rigelkitty: Fifty-two dollars for a tank of gas

Rigel (

rigelkitty) wrote,
@ 2008-05-13 00:49:00

Current mood:

cynical

Fifty-two dollars for a tank of gas

I don't drive an SUV. My car has a 14 gallon tank. Despite being over a decade old, it still gets an economical 30-35mpg. I can drive over 400 miles before needing a fill up, in rare cases nearly 500. On the first page of my mileage logbook from 1996, a tank of gas cost $15.

Today, I paid over $50 for a tank of gas for the first time. Local prices went up over a nickel since this morning alone, a dime since Friday.

This bothers me.

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	baphnedia 2008-05-13 05:20 am UTC (link)
	Yup. No end in sight that I see, either. :( (Reply to this)(Thread)

	toob 2008-05-13 05:54 am UTC (link)
	Well, of course not. Those days are GONE. We'll have brief respite occasionally, but it only gets worse from here on out. I mean, come on. We all knew this would happen. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	drleo 2008-05-13 04:32 pm UTC (link)
	It feels artificial when gas prices jump that much, though. When combined with the pitiful excuses (unrest in Nigeria, refinery shutdowns, bad astrology forecast) and then reports of record oil industry profits, it just all seems suspect. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	toob 2008-05-13 04:50 pm UTC (link)
	It's no more artificial than the price of anything else. You sell a product for the price that people are willing to pay for it. Anything else is just bad business. The only real reason that it's so expensive is DEMAND. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	drleo 2008-05-13 04:52 pm UTC (link)
	It feels artificial, and not due to supply and demand, whether or not it actually is. That's my point. (Reply to this)(Parent)

	captpackrat 2008-05-13 07:16 am UTC (link)
	I was complaining about paying $50 for a tank of gas back in 2004. Of course, the Ratmobile has a 23 gallon tank. At current local prices, a full tank costs about $90. (Reply to this)(Thread)

	harlequeen 2008-05-13 07:54 am UTC (link)
	Or about $190 in the UK (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

jdarkwulf
2008-05-13 11:45 am UTC (link)

This is by no means directed specifically at you, but I'm pasting a comment I placed in a similar discussion a couple of weeks ago.

"[Lowest gas] prices in the world" is a poor consolation when it's more than double what we were paying a couple of years ago. The U.S. is big and sprawling, and with the notable exception of a handful of the largest metro areas, public transportation is too poor to rely on to get you from A to B on a day-to-day basis. If you don't know someone who has a car, there are things you'll just have to go without. And for a large number of Americans, if you don't own a car (or a very reliable carpool), you're just not going to get to work. We may use more gas than the rest of the world, and complain about its prices really loudly. But unfortunately, the way it was decided to set everything up, we tend to need it more than most of the world, too.

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

harlequeen
2008-05-13 01:19 pm UTC (link)

Indeed. The gas prices aren't actually hitting us too badly. We don't use the car that much. The car manages about 40mp(american)g. We often use trains ( paid for in part by the tax on the fuel ), and I can cycle to work all of 3 miles. However out in the sticks there is more of a problem here.

Having said that there have been moving blockades of trucks because of the prices.

I take a similar attitude to gun law. It's your business, but over here we don't need them.

(Reply to this)(Parent)

	unclekage 2008-05-13 11:41 am UTC (link)
	That's what America gets for putting a Texas oil man in the White House. (Reply to this)

	joshuwain 2008-05-13 01:43 pm UTC (link)
	I would LOVE an electric car... What I need, for my normal usage, would be a car that can travel at sustained speeds of 75mph and can go 1000 miles before needing a recharge. Think we'll see anything like that, soon? (Reply to this)(Thread)

	1000 miles before recharge? tulan 2008-05-14 09:16 pm UTC (link)
	That might be awhile o.o (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

Re: 1000 miles before recharge?

joshuwain
2008-05-14 09:33 pm UTC (link)

Forgive me; I'm not trying to be snide.

My needs are this: I'm not big on taking planes everywhere. When I go on vacation, I prefer to take a drive through the countryside. Usually, like when I go to the shore of Lake Michigan or out to the South Dakota Badlands, I'll drive about 900 miles before stopping for the night.

I generally try to do this one or two times each year.

Sometimes more.

That's why I say 1,000 miles on a single charge...

Does that make sense?

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