# $368 a month on gas = 3 gallons a day! **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [May 6, 2011, 2:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/368-a-month-on-gas-3-gallons-a-day/580965 "2011-05-06T14:47:01Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 10
**Author:** ![Zeriel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/58956e/32.png) [@Zeriel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zeriel)\ **Post date:** [May 9, 2011, 2:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/368-a-month-on-gas-3-gallons-a-day/580965/181 "2011-05-09T14:12:38Z")
> [@bump](#): > > Considering that kids are supposed to sit in some sort of dumb-ass booster seat until they’re almost 9, what’s a family with 2-3 children under 4 supposed to do? There just flat out isn’t enough room in most small cars for the car seats and the parents to sit. I defy you to get 3 car seats into a Chevy Volt or Prius as well as both parents! You can get three car seats into the back of a Prius or Jetta. Don’t know about the Volt. Here’s a company that makes narrow-body (mostly by leaving off the armrest cupholders that 90% of convertible/booster seats have) car seats that nonetheless pass side-impact tests. [http://www.skjp.com/en-US/products/97556/Car\_Seats](http://www.skjp.com/en-US/products/97556/Car_Seats) ---
**Author:** ![amanset](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/8dc957/32.png) [@amanset](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/amanset)\ **Post date:** [May 9, 2011, 2:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/368-a-month-on-gas-3-gallons-a-day/580965/182 "2011-05-09T14:34:43Z")
> [@Hbns](#): > > Because they are almost all station wagons. 😉 > > I can see 15 cars in the lot from my office window right now. 8 are wagons, 3 are 5 door hatches, 1 mini van, 1 pickup truck, and 2 are mid size sedans. Hell, I live in the land of Volvo and even here I wouldn’t say that they are all station wagons (which feels weird for me to type, they’re estates, dammit!). I can’t do a scientific scan of the car park though as that’s under the building. ---
**Author:** ![DirkGntly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/d9b06d/32.png) [@DirkGntly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DirkGntly)\ **Post date:** [May 9, 2011, 3:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/368-a-month-on-gas-3-gallons-a-day/580965/183 "2011-05-09T15:54:03Z")
> [@FoieGrasIsEvil](#): > > Eh, we’ve been underpaying for gasoline for years anyway due to our Wal-Mart discount. It sucks that the chickens have come home to roost upon my generation, but…it was inevitable. Fuck you and the horse you rode in on. I HATE this meme…“the US has been under-paying for gas…” By whose standard?? In the middle east they pay forty-five fucking CENTS per GALLON! Are THEY under-paying? I think so, so fuck those third-world camel-fuckers! THEY can pay $4/gallon for gas, too! There is NO SUCH THING as “underpaying” for a commodity. Christ on a cracker…of all the assinine assertions out there…take an economics course, will ya??? (For the reading-impaired, there is HYPERBOLE in this post, particularly in regards to the phrase, “camel-fuckers…” I really have nothing against folks from the Middle East, just FYI) ---
**Author:** ![put\_down\_the\_sabre](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/da6949/32.png) [@put\_down\_the\_sabre](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/put_down_the_sabre)\ **Post date:** [May 9, 2011, 4:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/368-a-month-on-gas-3-gallons-a-day/580965/184 "2011-05-09T16:04:33Z")
> [@DirkGntly](#): > > Fuck you and the horse you rode in on. I HATE this meme…“the US has been under-paying for gas…” > By whose standard?? In the middle east they pay forty-five fucking CENTS per GALLON! Are THEY under-paying? I think so, so fuck those third-world camel-fuckers! THEY can pay $4/gallon for gas, too! > > There is NO SUCH THING as “underpaying” for a commodity. Christ on a cracker…of all the assinine assertions out there…take an economics course, will ya??? > (For the reading-impaired, there is HYPERBOLE in this post, particularly in regards to the phrase, “camel-fuckers…” I really have nothing against folks from the Middle East, just FYI) Hmm, I’m not convinced. You might say Americans have been underpaying for gas if prices have been so low that it’s led to an economy that is overly dependent on cheap gas. As for whether the middle-easterners have been underpaying… well maybe. But the situation is different there. For a start, when gas prices go up, it helps them, not hurts them (since they export so much). So they can afford the subsidy/cheap prices more. Having such cheap gas seems like a bad strategic move for the US (it makes them dependent on a dwindling resource they’ll have to pay more and more for) but less so for oil-rich countries. pdts ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [May 9, 2011, 4:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/368-a-month-on-gas-3-gallons-a-day/580965/185 "2011-05-09T16:43:38Z")
Our economy _is_ overly dependent on gas, although for what it’s worth public transit in the Gulf states is _actually_ non-existent rather than just nearly non-existent. ---
**Author:** ![scr4](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/59ef9b/32.png) [@scr4](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/scr4)\ **Post date:** [May 9, 2011, 6:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/368-a-month-on-gas-3-gallons-a-day/580965/186 "2011-05-09T18:07:14Z")
> [@DirkGntly](#): > > Fuck you and the horse you rode in on. I HATE this meme…“the US has been under-paying for gas…” > By whose standard?? Compared to what we’d be paying if gas/oil weren’t so heavily protected and subsidized by the government. ---
**Author:** ![DirkGntly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/d9b06d/32.png) [@DirkGntly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DirkGntly)\ **Post date:** [May 9, 2011, 6:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/368-a-month-on-gas-3-gallons-a-day/580965/187 "2011-05-09T18:37:33Z")
> [@scr4](#): > > Compared to what we’d be paying if gas/oil weren’t so heavily protected and subsidized by the government. How is it subsidized? Are you talking about front-end tax breaks during discovery? Or are you talking about subsidies for corn to make ethanol? I’m unaware of any other subsidies. Now should these subsidies that I pointed out exist? My personal opinion is “no,” but to claim that gasoline in general is inexpensive due to subsidies I think may be misleading, since a large percentage of the price we pay for gasoline is federal taxes (“large” being subjective). Maybe those taxes help pay for some of the subsidies you are decrying, in which case, it would at best be a zero-sum game, and at worst, the taxes represent income to the gov’t above and beyond what they pay out in subsidies, thus actually making fuel more expensive, not less. ---
**Author:** ![Machine\_Elf](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/82dd89/32.png) [@Machine\_Elf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Machine_Elf)\ **Post date:** [May 9, 2011, 7:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/368-a-month-on-gas-3-gallons-a-day/580965/188 "2011-05-09T19:12:37Z")
> [@monstro](#): > > Some people get SUVs because they’re simply easier to get in and out of. I’m thinking specifically of an obese woman I used to work with. She said she’d love to have a smaller car, but SUVs were much easier on the knees. That’s awesome. She’s a fat fucking walrus, and instead of losing weight to ease the burden on her perilously overloaded knees, her solution is to buy a fat-fucking-walrus transport. Makes me proud to be a 'Merican. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![MacGyverInSeattle](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/958977/32.png) [@MacGyverInSeattle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MacGyverInSeattle)\ **Post date:** [May 9, 2011, 7:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/368-a-month-on-gas-3-gallons-a-day/580965/189 "2011-05-09T19:56:37Z")
> [@monstro](#): > > Some people get SUVs because they’re simply easier to get in and out of. I’m thinking specifically of an obese woman I used to work with. She said she’d love to have a smaller car, but SUVs were much easier on the knees. > > I guess this is where the gray area of judgment gets grayer. Who am I to tell someone to “suck it up” for the greater good? I wouldn’t want to deal with knee pain either. But on the other hand, some could say it’s her choice to be obese in the first place, and that obese people have been driving non-SUVs since Heck was a pup. > > So I don’t know. I bought my smart car for exactly the same reason, it has a very large passenger compartment, is very tall and easy to get into and out of. I am 6’ 2", 300 lbs and have a bad hip and I love it (the car not the hip). Much easier than getting into our minivan or my 3 ton flatbed truck which are the other vehicles I occasionally drive when hauling things other than myself. I think she is using her knees as an excuse to own an SUV. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [May 9, 2011, 7:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/368-a-month-on-gas-3-gallons-a-day/580965/190 "2011-05-09T19:58:27Z")
> [@Hbns](#): > > Because they are almost all station wagons. 😉 > > I can see 15 cars in the lot from my office window right now. 8 are wagons, 3 are 5 door hatches, 1 mini van, 1 pickup truck, and 2 are mid size sedans. Wow, you got to tell us how you managed to post from the 1980s. 😃 We owned a wagon back then, and they were getting hard to find. I can see lots of cars from my window - lots of hatchbacks, some SUVs, some minivans, and no wagons. ---
**Author:** ![guizot](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guizot/32/3636_2.png) [@guizot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/guizot)\ **Post date:** [May 9, 2011, 8:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/368-a-month-on-gas-3-gallons-a-day/580965/191 "2011-05-09T20:01:46Z")
> [@DirkGntly](#): > > There is NO SUCH THING as “underpaying” for a commodity. Christ on a cracker…of all the assinine assertions out there…take an economics course, will ya??? Often one problem with those who take a few undergraduate courses in economics is that they aren’t listening to the professor when s/he prefaces descriptions of those neat and tidy “laws” saying: “All other things being equal.” That’s because all those other things are rarely equal. ---
**Author:** ![Hbns](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/8edcca/32.png) [@Hbns](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hbns)\ **Post date:** [May 9, 2011, 8:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/368-a-month-on-gas-3-gallons-a-day/580965/192 "2011-05-09T20:13:54Z")
> [@Voyager](#): > > Wow, you got to tell us how you managed to post from the 1980s. 😃 We owned a wagon back then, and they were getting hard to find. I can see lots of cars from my window - lots of hatchbacks, some SUVs, some minivans, and no wagons. Come to Southwest Germany and I will show you wagon after wagon after wagon. Not every American is in America at the moment. 😉 ---
**Author:** ![Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spectre_of_pithecanthropus/32/12343_2.png) [@Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spectre_of_Pithecanthropus)\ **Post date:** [May 9, 2011, 8:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/368-a-month-on-gas-3-gallons-a-day/580965/193 "2011-05-09T20:55:00Z")
> [@Zeriel](#): > > The cliched quote goes a long way towards why you can’t directly compare European gas usage with American. > > “Americans think a hundred years is a long time. Europeans think a hundred miles is a long distance.” > > America doesn’t have the population density, except in a very few large cities, to make the kind of transit network that Europe and Japan enjoy feasible or cost-effective. Then again, not every European city has a flashy rail transit system either. In most places, the only public transit offered is by bus, or possibly a leftover streetcar line from the old days. But the average citizen there is wisely much more willing to use the buses than the average American is here. ---
**Author:** ![Zeriel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/58956e/32.png) [@Zeriel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zeriel)\ **Post date:** [May 9, 2011, 9:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/368-a-month-on-gas-3-gallons-a-day/580965/194 "2011-05-09T21:00:17Z")
> [@Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](#): > > Then again, not every European city has a flashy rail transit system either. In most places, the only public transit offered is by bus, or possibly a leftover streetcar line from the old days. But the average citizen there is wisely much more willing to use the buses than the average American is here. I don’t think the problem is limited to flashy rail, either. Put it this way: I took the bus to work for several years. I had to stop, because the bus ridership was so low they consolidated routes, and the nearest bus stop would have required me to literally walk halfway to work anyway. The primary reason ridership is so low? Aside from the student apartment complexes, the suburbs and residential areas of my city are too spread out to make bus routing workable/feasible. In places in the US where density is high enough (like Philadelphia, with seemingly a SEPTA station, trolley stop, or bus stop every other block) you see sustained use and ridership, but that doesn’t account for all that large a fraction of the US by land area. ---
**Author:** ![Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spectre_of_pithecanthropus/32/12343_2.png) [@Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spectre_of_Pithecanthropus)\ **Post date:** [May 9, 2011, 9:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/368-a-month-on-gas-3-gallons-a-day/580965/195 "2011-05-09T21:35:46Z")
> [@Cat\_Whisperer](#): > > That goes back to choices again. Most people choose to have as many kids as they have, and there are many repercussions for those choices. > > It’s also not a valid point because most people don’t have three kids, they have 0.94 kids ([link](http://surveysez.com/joomla/index.php/lifestyle/104-children-per-household.html)). You can easily fit two carseats (and parents and groceries) in the Corolla I drive. That goes back to the difference between “can’t” and “won’t” again. Sure there are some people who have three or more kids; most people don’t, though. Glad you brought up this very fundamental choice. There might have been some uptick in per capita fuel consumption with the popularity of SUVs and trucks in the 1990s. Now, though, I’d say that I don’t see so many true SUVs on the road these days as I do smaller crossovers. A lot of those get as good mileage as my Nissan sedan, if the figures are to be believed. But over forty years, as automotive engine efficiency improved and we reduced our overall per capita consumption, we grew the population by fifty percent. When I think about this, I just want to break something. A major objective of conservation is to extend the usefulness of a natural resource over time–this is what we were taught in school. But we (as a country and as a planet) have not done that. Conservation has, in the end, served only to accommodate more people living _now_ rather than future generations of people. ---
**Author:** ![put\_down\_the\_sabre](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/da6949/32.png) [@put\_down\_the\_sabre](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/put_down_the_sabre)\ **Post date:** [May 9, 2011, 9:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/368-a-month-on-gas-3-gallons-a-day/580965/196 "2011-05-09T21:47:09Z")
I wonder if one reason you don’t see many truly small cars on the road in the US (ford KA etc) is that the roads are so crap and potholed? I really wouldn’t want to drive my dad’s KA on some of the roads in NC… ---
**Author:** ![jz78817](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jz78817/32/1028_2.png) [@jz78817](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jz78817)\ **Post date:** [May 10, 2011, 1:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/368-a-month-on-gas-3-gallons-a-day/580965/197 "2011-05-10T01:18:39Z")
> [@Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](#): > > But over forty years, as automotive engine efficiency improved and we reduced our overall per capita consumption, we grew the population by fifty percent. When I think about this, I just want to break something. go ahead and break something, if it’ll make you feel better. but AIUI the U.S. birth rate isn’t even replacement; we’d be declining if it wasn’t for immigration. so blame those filthy furriners. ---
**Author:** ![vivalostwages](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/d07c76/32.png) [@vivalostwages](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/vivalostwages)\ **Post date:** [May 10, 2011, 2:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/368-a-month-on-gas-3-gallons-a-day/580965/198 "2011-05-10T02:24:38Z")
> [@Try2B\_Comprehensive](#): > > It looks like a 1-speeder to me. It is kind of boxy and may conceal gears I don’t know about. But- I meant 15 miles each way, and it is kind of hilly around here, seems to work. The problem here is that my workplace requires going up a rather steep hill, and though it is just a few miles away, I imagine I would be a sweaty mess by the time I got to the campus; and I don’t want to have to use a college locker room (which might be locked anyway) to shower and clean up and then change clothes so I can teach a class. ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [May 10, 2011, 2:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/368-a-month-on-gas-3-gallons-a-day/580965/199 "2011-05-10T02:30:28Z")
> [@put\_down\_the\_sabre](#): > > I wonder if one reason you don’t see many truly small cars on the road in the US (ford KA etc) is that the roads are so crap and potholed? I really wouldn’t want to drive my dad’s KA on some of the roads in NC… Not really. The roads in most US states are pretty good. Certainly better than Britain’s, if not quite up to German or Spanish standards. You don’t see many truly small cars on the road in the US because (1) Americans are a pretty chunky lot, by and large; (2) gasoline/petrol is cheap enough that it’s not worth the trade-off in space and power; (3) profit margins on small cars are tiny, and the Japanese are better at making small cars Americans want\* than American or European carmakers anyway. > [@scr4](#): > > Compared to what we’d be paying if gas/oil weren’t so heavily protected and subsidized by the government. > [@DirkGntly](#): > > How is it subsidized? Are you talking about front-end tax breaks during discovery? Or are you talking about subsidies for corn to make ethanol? I’m unaware of any other subsidies. Now should these subsidies that I pointed out exist? My personal opinion is “no,” but to claim that gasoline in general is inexpensive due to subsidies I think may be misleading, since a large percentage of the price we pay for gasoline is federal taxes (“large” being subjective). Maybe those taxes help pay for some of the subsidies you are decrying, in which case, it would at best be a zero-sum game, and at worst, the taxes represent income to the gov’t above and beyond what they pay out in subsidies, thus actually making fuel more expensive, not less. I think he’s referring to the substantial portion of our defense budget that goes toward securing our commercial oil supplies (see, US Fifth Fleet, etc.) ---
**Author:** ![Kozmik](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/8dc957/32.png) [@Kozmik](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kozmik)\ **Post date:** [May 10, 2011, 2:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/368-a-month-on-gas-3-gallons-a-day/580965/200 "2011-05-10T02:48:14Z")
> [@guizot](#): > > Often one problem with those who take a few undergraduate courses in economics is that they aren’t listening to the professor when s/he prefaces descriptions of those neat and tidy “laws” saying: “All other things being equal.” That’s because all those other things are rarely equal. “_Ceteris paribus_.” The economics professor I had rarely, if ever, said that. :rolleyes: [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/368-a-month-on-gas-3-gallons-a-day/580965.md?page=9) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/368-a-month-on-gas-3-gallons-a-day/580965.md?page=11)