$10 per gallon gas ?
jerry warner
Jack May
"jerry warner" <"warne(no)"@mchsi.com> wrote in message
news:481835D8...@mchsi.com...
> will it collapse America?
>
They are running $9 to $10 per gallon in England and a little less than 90%
of the travel is in cars. Similar situation in the rest of Europe.
The high price of fuel will mainly slow down the economy, increase
unemployment and probably bankrupt some transit agencies. Certainly NYC and
Chicago transit are in deep financial trouble, but probably from multiple
causes.
James Nicoll
jerry warner <"warne(no)"@mchsi.com> wrote:
>will it collapse America?
>
Absolutely. Ignore the fact that people in the Netherlands
are already paying nearly $10.00/gallon (with the UK not too far
behind) without collapsing into anarchy and rampant cat-dog marriages.
--
http://www.livejournal.com/users/james_nicoll
http://www.cafepress.com/jdnicoll (For all your "The problem with
defending the English language [...]" T-shirt, cup and tote-bag needs)
Straha
> are already paying nearly $10.00/gallon (with the UK not too far
> behind) without collapsing into anarchy and rampant cat-dog marriages.
US can easily handle $20 a gallon gas if it's a measured transition to
it. If it comes FAST due to Saudi implosion or war in venezuela the
world does a worse 1929.
jerry warner
Jack May wrote:
Thanks Jack. I would point out that the EU countries all
have a different tax and economic structure which leaves
room for high gas prices without lowering the basic standard of living. The US
does not share that same equity in the lives of most Americans unless health
care, education, and other basics suddenly became included in basic taxation in
America - which they won't! There are profound cultural diffrences which
translate into basic security of life issues.
Jack May
"jerry warner" <"warne(na)"@mchsi.com> wrote in message
news:48197897...@mchsi.com...
When this comment has come up before, somewhere an expert said the standard
of living is significantly lower in Europe than in the US and it also
greatly limits Europe's ability to grow their economy to compete with the
US. The British at uk.transport frequently point out the high gas taxes
used to fund transit is making the roads fall apart leading to high
congestion ruining a big part of their quality of life.
High gas taxes are not even remotely a solution for peak oil. The real
solution is the development of lower cost alternative fuels. In another
discussion on alt.history.future I discuss how General Motors is pushing big
time to switch their cars from oil based fuels to alternative fuels.
Conservation of course is a non solution for the long term.
jerry warner
Jack May wrote:
In the meantime, fixed income people who can no longer work
or even get hired to work are totally screwed, which is a full
1/4th of the population in my State. The death rate from the
poverty segment above age 55 in my State has soared to the
point the news media refuses to even report it, especially suicides! We are
living in dire conditions and a fantasy land here in my State with the news
media and Givernor all smily faced dodging hard questions ... and people madder
than hell.
Even our casinos are now failing! In one year things are going
to blow here, inescapble.
Jerry
jerry warner
It will be anarchy here and make Vietnam look like a picnic
domestically.
I guess some people are plain dense. There will be blood
in the streets of has goes to $10 a gallon because very simply
people willnot be able to survive in it or exist.
My State Senator doesnt give a shit. Both our Senators have
"no comment". They both rake in oil revenue by the millions.
Push has come to shove and the bullshit is over.
Jack May
>
>
> Jack May wrote:
>
>> "jerry warner" <"warne(na)"@mchsi.com> wrote in message
>> news:48197897...@mchsi.com...
>> >
> In the meantime, fixed income people who can no longer work
> or even get hired to work are totally screwed, which is a full
> 1/4th of the population in my State. The death rate from the
> poverty segment above age 55 in my State has soared to the
> point the news media refuses to even report it, especially suicides! We
> are
> living in dire conditions and a fantasy land here in my State with the
> news
> media and Givernor all smily faced dodging hard questions ... and people
> madder
> than hell.
> Even our casinos are now failing! In one year things are going
> to blow here, inescapble.
I agree that high gas prices that some people favor is not a good solution.
It causes far too many problems. Developing lower cost alternative fuels
is a much better way to go.
eatfastnoodle
>
> - Show quoted text -
Michigan? Michigan is the angriest state I have ever been to.
Kevin Cherkauer
news:xYydnUsngv2LzYfV...@comcast.com...
> somewhere an expert said the standard of living is significantly lower in
> Europe than in the US
I will volunteer an equally well-attributed claim that I have heard the
standard of living in the advanced industrial nations of Europe (as opposed
to "Europe" as a whole) is as high or higher than the US's. (I am not
generally a world traveller, but from my visits to admittedly only one
advanced industrial nation of Europe, this did seem to be true.)
Of course, a lot depends on how you measure "standard of living." If you
measure it in square footage of your house and horsepower of your car, then
the US probably wins hands down. (Note that the US consumes 25% of the
world's energy but only has 5% of the world's population...) But if you
measure it in happiness, the tables may turn. There is much more a sense of
being "in it together" in the liberal European countries. Many studies have
found that what actually makes people happy, and what people *think* will
make them happy, are two different things. Unfortunately what they *think*
will make them happy is a large square-footage house full of flat-screen TVs
and such out in "the country" (translation = asphalt suburban sprawl), and
huge, powerful vehicles to enable them to get between there and everything
else then need to live (which is, basically, *everything* else) in five-star
comfort, on eight-lane high-speed arterials so the traffic can flow, baby,
flow, without having to interact with another soul. In Europe, the tax
structure and amount of land available were skewed to make this "American
Dream" impossible for most. As a result, people live in more traditional
communities, in smaller houses, with smaller cars, but most possibly ended
up happier for it. They know (and actually speak to) their neighbors, can
walk or bike to most things they need, and many other things that make life
more human. Though if they had been given the choice they might have gone
for the American Dream caricature of living, unknowingly shooting themselves
in the foot.
>The real solution is the development of lower cost alternative fuels.
The real solution is about 5 billion fewer people.
Kevin Cherkauer
Utopia in Decay -- The future is coming to get you.
http://home.comcast.net/~kevin.cherkauer/site/
Jack May
"Kevin Cherkauer" <a...@bbb.ccc> wrote in message
news:zfedndupfppHqKfV...@comcast.com...
In other words you have no idea what standard of living means.
There are things in there like Europeans having half of their GDP consumed
by taxes where it is about a third of GDP in the US. Europe has a higher
unemployment rate and lower incomes. They are living in what we would
consider to be slum tenements in the US. Graffiti is out of control in much
of Europe.
The opportunity to start you own business is much harder in Europe and it
much harder to become financially well off. You seem to think money does
not matter, but money is what gives people freedom from many worries in life
and the freedom to pursue your goals in life.
Europe has a far more stagnant culture with little ability to adapt to
changes as is done in the US. The adaptability of the US culture is a
primary reason for the US being the most productive nation in the world. A
highly adaptive attitude in the culture is extremely important in the
present times of large change starting to happen.
I have seen nothing that says Europeans are happier than Americans.
Americans tend to be very optimistic and happy. Europeans tend to think
that it is acceptable to continue a steady decline of their economy with
little optimism on expecting improvement.
Kevin Cherkauer
Google search just now:
http://www.socyberty.com/Sociology/World-Happiness-Rankings.116999
USA comes in #19 which I admit is not as low as I expected, but not in the
top ten either. Interestingly 100% of the Scandanavian nations (Iceland,
Sweden, Finland, Norway, Denmark), which are just "drowning" in taxes, came
in above the US.
"Jack May" <jack...@comcast.net> wrote in message
news:NI-dnYPAYe9W36fV...@comcast.com...
> In other words you have no idea what standard of living means.
I'm not going to play the game of definitions and semantic hair-splitting. I
will hazard a guess that you are a stickler for a particular definition
promoted by various economic pundits and politicians that maps, more or
less, to "total amount of stuff per capita." Official economic pundits and
politicians in the US like such definitions because those are the kind where
the US comes out on top, and we can all stop thinking after that point
because the Powers that Be have just proved to us how happy and advanced we
all are and we can all give ourselves a smug pat on the back. Yup, we sure
have a lot of stuff. Nobody's got more stuff than us, no siree. We sure
showed the world what piling up the *stuff* is all about, now didn't we!
I prefer a definition that is more relevant to something we ought to care
about, namely one that measures total happiness per capita. I don't really
care how much stuff I have if it doesn't make me happy. Alternatively, I
don't really care how little stuff I have if I am in fact happy. So call it
whatever you want (such as "fried chicken"?).
Your argument implied that a higher "standard of living" is what we should
all want, without defining it. I propose "happiness" as the thing we should
all want, but you don't like that definition because the US is not #1. So it
seems like your main goal here might be to show that the US is better than
everywhere else, and Europe is populated with benighted fools who don't buy
into Friedmanite economics.
> The British at uk.transport frequently point out the high gas taxes
> used to fund transit is making the roads fall apart leading to high
> congestion ruining a big part of their quality of life.
We don't have "high congestion" in the US?
An interstate highway bridge didn't just drop into the Mississippi River in
Minnesota?
Ivan
||||
|| (Note that the US
|| consumes 25% of the world's energy but only has 5% of the world's
population...)
Therein lies the big problem, with levels of consumer expectations
continually rising in countries such as China and India (to name but two!)
both with populations 'far' greater to that of the U.S.. With hugely
increasing numbers of them beginning to demand a similar standard of living
to the ones which hundreds of millions of us in the developed world have
thus far enjoyed.
My own pessimistic guess is that although we've hardly yet seen the tip of
the real iceberg, we are at least beginning to witness the early signs of
our profligate lifestyles now beginning to come apart at the seams.
pjsmi...@warkscol.ac.uk
> "Kevin Cherkauer" <a...@bbb.ccc> wrote in message
>
> news:zfedndupfppHqKfV...@comcast.com...
>
>
>
>
>
>
> - Show quoted text -
Speaking as a highly taxed, culturally stagnant European who lives his
sad miserable life in a small brick cottage on the edge of desparate
poverty due to incredibly high taxation. I would just like to point
out the obvious, buy fuel efficient cars, believe it or not, you can
get Fords, Chryslers, General Motors in Europe and they do 35+ MPG.
America is a large nation, you need your cars, you don't need their
fuel consumption. Just think, by simple engineering fixes like
changing engine sizes, altering gear ratios, reprogramming engine
management systems and carerful (that is to say more sedate) driving
styles, US drivers could double the MPG they get from their cars,
effectivly halving the cost of a gallon of gas. Not so much a $10
gallon as a $5 gallon.
As for standard of living, I have lived, worked and travelled in the
US over many years, in the rich west of Europe, material living is as
good as the US, and support for disadvantaged groups is better. I've
seen the good times in the US, and they can be good, but in a land
that cherishes freedom and liberty, the bad times are dire. It seems
that freedom brings with it the freedom to rot.
For the record, I was born in a city flattened by WW2 (Coventry), I
recieved a socialised state education and have been a carefree
recipient of state medical services, my father recently had a
quadruple heart bypass operation. when my company closed, the state
paid my mortgage, local taxes and retraining, retraining that was so
good I spent the next twenty years working in the US. The state paid
for my university education and encouraged me to aim higher in order
to better myself - I have an open ended green card to work in the US.
All of this was funded out of those high state taxes you despise.
Which brings me to my final point, taxes, Yes Europe has high taxes,
we do this so that we can share the fruits of our prosperity
throughout the whole community. When comparing US taxes to European
ones, add into your figures the cost of University Education, Health
Care, Pension plans and 'Local Sales Tax' then tell me how much
discretionary income you have left.
The $10 or even $20 gallon won't floor the US, as a people you are far
too resourceful for you to let it.
Kevin Cherkauer
every person on Earth to the level of consumption of those in advanced
industrialized nations. If they all rose to the level of US consumption, the
world would consume 500% of the world's available energy.
While consumer expectations in places like China and India are rising,
consumer expectations in the US seem to be declining. So stay tuned for a
shift in the relative sizes of the piles of stuff owned by the peoples of
these different nations.
With China producing much more than it is consuming, while the US consumes
much more than it produces, China is sitting on a big pile of little
portraits of former US presidents. At some point they are going to want to
get something in return for those, such as more cars, televisions, steak
dinners, vacations abroad, central air... But since the US consumes more
than it produces, the Chinese will have to go elsewhere to purchase those
things -- places where little portraits of former US presidents are not the
national currency, and thus are not guaranteed to be accepted if the
perceived value of the little portraits continues its downward trajectory --
which seems likely, given that the US finances its consumption of more than
it produces mainly by printing more of these little portraits. (Or, these
days, we don't even have to print them -- inflating the currency, like
everything else, has been streamlined into unbounded levels of "efficiency"
through the magic of computers.)
So if China can't get as much stuff as they think they ought to elsewhere
with their discounted dollars, they might end up having to buy stuff from
the US. But since the US produces much less than it consumes, this probably
means the shelves will be bare of stuff to buy, and they will have to start
buying up the hard assets instead -- land, corporations, office parks,
mineral rights... In the current political climate, perhaps even pieces of
the US government. For example, the Postal Service? The Department of Health
and Human Services? The possibilities are endless, in the current political
climate. Perhaps we can have China run our next round of elections for us --
outsourcing is supposed to save money, they say.
Utopia in Decay -- The future is coming to get you.
http://home.comcast.net/~kevin.cherkauer/site/
Kevin Cherkauer
"Ivan" <ivan'H'ol...@yahoo.co.uk> wrote in message
news:69vnp7F...@mid.individual.net...
eatfastnoodle
Lower tax in the US isn't a result of having more discretionary
income, it's more of a problem most Americans have with spending what
they see their hard-earned money on somebody else. Americans are
individualistic, unapologetic and above all, very good at shifting
blames. If you just turn on CNN and watch how many times "cut wasteful
spending" has been cited by presidential candidate as their magic
source of funding for tax cut or no-tax-hike, most likely these so
called wasteful spending would be stuff like health care, funding for
science or investment in public infrastructure (funny nobody mentioned
the multi-trillions spent in Iraq as wasteful spending, or the 500
billion annual defense budget as wasteful spending, in the end, you
get a best trained best equipped staffed with the best and the bravest
military completely unable to defeat a bunch of barely literate
fanatics with AK47s, in any other public or private institutions, that
kind of return for that kind of investment would have the leader and
the employee of that institution lynched by investors, yet nobody from
both end of political spectrum seem to think that Pentagon is a
gigantic hole of wasteful spending).
Ivan
|| So much for the idea that all we have to do to control population is
|| lift every person on Earth to the level of consumption of those in
|| advanced industrialized nations. If they all rose to the level of US
|| consumption, the world would consume 500% of the world's available
|| energy.
||
|| While consumer expectations in places like China and India are
|| rising, consumer expectations in the US seem to be declining. So
|| stay tuned for a shift in the relative sizes of the piles of stuff
|| owned by the peoples of these different nations.
||
||
I apologize for reposting this from another thread, but IMV it puts a lot of
what's happening into some kind of perspective.. although despite what's
going on with increasing world demand I saw the chairman of Anglo American
Oil Sir Mark Moody-Stuart in an interview on Channel 4 news last night, who
said that that there was more than enough available oil to meet demand, and
possibly after about four years of pain prices could settle back down to a
floor of around $50.00 a barrel.. even though he's in a position to know
better than most, I can't help wondering if he was being a tad over
optimistic?
"But the biggest reason prices have been soaring is the future supply and
demand outlook. The Beijing Olympics this summer will open the world's eyes.
In the next 17 years, plans are to move 300 million Chinese from farms to
cities that have yet to be built. They will want roads, cars, buildings and
streetlights. The equivalent of five New Yorks, and some 50,000 skyscrapers,
are on drawing boards. Already, some 174 subway systems are under
construction and a power plant is completed every Month. China already has
200 cities bigger than Dallas."
<http://www.financialpost.com/analysis/story.html?id=105c270f-a0c9-4ebb-bccf-cfaef42b3991>
<|
Kevin Cherkauer
oil, i.e. not only is demand going up, but supply is going down for
geological reasons, not just political and/or incompetence.
Utopia in Decay -- The future is coming to get you.
http://home.comcast.net/~kevin.cherkauer/site/
Kevin Cherkauer
"Ivan" <ivan'H'ol...@yahoo.co.uk> wrote in message
news:6a7cukF...@mid.individual.net...
Ivan
|| Interesting article, though it surprisingly seems to be ignorant of
|| for geological reasons, not just political and/or incompetence.
||
|| Utopia in Decay -- The future is coming to get you.
|| http://home.comcast.net/~kevin.cherkauer/site/
||
|| Kevin Cherkauer
||
||
However in all the acres of news coverage I've read, seen and heard on the
subject over recent Weeks I don't think the taboo words 'peak oil' have
hardly warranted a mention, if so then only to be dismissed out of hand.
Plenty of experts in sharp suits telling us about oil 'speculators' and how
in a couple of years everything's going to bounce back to the way it was,
once 'confidence in the markets has been restored', so all we can really do
is just wait and see if their predictions turn out to be correct.
My own guess is that even if they do manage to achive some semblance of
normality by somehow managing to paper over the cracks, what it means is
that everyone will be lulled back into their little complacent world of
believing in never ending supplies of dirt cheap energy and the next time it
happens, that time it's going to be for real!
<