We currently import about 56% of what we consume.
[QUOTE]
Originally posted by sharkboy:
I believe that we here in Britain have the most expensive petrol in the world. We currently pay 84% tax on our petrol and that has just gone up higher in the budget on monday. We pay about $5.50 per gallon and that was last week. It really pisses us off 'cos the money is swallowed up by the government and we still have rubbish roads.
84%!!! Hey, maybe we in South Australia aren’t so hard up as I thought we were. Although I am ashamed to acknowledge that Mr Blair learnt a fair but from a former Australian Prime Minister about how to tax the f* out of the people…
Knock softly but firmly, 'cause I like soft firm knockers…
The US petroleum balance sheet for December, 1999:
The Prince: “Did you kill Jahamaraj Jah?”
Lady: “Yes.”
The Prince: “My Gods! Why?”
Lady: “His existence offended me.”
I hope the prices stay up. It gives me a good chuckle whenever I see someone in a Range Rover…g. However, we have so many Microsoft millionaires around here, you could probably jack the prices of everything up 500% and they wouldn’t notice.
As a Washington boy, I’m used to getting screwed via taxation on everything: booze, gas, you name it. Hell, according to my barkeep, he gets taxed on each keg he buys, and then has to tax me when I buy a pint. So the folks in Olympia get to double-dip.
What are other US folks paying? Regular unleaded here is about $1.75, super is $1.98. Whatever happened to the corn-based gasahol ideas from years back? What would the cost for a gallon of ‘synth-gas’ be? It would be nice to be able to raise the price of corn and help the environment (it burned pretty clean, IIRC) at the same time!
-sb
“This is going to take a special blend of psychology and extreme violence.”
spankboy:
just saw/heard something the other day (npr maybe?) about the ethanol (sp?) debate…here in the midwest it’s all over…never see a gas station without it. all the lower grades have it. never thought that somewhere in the US there was no ethanol…but then the MTBE (or whatever that stuff is) came up for debate in california (or where ever it was)…i guess the two act pretty much the same…but corn extract is safer… but MUCH MUCH more expensive to ship across the nation…it’d raise the cost per gallon to ship ethanol than straight gasoline, from what i gather. so ethanol is viable, but only in regions where corn is aplenty…
Ditto, kunilou’s ‘No’.
But, I’ve been amused lately to see how many SUV’s are being put on the side of the roads here in Atlanta, with ‘For Sale’ signs on them. If only their cellphones were included! 
“Um, according to who? Nothing more than a high brow troll, though occasionally the bi polar personality swung in a constructive direction on innocuous topics.” Omniscient
We have ethanol around here, I seem to get MUCH worse gas mileage when I use it.
BTW, while I am hating the gas prices (it makes my LOONG daily commute and VERY limited funds even more taxing), I DO enjoy seeing all these fuckin’ yuppies with their fuckin’ gas guzzler fuckin’ road-hog asshole-driver slow-in-the-fast-lane-cuz-I’m-a-dick-and-I-fucking-can-and-there’s-nothing-you-can-do-about-it-cuz-I-made-2000-times-what-you-do motherfuckers SUVs sitting beside the side of the road, asshole yuppie dick on his cell phone calling for someone to send him gas. OnStar my ass!
–Tim
Excuse my antipodean ignorance, but what is a SUV?
Knock softly but firmly, 'cause I like soft firm knockers…
SUV stands for Sport Utility Vehicle. In appearance it looks like a sort of down-sized Range Rover, and is marketed to appeal to white-collar, middle-class and upper-middle class folks. That’s as much as I’m going to say on the subject, because people tend to have strong feelings about SUVs–they’re either the greatest thing since sliced bread, or they’re the Devil’s tools expressly designed to flip over at surprisingly low speeds and crush our defenseless babies in their car seats.
Anyway–I will go on record here as stating that yes, I personally believe that there is a gas conspiracy somewhere, but I don’t think the feds are running it. Frankly, I don’t think they’re coordinated enough for it. Ditto for OPEC.
No, I think the American oil companies are doing it all by their ownselves, for the same reason that a dog licks his (ahem) testicles–because he can.
The price of all the grocery items down at Kroger doesn’t fluctuate wildly up and down the scale, by as much as 50% in a few days. (I’m talking about staple items, like toilet paper and gallons of milk, not meat.) A while back, there was a week when I put gas in the car for 99.9, and a week later it was up to $1.49. Canned beans don’t do that. A can of beans doesn’t cost 79 cents on Monday, 89 cents on Tuesday, and so forth until it’s up to $1.19 by Friday, and then on Sunday it’s back down to 99 cents. And then by Tuesday it’s $1.09. Everything in the Kroger store is pretty much the same price from day to day. That’s because the Kroger manager would have to pay a stock clerk to go around the whole store once a day and change the all the prices on the front of the shelves, and that’s too expensive, in terms of labor cost.
However, the gas station owner only has to change one thing out in front, and that takes, what, 5 minutes? So of course he changes his prices every day–because he can. That’s the free enterprise system. Charge whatever the traffic will bear, and I seriously think that somebody, somewhere has a meeting and decides what those prices should be. I’m a product of the Watergate era–nothing surprises me any more.
You young folks out there, in 30 years you’ll be able to say proudly, “I’m a product of the Monica-gate era.”
So that’s my theory, and I’m sticking to it.
An SUV is a Sport Utility Vehicle, such as the Chevy Blazer or the Ford Explorer.
An SUV is a Sport Utility Vehicle, such as the Chevy Blazer or the Ford Explorer.
SUV = Sport Utility Vehicle. A somewhat broad term for a fairly new classification of vehicle that exploded in popularity with the fall of gasoline prices and rise in the stock market. SUVs are usually based on truck bodies, and, although smaller ones exist, over the last few years U.S. automobile retailers have been in a race to see who can build the tallest/heaviest/most expensive models.
Gas mileage for the biggest SUV’s is about 1/2 that of a normal car. They are often advertised as being great off-road vehicles, because of their four-wheel drive and high ground clearance. But, because so many are being sold to people that are careful not to get them dirty, the biggest market appears to be people who just want to drive the biggest vehicle on the road. (The “mine’s bigger than yours” syndrome).
There are also safety issues–SUVs do better in crashes because they are so heavy (although they tend to tip over more easily), but this may be at the expense of the people they run into. Also, SUV bumpers often are so high that they hit the bodies, rather than the bumpers, of smaller vehicles, although the industry recently said it was working to rectify this problem.
When people refer to “those SUV drivers”, they generally are talking about the high-end models, piloted by drivers who are too busy talking on their cell phones to pay proper attention to the road.
The Sport Utility Vehicle Anti-Fan Club has a good summary of why SUVs are sometimes controversial in the U.S.
Thanks for the definition of SUV, guys!
We have much the same thing here - a huge proliferation of four wheel drive vehicles that never are taken out to do what they are designed for because they might get scratched!
In Sydney and Melbourne, they are often called “Toorak Tractors” - Toorak being a commonly used name for a wealthy suburb.
And yes, they are owned and driven by the same sort of people as are SUV’s. A really obnoxious example will have ALL the options: fishing rod holders that look like rocket launchers, huge bull bars, roof racks, many radio aerials, expensive alloy wheels, some even have a small aluminium boat BOLTED to the roof rack!!
Knock softly but firmly, 'cause I like soft firm knockers…