gas is cheap in the u.s., always has been. the low cost has caused a lot of problems for us over the years
Here in Laughlin, NV the two locally owned stations are at $3.39 a gallon. Across the bridge in Bullhead City, AZ it's $2.71 at Sam's Club and Fastrip. I had to go down to Lake Havasu today so I passed through Needles, CA. I noticed as I drove by that the Chevron was $4.99 a gallon.
How do you mean this? I've made some not-so-nice comments about the US in this respect, partly fueled (pun intended) by jealousy for your magnificent V8 cars while the rest of the western world made do with 2 or 3 times smaller displacements. Often necessitated by fueltax. When young, I was in awe of the 5.0 Mustang (wow, 5 liters displacement...) until I found out it didn't make much more power than a Saab 2.3. Sometimes it looked (to me) like the US were determined to deplete the world's oil supplies as fast as it could before anyone else would. Whilst forgetting we (the world) may all have our own straw, but we're all drinking from the same milkshake. Drinking as fast as you can gives you *maybe* a tiny bit of extra gratification along the way but once its empty, you have nothing to show for it but an empty glass. But you're the kind of audience that probably somewhat agrees with me, so I'm preaching to the choir, and doing so in hindsight...
agreed, but it is not intentional on the peoples part. it is mostly a matter of government policies to rev up the economy and support oil companies who donate millions to politicians campaign funds. people are victims of their own circumstances. big cars and trucks are cheap, gas is cheap, roads are huge, public transportation is inadequate. fast food is cheap, and exercise is eschewed. bicycles are foreign to us. of course, it's all in the name of 'freedom' jealous? i guess if you really want that mustang, but europe did give us the land rover of course, we pay the price in pollution, climate change and health issues, but i guess it isn't high enough. yet.
...didn't they have to use Buick engines to pull that off? Doubt we would have loved them as much if they'd shown up with the homegrown 2.3L
$2.30. Supply and demand: Missunderstood. Eggs locally are about $2 for a 2-1/2 dozen flat. Why? Easy. Vegans and hippies that think that when ultra-large companies put pictures of little girls holding "happy chickens" on their cartons that they're healthier. Also, when chichening became a verb. So.... Mk-1, Mod-0 "white" eggs now have ratings that make CNN envious. Similarly.... You WANT gas to be $0.50 or less a gallon because so many people aren't having to use gas to power their cars or generators in failed US states (and in developing or war-torn nations) with inadequate power grids. Also..... Cheap energy sourced locally means that you don't have to use nuclear power as much.....as in nuclear powered carrier strike groups. Public transportation is sorta like population control...carpooling.....socialized health care....public schools. Everybody wants everybody ELSE to do it.
I was in the military and stationed in Germany in the late 60's. A friend had a Plymouth RoadRunner and he got so many gas coupons a month. He could buy gas with coupons at the local gas stations for about 30 cents a gallon. The locals were driving tiny cars and paying about $2.50 a gallon at the time so it didn't ingratiate us with them. I was in Belgium for work in 2000. A driver picked me up and as I walked out of my hotel room, he reminded me that I had left a light on. Western Europe has to buy most of their energy from others and so they are pretty energy conscious. That driver had a new Ford Escort size VW wagon. He said that it had a 4 cylinder engine. They have a sales tax on engine size and the next size larger engine would have cost him thousands of dollars more. I thought of that when I paid my $100 Ohio registration penalty for driving a hybrid. My Odyssey was $46 and the Prius cost $146 to renew my Ohio registration. Belgium and much of Europe penalize' energy consumption and it seems that we penalize conservation.
Not sports cars, but, I've gotten to regularly compare a Sable with a 3L V6 to a Sonic/Aveo with the 1.4 turbo on a regular basis. The power curve of the naturally aspirated engine was simply more engaging to drive. Then those turbos will drink as much fuel if you did push them to much the power output of the larger NA engine. The US is huge compared to an individual European country. Cheap fuel was used to get goods and people around, and that was possible because of our own national energy reserves. I'd say 'freedom' is more the American dream of owning your own home out in suburbs. That made public transit less practical. Where I grew up in NJ, many people worked in NYC. They used the bus or train to commute, but first had to drive to those stations.
[offtopic] Probably mentioned this on here before, but I toured the US (and some Canada) by train in 1990. (Toronto, Ottawa, Detroit, Seattle, Vancouver, Salt Lake, LA, Washington DC, Ft Lauderdale, Orlando, NY, Toronto). Trains will get you there eventually. Detroit Seattle was a 2 day trip and only ran 2 or 3x a week. So glad the train was still waiting for me when I arrived 15 minutes late! (Public transport bus took me over the border from Canada, but threw out my suitcase and drove off when customs took some convincing excepting my life-time visum (only non-perforated page in my old passport) for the US). When arriving in Orlando by Amtrak, I asked where the bus to Disney World was. I just got a glazy stare. Ended up booking a daytrip in a hotel I didn't stay in to get to Epcot Centre. [/offtopic]
yep, for all the transportation around disney, the only way in and out of the airport is by car, bus or plane. even disney has backed off their brilliant monorail because of cost, and implemented a huge bus and van program
Son works at a gas station. Lots of somewhat rude chumps ( usually in a huge truck ) bitching to him about gas prices. Needless to say, he is getting sick of it. And it has only just started. Honestly...Wth did they expect? higher prices were bound to happen... Something tells me 'the cycle' of folks trading down for a smaller vehicle is going to happen / is happening.
Well, To be fair there's a lot of pent-up demand, a distribution network that's still somewhat disrupted, and a second administration in a row that likes to write checks with 4 commas in them. People making more money by not working and a rudderless dampanic landing aren't helping either. Petrol isn't some notional idea of capital that can be generated with political speeches and a mouse click. Gasoline is a commodity almost just like lumber, which has seen 100% price spikes lately. If too many dollahs are chasing after a finite supply of gas, then it's not going to get less expensive. This will probably only be temporary. History doesn't repeat itself verbatim but it does sorta rhyme a little. The last time we had a dampanic there was an explosive period of growth followed by something I like to call The Great Depression. If you look at the roaring 20's...there were racial tensions....battles over immigration....a budding tryst with socialism.....all the stuff that people are still arguing over today. GAS prices? Pretty weak tea, IMHO.
It also helps that large bailed out interests are monetarily motivating oil companies to reduce/eliminate exploration and drilling. In the past when oil companies were stimulated with new demand they would open up drilling to cash in with more production. There is a coordinated effort by large investors to stop this (started during T so non-denominational) so they can cash in on unrealistic profits, we know how that has turned out in the past. let’s see if In 5 years we have a spike and bloodbath Current Housing market 100% indicates stagflation and to be honest all products have jumped 50-100% in price since last year without increasing supply, expanding real goods production or even an increase in demand as compared over past years. Considering glass-segal was never re-instated and the fact that the poor to lower middle class can’t participate in the recovery due to the high level of entry. It’s as if the bottom 2/3’s of houses and cars that have been in the market since the dawn of time have gone out of existence 2019-2020 The upper income owners are unevenly taking on massive debt compared to the bottom half. Once this thing unraveles it will be like a damn burst because only a small portion of the population can borrow anywhere near the cost of entry meaning massive losses once things open and we try to make housing more liquid. Because of the intense rift I’m guessing 80% markdowns before the lower half can even look at purchase. Basically we are trying to inflate our way out and because all investments can’t keep up with inflation all income dumps into stocks even though the fundamentals to invest there are worthless PE ratio is similar to 1999
