta be paid. we cant build those better refineries to lower the price of fuel. Why cause we gotta stop people from driving, cant bulid anymore Nuclear power plants.

sure hillary and others are giving lip servics to tax reduction on fuel, in the mean time dem congress members have introduced .50 cent a gallon increase.
Why to keep people from driving. to battle the mythic man made Global warming. Something al gore has a need to promote cause of his 600 million invesment in Gobal warming compaines.

funny really, they are getting people to drive less, and people still complain.

anyway, according to some, the demand for gas in the us is way down.
normaly the prices would be coming down. But they are keeping high.

how the demand for ethanol, is driving up food prices. ethanol is going to cause more damange in the long run then oil is.

lol its a fun road eh?

oh well that is what happens when your business and elected goverment sale out to forgin nations.
 

jcat

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Gas hit €1.50 a liter in Germany this weekend, which is $2.32 per liter. That's $8.79 a gallon. It has been a long weekend, with no school next week, but I bet a lot of people just decided to stay home.

I think these prices are going to kick off a rural exodus. I know several people who are looking for apartments or condos in the city, so that they can do without a car.
 

fwan

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Also living in Germany but more in a business area of Frankfurt, i am very grateful. I dont need a car, infact the monthly train ticket is killing me each time i see it go up.

I know when i get to australia i will need a car, simply because we will not be living in the city. I am hoping we will be living a good distance to the busstop or to the train station in case i need to get to work.
 

cococat

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I glanced at the title and thought cheap and gas cannot be in the same sentence! Gas prices are brutal
 

mrblanche

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Our European friends may not understand that our economy is set up in such a way that high gas prices are a serious problem. There's not that much public transit, and people tend to live quite a ways from work.

However, I do need to point out that the oil companies right now are making about an 8% profit, which is fairly normal for most business, a little higher than they made a few years ago, when they were actually under-performing in the economy. Very little of the oil is owned by the companies; they have to buy it before they can refine it. And when I worked for a little tiny oil company (Leasehold Manager), we drilled a number of wells but never had a productive one. We spent $13,000,000 on one dry hole.

But the wisest man I know in the oil biz, a guy named Jeff Smith, tells me that we are balanced on the knife edge of $200/bbl oil, and $10/bbl oil. A significant portion of the current price rise is on commodity speculation, and the U.S. demand has already fallen 7% from last year. If that keeps up, and if we actually do have a recession, buyers are going to begin to default on futures contracts, and the oil market could collapse in a matter of days.
 

jcat

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Originally Posted by mrblanche

Our European friends may not understand that our economy is set up in such a way that high gas prices are a serious problem. There's not that much public transit, and people tend to live quite a ways from work.
I think they/we do, but are merely pointing out that the problem definitely isn't limited to the U.S., and that the States should seriously make an effort to provide more public transit, and municipal planning should take fuel prices into account, and make supermarkets, banks, etc., more accessible to those without cars.

We've, i.e., those living in Europe, really been hit by much higher food prices, too, in part because of the oil price. Most goods are transported by road in Europe, as freight and passengers use the same rails. That's one thing the U.S. has done right - separate lines.

A big part of the problem is that oil production in several big oil-producing countries, like Saudi Arabia, Russia, Venezuela, etc., is in the hands of the government, and not the big multinationals, and restricting output has become a political tool. Another is the increased demand in emerging economies like China and India.

Governments can decrease the taxes on fuels, e.g., the "green tax", but in no way can they get fuel prices back to the old levels.

Gasoline cost about 32 cents a gallon when I first started driving in the early seventies. Unreal.
 
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