You either have a lead foot, or a relatively large car for that engine size? :)

Mine is a "family" size sedan with an inline 6. Gets down to about 9L/100km on the highway.

we only fill up each vehicle about twice a month... so i really don't even know what the price at the pump is... i think it's over $4 a gallon though

but still, the truck fills up for about $90 and the car for $60 - that's a drop in the bucket compared to what it costs to own them

In Australia here is how it is going down. Fuel prices up, prices of goods and food go up, aka inflation up, interest rates keep getting hiked to try and stop inflation. It's costing most families a lot more than $100 a month.

Good. Sooner or later they'll stop buying shit they don't need and might even start saving again for the first time in 20 years.

well 100usd is not so much but prices are height

Did bush cause the average extraction cost of a barrel of oil to rise to $35 and monthly 3% inflation cost increases did he? Iraq's oil production only fell significant'y during '03 the year of the actual war.. 5 years later it's almost unchanged from pre-invasion '02. It's not going to get appreciably better under Obama, McCain or anyone else. The high price of gas right now is one of the best things for us... a bitter medicine we need to take as soon as possible.

Like what shit they don't need, their monthly mortgage payment and food on the table?

There's lots of hardworking people out there struggling to get by nowadays. You might not give a rat's ass about them but not everybody feels the same way.

As for saving; what the fuck do you want them to do that for? Disposable income is best spent on porn :thumbsup

:1orglaugh:1orglaugh:1orglaugh:1orglaugh:1orglaugh :1orglaugh:1orglaugh:1orglaugh:1orglaugh:1orglaugh :1orglaugh:1orglaugh:1orglaugh:1orglaugh:1orglaugh :1orglaugh:1orglaugh:1orglaugh

a) Almost to the person, unless they are on the absolute poverty line the gas prices so far aren't affecting shit... they're not even that high in the US.
It's like the guy in the office here that talks about an extra $30 a week gas but smokes $100 worth of cigarettes a week and spends $50-100 at a bar on the weekend.

It's time oil asserted it's proper place in the scheme of things. The ability to drive to work is more important than drinking, smoking, buying new clothes every month, drinking $4 coffees, eating $10 lunches, getting mortgages that were far out of their reach or using an SUV to get there instead of a smaller car.

b) I care, this really is the best thing for them, artificially cheap fuel for another 5 years is going to hurt them even more. It's more that people don't give a rat's ass about their own situation and can't see the forest for the trees. Unless they are literally the working poor they mostly have themselves to blame. It's harsh but true. No one pointed a gun at anyone's head and make them take out a 500k mortgage and buy a SUV that gets 10mpg.

At least their debts are getting inflated away too.

It's not really the price of gas that is causing a problem for most people.

It's all the shit at the supermarket that causes the problem.

Looked lately at the cost of a box of lucky charms?

Great you earn good money and you live near your office. The people bitching seem to have different problems. USA is built on commute to work and bring in the worker ants.
Do you think a worker ant can afford the increase when he has a 2 hour commute each day?


Edit not to mention his ARM just flipped over and he is paying 14% on a loan and his house can not hit the appraisal so he can refi.

Food prices are interlinked with the price of oil and really, isn't there an obesity epidemic going on?

I know i'm probably sounding a little callous.. but haven't there been people shouting in megaphones about this for at least the last half decade?

If you want lucky charrms to come down in price, lobby your representative to stop the farming lobby pushing for fuel from wheat.

$75 to fill up my SL500 with premium. Crazy shit.

I'd agree with you, but I am not sure you are from Sydney. There are people who go out and build massive mansions on a laborers wage and than struggle to pay for it anytime their interest rate goes up. But most people in Sydney live in rather modest housing, in modest areas and still can't afford a mortgage. What's the minimum repayments on a $300k mortgage now days? $600-650 a week? Now try and find a house ANYWHERE in Sydney for $300k, you honestly can't. I am not a fan of people living beyond their means and perhaps you are right to a degree, this will push everything back further into a realistic range with people living realistic lifestyles, including house prices. I do however think a lot of very decent people, living within their means (or trying to) are being caught up in it as well. People with 3 kids, a fibro house and on a regular wage are really starting to struggle in Sydney at least.

hey hey baller, nice car, agoura girls must get wet quick :pimp

lets finish that chat we were having

I used to work with a guy who helped start the first MS Word and onwards, he had a nice chunk of MS shares. Worked in Toronto, and flew home to SEATTLE every weekend to....

sing with his barbershop quartet :)

He used to say he didn't understand change, and that they should just round everything to the next dollar to get coins out of the system heh

I lived in Sydney for 6 years and I know how insane housing is there, but wages are also incredibly high there at the moment... (avg wage here is $27k and house prices almost as crazy) Yes out of pace with the rise in housing, but once again no one is forcing anyone to get a mortgage. I remember a news article even as far back as ten years ago talking about how you needed two incomes to even think about buying a house in Sydney. It's one of the reasons I bought a house up here. Everyone has options. unfortunately you get a societal groupthink and greed happening and you manage to block out all the the signals you should be listening to when it comes to your lifestyle and consumption patterns.. I understand it, I've done it myself. Actually it's precisely because of how I was living in Sydney that I tried (keyword: tried) to change my ways. The good times never last forever and you have to be responsible and develop some kind of safety net. We're all adults and have to make adult decisions. If that means renting a shit apartment and trying to save money.. instead of building a McMansion and buying the biggest plasma tvs then so be it.

Don't get me wrong.. I feel for people. Even when it's their own fault because it's actually quite hard not to get in that situation most of the time unless you've made past mistakes you can learn from.. and even then you have to actually remember to learn from them.
And it's not like I'm doing everything I possibly could to maximise my situation because I'm also not willing to make certain hard choices..
It's not like I'm without empathy.. it's just I'm not going to put up with whining about it.
The working poor living in a fibro home will mostly get some sympathy. Depends on how much money they waste and on what though. Tradies are making so much money at the moment I can't really consider them part of it even though I know most of them live week to week.

For how many years have people been telling us to buy smaller more fuel efficient cars? How many years have you seen that personal debt graph posted here at gfy?
People will adjust though... it's just that no one likes having things taken away or recieving less than they used to... the majority of people will adjust and be fine providing they actually start taking responsibility for their actions instead of pushing for stupid things like fuel subsidies.

It really is the best thing to happen though, little bit of bitter medicine now will force us to develop solutions now rather than putting them off for another 10 years. Personally I'm livid at the 30B Rudd is giving away that could be going into infrastructure to help begin to cushion us from the impact of higher oil prices. A tax cut that instantly evaporates by increasing inflation instead of.. well pretty much anything useful. Eg. 30B would put free solar panels on the rooves of pretty much every family home in Australia to help give free electricity for the next 15-20 years which would give incalculably greater savings if we had the balls to do it. We could phase it in over the next ten years as we require more generators so it didn't affect the coal industry too much either.
Actually the cheap price of electricity in Australia is pretty much the biggest reason we lag behind in any kind of alternative fuel industry. The price signals aren't large enough to stimulate the development required. Thats why it's important that oil rises to the point that alternatives become cost effective before we actually start physically running out of the stuff. We're also seeing good healthy demand destruction. And hopefully more focus at a government level about things like public transport.

And it's really not that bad in Australia yet, our problem is that the economy is doing too well.. and we're cushioned from the full brunt of oil's recent rise with our high dollar. There is still time to make hard decisions (and lots of easy ones) before things get worse.

I told one of my mates well over a year ago to stop smoking, buying lunches in sydney cafes and 2-3 coffees a day and put the savings into oil stocks. If he'd done even that simple couple of things he'd be laughing right now and have enough extra money to erase 3+ years of petrol hikes. Instead he owes even more on his credit card.