# High gas prices, love them or hate them?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/high-gas-prices-love-them-or-hate-them/831636>\
**Category:** In My Humble Opinion\
**Created:** [March 27, 2019, 10:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/high-gas-prices-love-them-or-hate-them/831636 "2019-03-27T22:19:43Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 3

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**Author:** ![kopek](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kopek/32/337_2.png) [@kopek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kopek)\
**Post date:** [March 29, 2019, 5:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/high-gas-prices-love-them-or-hate-them/831636/41 "2019-03-29T17:23:25Z")

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> [@ZurBob](#):
>
> Congratulations. I envy you. However, you realize you are one in a million, right?

Forty years ago maybe but not so much these days; especially when you average in people from say NYC and other dense city-scapes. Now I would say its more like one-in-forty-thousand. 😉 Seriously, it is very much like it was with smoking those same forty years ago. Different reasons and motivations but more and more people seem to be looking for a way out of driving as a need. We’ll never see a time without cars any more than we will a day without some sort of tobacco but I do see maybe living enough to see “driving lite” (high mileage or alternative fuel cars) and less people making daily long drives their first choice more the norm than the exception. It will have its own problems (like gentrification) but it will be interesting.

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**Author:** ![begbert2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/begbert2/32/3357_2.png) [@begbert2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/begbert2)\
**Post date:** [March 29, 2019, 6:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/high-gas-prices-love-them-or-hate-them/831636/42 "2019-03-29T18:18:46Z")

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> [@Textual\_Innuendo](#):
>
> Is it really, though? Do you have a cite for this? Because in my own experience, back 10 years or so ago when gas was in the $4-$5 a gallon range, there was DEFINITELY less cars on the road and traffic was notably better than either before or after that time.
> 
> That’s part of the reason I’m for high gas prices - I’m for _anything_ that would significantly reduce traffic, up to and including high gas prices, high car prices, strict drivers licensing requirements, and orbital lasers from space that will impartially and summarily reduce anyone that comes to a complete stop on the freeway to vapor and ash.
> 
> Realistically, the only one of those we’re ever going to get is high gas prices, so bring them on! Gas is way too cheap now, with a lot of negative externalities that aren’t being addressed at any level.
> 
> I think any inelasticity may be time-dependent more than anything, I would imagine there’s a curve where driving-hours dips soon after gas prices reach a notably higher threshold, then gradually climb back up to some level near-but-still-below the cheap-gas peak over the next 6-12 months.

[Gas is famously inelastic.](https://www.quora.com/What-are-some-examples-of-inelastic-goods) Inelastic doesn’t mean consumers are _completely_ unresponsive to changes in price, just that it takes a disproportionately large change in price to get the same effect.

And while there is merit to your orbital laser approach (though watch out for the externalities, that vapor and ash has to go _somewhere_), the core problem is that while some people will stay home if travel is too expensive, people still gotta eat, so people have gotta get to work, which means that there’s a collection of people who are going to keep cluttering up the freeway unless you literally destroy their life. (Which is why fuel costs are so inelastic.) You wanna get those people off the road, you have to provide viable alternatives.

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**Author:** ![HeyHomie](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/heyhomie/32/207_2.png) [@HeyHomie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HeyHomie)\
**Post date:** [March 29, 2019, 6:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/high-gas-prices-love-them-or-hate-them/831636/43 "2019-03-29T18:31:44Z")

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Rarely do I drive more than a few blocks (Mrs. Homie and I both work from home), but when I do drive more than a few blocks, I’m driving 30-40 miles at a minimum, living as I do in a small town in the middle of nowhere. That makes high gas prices a once-every-few-weeks annoyance, rather than a daily one.

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