Starbucks and water and gas! Oh my!

JohnnyG wrote:
I saw on the news tonight that a station in Atlanta, Ga. has gas at a little over $6.00 a gallon today! I don't know if it was a joke but if it was it wasn't very funny.

I totally agree with the original poster. I didn't hear of $6/gal here in the Atlanta area, but it's entirely possible. At 6am yesterday morning my local station was $2.62/gal, at 3pm I paid $2.99/gal and the guy was in the process of changing the sign to $3.19/gal.

I think part of the problem is the news media. They have been hyping up possible gas shortages in GA because one of the two piplines supplying the state has been damaged. They say there may only be a 10 day supply. True, who knows. So what do you expect people are going to do, everyone goes and tops off thier gas tanks putting more of a strain on an already limited supply. Just my .02c

If you guy's think you have it bad, just head north.
Price of a LITER of gas just went to $1.34 CDN.
Do the math and it comes out to about $8.80 USD.

I'm in Bangor Maine and I have seen the prices jump here as well. Our gas prices have gone from 2.39 on Wednesday to 3.59 as of 7:30 this morning. And they are talking higher than that by tonight. I haven't checked the price of oil for heating yet, I'm a bit scared to! LOL

I think that math is backwards. $1.34 CDN is $1.12 US. 3.8 Liters per gallon makes it $4.25 per gallon. There are many gas stations here that are already at $3.99 a gallon for regular, so it's not far off.

Keep in mind we were paying $1.25-$1.50 only about 2 years ago, so that's why we are complaining. We are looking at a tripling in gas prices over a 2 year period, conveniently right after the big SUV and truck boom ended and hudreds of thousands of vehicles were sold that get 11-15 mpg. I don't think any other country has faced a tripling in gasoline prices in the past 2 years.

To me it seems like another scam to help the failing auto industry. Now everyone who bought all the big trucks and SUVs will have to go out and buy more fuel efficient cars. The price will go down again and people will trade their fuel efficient cars back in for big trucks and SUVs, and so on.....

I'd bet they would raise the property tax on the car!

For the last 28 years or so, I have never paid any property tax on a car.

Some states are like that.

---Bob Gross---

American cities are so rediculously non bike friendly compared to European cities. And even if we had bike highways here, I doubt the people in my office who take the elevator DOWN from the 2nd floor to the 1st floor would use them. I have no sympathy for anyone who bought an SUV.

I completely agree with this. The government uses tax money to subsidize the energy industry. This keeps gasoline and other energy prices artificially low. This creates an imbalance in the market and leads to artificially high consumption. Why would anyone want this? Well, any question in life can usually be answered by following the money trail.

one five pound of folgers will last me over a month.. its like 3 bucks.. god, i pay more for the half and half i put in it...lol were up to 3 bucks a gallon here in ct now, and i dont drink bottled water unless its the cheap stuff i get at biglots... 6- six packs for about 2 bucks! id rather pay for gas than spend the $$$ on expensive "designer" coffee, plus i have photo stuff to buy. Although i do stop at the local mini mart every morn for my cup o' joe (which is excellent) and a bagle... but hey, breakfast IS the most important meal of the day!

Oh, I highly doubt that. I work in the auto industry (no pride involved just a fact) and I can assure you that the auto manufacturers make ALOT more money (per vehicle and in general) selling trucks and SUV's than they do with cars. Particularly Ford and GM ... even Toyota (speaking of which ... it makes me laugh when I hear how much credit Toyota gets for being "environmentally friendly" because of that ridiculously low volume Prius ... while simultaneously introducing more (and bigger) trucks to the market).

Detroit (meaning the American automotive industry) is not pleased with the gas prices.

I agree with most of your diatribe, but I wanted to point out that drinkable water is almost never free. Perhaps it is somewhere, but where I live we receive a bill from the city either quarterly or semi-annually (don't remember which). I don't recall the price per gallon, but it ain't free. Where allowed, I suppose you could drill a well on your property to get some for free, but I don't think that's allowed in most cities.

Additionally, water is most definitely not everywhere. Rationing already takes place in some parts of the U.S., and I'm certain there are places in the world where drinkable water is very scarce. In my opinion, fresh, drinkable water is going to become an extremely valuable commodity as the world population continues to increase. There has already been a couple commercial attempts (thwarted, so far) to divert (sell) Great Lakes water to other parts of the world.

Actually there was a very interesting article about the consumption and demand of water in either last months or the previous months National Geographic.

Due to lack of rain this year (and for the past several) and the ammount of water used/demanded we are facing an ever growing shortage.

Jesper wrote:
And who is the winner: The Netherlands. We have the most expensive gas of the world!
It costs about US$ 6.50 per gallon here.
So don't complain...

That's what people in Georgia are paying today. Can we complain now?

pcasciola wrote:
That's what people in Georgia are paying today. Can we complain now?

Yep, it is true some stations were charging upwards of $6/gal. Most have leveled off at $3.50.

We are paying around $4US a US gallon based on the current exchange rate and our price per litre.

One difference here is though the fact that we generally don't commute as far (hey it takes me almost an hour to travel 10 miles in the morning rolleyes: ), and we generally have much smaller Japanese cars, the average size probably around a 2 litre engine, not much point in going to large, as there are few opportunities to really utilise that.

I for one spend around $50US a week in petrol that gets me around 220miles, that is on my 2.5L Mazda.