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[JoesTypeS]

@JayS

I should know by now that the news likes to blow stories out of proportion because really bad news = more ratings, but the gas thing is getting stupid. I have no problem with them talking about the trickle down effect of high gas on goods and services, because that could really hurt the consumer.

What I’m REALLY getting tired of is them interviewing John Q Moron while he’s gassing up his car bitching about how the cost of gas is making such a huge dent in his budget. Lets look at some numbers.

As a base:
14000 miles per year.
25 mpg car.
560 gallons of gas per year.

If you don’t fit in that that, it was your choice to either drive more than the average, or own a low mpg vehicle.

At $2.25/gallon, you spend $1260 a year in gas.
At $3.25/gallon, you spend $1820 a year in gas.
That’s $10.75 a week more, or $46 a month.

Sure, $46 a month is nothing to just throw away, but hardly enough that if you’re living within your means that you have to start pawning your worldly possesions like these idiots on the news. And lets not forgot these calculations are based on an entire dollar jump per gallon. If you can’t afford an extra $46 a month you probably should start looking at the rest of your budget. You’ll probably find that maybe you shouldn’t be spending 2-3 grand a year on car mods, or several hundred dollars on console games, music, or dvds.

The other laughable thing is that politicians, both left and right, think their grandstanding is going to do something about it. Guess what, the price of a barrel of oil is an INTERNATIONAL PRICE. No short term grand standing trick (stop filling the reserves, drilling in anwar, caps on profits etc etc) is going to change that. As long as oil is in the $70/barrel range, gas will be in the $3/gallon range.

Finding a political solution to the Iran nuke issue would make a huge difference. So would finding a way to cut our usage by %15. In that way though, high gas prices just might be the answer. The higher the price goes the more people think about conservation, which is the only way we’re going to lower our usage. But $3.25, as my numbers show, that won’t really be enough to change people’s habits. They’ll bitch, but they’ll still drive to work/school in single occupant vehicles, they’ll still go “cruising”, they’ll still go autocross, they’ll still drive what they drive now. Maybe the full size suv guy steps down to a mid size, and a few small car people buy hybrids, but you won’t see lines at the local car dealerships as everyone fights for high mpg rides.

I agree, high gas prices really don’t have a big effect on individual consumers at the level of driving.

I was however going to draw up an example of potential costs to a small business, but as I was calculating the numbers, I thought ‘Hey, if your business costs go up $5k/yr and you can’t cover that, you shouldn’t be in business.’

Then I figured where the real pain gets felt by consumers and businesses alike. Shipping and travel. I’m no expert on FedEX or if they get their fuel at a discounted rate or whatever (but now I’m going to look into it), but their costs have got to be skyrocketing.

On another, unrealted note to the specific topic, but something I’ve been wanting to put out for debate…SUVs, Pickups, etc… Americans clearly aren’t going to stop driving them no matter what. So here’s what I suggest. Congress passes a law that would require all “trucks” to be diesel by like 2008/9 (it’s not like it would really be a hard thing for the car companies to do). Then you get the biodiesel movement really going, not through exxon or whatever, but local community driven projects that get direction and assistance from a national group. In a perfect world, maybe there would even be a small profit that would be reinvested into the local community. Just one idea I’ve been thinking about…