On Fri, Mar 03, 2000 at 09:56:08AM -0700, Wes Peters wrote:
> "Koster, K.J." wrote:
>
> > Oh, those Americans. :-)
> > Let's see: $1 per gallon in the US. $1.2 per litre in the Netherlands,
> > times 4.5 (or thereabouts) is $5.4 per gallon in the Netherlands.
> > Everyone in the Netherlands drives cars; everyone thinks gas is expensive.
> > This means that the gas prices in the US can go up 440% and people will
> > still drive cars and buy gas (and complain about gas prices, of course).
>
> First, this off-topic for -hackers, so I've directed replies to -chat
> if you want to continue.
Sage advice :-)
> Second, I know people that commute distances that would cross your
> country. I suspect the average American uses a lot more gas than the
> average Nederlander.
Bah. In Western Australia there's a sheep station called "Little Texas"
which just happens to have a land area larger than the state of Texas;
I live in Adelaide, so I have to go 600 km East or 3000 km West or 3000 km
North to find another population centre with more than 50,000 people;
the nearest interstate Capital city is 980 km away. Our cities are also
a hell of a lot more widely laid-out than yours: Adelaide, with a pop.
of 1.1 million, has the same surface area as New York City.
So let's accept that distances in the US are pissant little commuter hops,
shall we? :-)
> Third, our gas prices here are held down by all sorts of weird
> government intervention, bizarre market shenanigans, and a public that
> doesn't understand that the price of gasoline has risen only 4x in the
> same period that the price of cars has risen 10x. That's certainly
> NOT a "natural occurence".
Our prices are held *up* by the fact that over 50% of them constitute
State and Federal taxes.
> Fourth, I'm paying $1.48/gal right now, and I want the price to go
> DOWN, not UP.
I'm paying A$0.83c/L right now, which is roughly A$3.73/gal, which is
roughly US$2.76. That means the US price of petroleum can rise by almost
100% and people still still drive the kind of distances which usually
constitute international travel.
- mark :-)
--
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