aw craaaaaaap... Gas went from $3.29 to $3.45 yesterday = = =

Yeah, I'm feeling the pain to, Sagey. My Taurus gets around 20 mile per gallon = = =... And yeah, I'm in the same boat commute wise. UST is about 25mi away. Work in the summer is about 50 mi away.

The thing that really sucks is that EVERYTHING else is going to go up in price as well... That is, except for minimum wage =.

Across the pond in the land of crumpets and tea, UKians are paying £1.10 per litre for petrol (diesel is about £1.17+ /litre)

There are 3.785 litres to the US gallon btw. So we're paying £4.16 per US gallon, or roughly $8 (petrol)

So you can't complain at all.

And before anyone pulls out the "your minumum wage is higher" card we pay higher on almost everything so it doesn't count at all. I reckon (but don't know as a fact) that the amount we get ripped off more is larger than the amount we earn more in the first place.

I imagine I wouldn't be able to drive every day on my wage when I pass my test/get a car. And I wouldn't even be driving as far as you lot do.

I hate that friggin' card. YES we can complain. I don't like doin' the "BUT WE'RE AMERICAN" thing, but the US has had pretty stable gas prices for about 15 years or more, so this is pretty much screwing with our lifestyle and budget.

Also, your taxes are higher.

Touche. I would've thought the transportation costs (for the fuel to get here in the first place that is) would have been lower for us though.

And for the record, I stand totally corrected now. Apparently, according to my Mum our petrol tax is as high as 75%. I guess that explains it really.

So yeah I getcha. You can stop having a go at me now, I'm fully aware I was wrong and stuff. Also corrected the first line for clarification.

I hate that friggin' card. YES we can complain. I don't like doin' the "BUT WE'RE AMERICAN" thing, but the US has had pretty stable gas prices for about 15 years or more, so this is pretty much screwing with our lifestyle and budget.

Also, your taxes are higher.

Deep down you all wish you could be British 😛

I hate that friggin' card. YES we can complain. I don't like doin' the "BUT WE'RE AMERICAN" thing, but the US has had pretty stable gas prices for about 15 years or more, so this is pretty much screwing with our lifestyle and budget.

Also, your taxes are higher.

Deep down you all wish you could be British 😛

And have the bad teeth along with dealing with your peoples silly teenager chav mindset? I mean, sure - you guys constantly give us the awesome that is Doctor Who - but I'm not quite sure that's a fair trade at the end of the day, sir.

(lol funny accents are funny)

Oh dubs, by the way, when we got back in my town the price per gallon was $3.67... Lucky jersey people... It's almost economical to drive there JUST for gas, lol

I hate that friggin' card. YES we can complain. I don't like doin' the "BUT WE'RE AMERICAN" thing, but the US has had pretty stable gas prices for about 15 years or more, so this is pretty much screwing with our lifestyle and budget.

Also, your taxes are higher.

Deep down you all wish you could be British 😛

And have the bad teeth along with dealing with your peoples silly teenager chav mindset? I mean, sure - you guys constantly give us the awesome that is Doctor Who - but I'm not quite sure that's a fair trade at the end of the day, sir.

(lol funny accents are funny)

Now now, Dubzle, they did also give us Monty Python and our own rendition of the Office, (all with better teeth), so step back a bit.

As for me? Gas has become another friggin' monthly bill for me. I commute for work as well, driving every single day on 90, (which is being torn up, again, for like the 5 millionth year in a row), and that's about 30 miles to and fro, so 60 miles per day. Thankfully, my Sunfire is about 28 miles to the gallon on the highway - and it holds true - so it gives me better luck than most other people driving some really crappy gas guzzling cars. I fill up every 5 days, and that's about $34 each time, (granted, I don't wait for it to hit empty, either). So that's about $120 a month for gas.

I miss when the pump used to read like, "HEY GUY, $16.00! You're done! " And it gave me that smiley face and everything.

lol @ Jin

When I started driving at 18, gas was like... $1.75 a gallon. I remember when hitting the $2.00 mark was unthinkable... and then $3.00.

Hell, I remember back in like 96 or 97 gas actually dropped under a dollar a gallon. It was craziness...

A culmination of factors that are starting to hit home. No new refineries, less exploitation of fuel resources that we really SHOULD be going for (which we WOULD have had certain people not stonewalled the effort every single freakin' time), HEAVILY increased demand by India and China, increased inflation, this fixation on prices according to 'speculation' (which is somewhat absurd; raising the price on a product already delivered to the pump? Wait till the next shipment!).

(Is grateful for the 35-40 mpg Honda Civic)

Something's going to come to a head soon though. Economies are slowing globally. Food prices are rising (corn prices going up due to increased demand for corn-based ethanol...meanwhile, we still have the government subsidizing farmers to let their land sit idle and NOT grow anything. I don't understand that.). In the face of this reality it is unreasonable to expect oil prices to maintain these levels for long. My take is that this is a partially manufactured phenomenon caused by a combination of the above factors, plus the OPEC countries and political activists with a lot of money keeping the price inflated by their aggressive bidding on the COMEX.

I foresee a calamitous crash at some point down the road when the last folks on this train realize they have been had by swallowing the theory that oil prices can only go up and attempt to get out at any cost. The beginning will be seen as soon as consumer spending in America shows a confirmed slowing trend, i.e. more then a month or 2 drop. Once we stop consuming the likes of China will cut back production since there is no one to pick up the slack with Europe also slowing.

And I'd wager that summer tourism's gonna take a big hit too.

$3.29 in Nebraska and rising.

The reason high gas prices suck more for Americans is simple: we have farther to drive. We have a culture here that demands long commutes to work and only a few select cities in America have a mass transit system that's worth a damn. Thus, our reliance on gas is less a 'convenience' issue and more 'I need to spend lots of money just to go to work' issue.

And Ultra: The picture you put in your post is chock full of retarded. Saying one party is more to blame for our current situation than the other is the act of a person easily tricked by the jibbering ninnies that parade themselves on "news" stations every night and the sub-human retards that populate the political blogosphere. Both parties are at fault, from the Democrats overtaxing to the Republicans pissing off the oil providers and wasting the oil on unnecessary overseas endeavors that don't benefit anyone other than the upper 1%.

Seriously, edit that swath of stupid out of your post before you derail this into the political discussion that nobody wants this to turn into.

Fine then.

It is a verifiable observation that the ones derailing any attempts to delve into our own natural resources belong to the Democratic Party. I certainly haven't heard any Republican calling out against, say, drilling in ANWR. Save for the more liberal members of the party, like Chafee and DeWine and McCain and...

On second thought, you do have a point.

For those who are British: Yes, but my state is larger than your entire country. It's completely common here to have a thirty or forty mile commute to work, especially for those of us who live in the country and a good 30 minute drive away from any sort of grocery store, hospital, or school. You also have great public transportation, something that those of us living in fly-over-country-middleamerica have almost absolutely no access to unless you live in a major city.

Or: What Castor Said.

It's $3.35 a gallon here and between my jobs I make an average of $8 an hour.

Thank you guys for your efforts to not turn this into a political discussion, as nobody (especially me) wants that. We've got enough problems to deal with

And let me just say right now that most of your gas prices look really freaking favorable right now. This morning, there were still some places with $3.59, with some places on bigger roads climbing all the way to $3.80 x_o; Investment in a bike would look really nice if I didn't go to school 20 miles away or have a job where I can't look windblown and dirty.

Also, Ultra's got an interesting point. How's this gonna affect (your) summer travel? As much as it kills me to say this, it might decide whether or not I'm going up to camp to even visit this summer... With everything going on, I can't work there, I dunno how I'd be if I couldn't even go to see everyone and participate in a campfire again or volunteer for this or that.... ;__; I need my boyscout crack.

~Shadowed Spirit Sage

I just plan to bike to work in the summer. I live close enough and driving a nearly 20 year old SUV just...bites. My former sports car was less greedy. 60 dollars to fill that thing up every week...

$3.35 in oklahoma.

My uncle reports in that's in $3.90 in his area of Cali.

~Tobe

Dunno how much it is in MT right now, but I feel sorry for all my friends that live up there, Driving is a neccessity >>

However, this really bothers me. Plane tix are sure to jump and I'm sure as hell not taking the bus to MT ever again.

...and it was $3.39 when I last filled up.

And I'm -still- looking for a decent job...

You also have great public transportation

You've clearly never been on a British train. Or tried to use a British bus service anywhere outside the capital.

The taxes are indeed uber-high. Wouldn't be so bad if the government actually used the revenue on the roads, but that is a pipe dream.

Still, it encourages me to walk the 3 miles to work rather than driving or taking the bus. I suppose that must be doing me some good. Plus it makes me to look at the mpg figures when considering what car to get next. My 11 year old Polo gets an average of around 44mpg (British g that is) provided I'm using it to get out of Bristol and up or down the motorway.

For the record, cheapest petrol in the city is probably about 104.9p per litre. The most expensive I've seen this week was 110.9p.

DW

You also have great public transportation

You've clearly never been on a British train. Or tried to use a British bus service anywhere outside the capital.

Maybe so, but the point is that you at least have some sort of transportation. I'll be damned if Rockford transit can take me to the right place- oh right, it doesn't. Tried it when I didn't even have a car when I first moved here.

Hey, we have a lightrail system here in Minneapolis!... of course, it only runs from the airport to downtown.........

Cheapest I saw here in Tally yesterday was $3.49, most expensive was about $3.69. Mom said that down on the Rock, it was $3.89. The price of gas, more than anything else, is what's financially screwing me over right now. I'm sorry, but it should not cost $40 to fill up a freakin' Beetle! And I'm not sure how much longer the poor thing's gonna last. In the look for a new car, the very first thing I look for is the MPG, then the price. As much as I'd love a Prius or another hybrid, I can't afford one, so I'll probably end up getting a Yaris. I was really hoping I'd be able to wait until some alternative (other than corn ethanol) got perfected, but it doesn't look like that's gonna be happening anytime soon.

You've clearly never been on a British train. Or tried to use a British bus service anywhere outside the capital.

Your ability to make accurate assumptions totally sucks.

Actually I've spent a cumulative 9 months of my life living in Sheffield, taken numerous buses, trains, and trams as my English paramour had no car. When he was at work I took myself all over Northern England for the hell of it and never had any problems other than the occasional late bus, which wasn't really a problem because I'm capable of entertaining myself. If I were to complain about any part of it then it would be the fact that a week pass for S. Yorkshire costs about 8 pounds so unless I rode it all seven days (I didn't) I wouldn't save any money.

The Toyota Yaris is a pretty good car Jerry. It actually has better gas mileage than my Honda Civic; I considered the first, then opted for the second one due to more features (and at the time, I figured that an extra 3-5 mpg would be just fine).

I know I pimp it a lot, but the 2007 Hyundai Elantra has great gas mileage as well (28/36), and is a pretty car to boot. Toyota Yaris, while it has good features and whatnot, is not an attractive car whatsoever. >>; Very nice price though... A new Elantra in 2007 was $13k, I'm sure it's gone down by then. But I know like next to nothing about cars except for the one I drive 8D So I might be wrong. Ah well.

~Shadowed Spirit Sage

Your ability to make accurate assumptions totally sucks.

Actually I've spent a cumulative 9 months of my life living in Sheffield, taken numerous buses, trains, and trams as my English paramour had no car. When he was at work I took myself all over Northern England for the hell of it and never had any problems other than the occasional late bus, which wasn't really a problem because I'm capable of entertaining myself. If I were to complain about any part of it then it would be the fact that a week pass for S. Yorkshire costs about 8 pounds so unless I rode it all seven days (I didn't) I wouldn't save any money.

I take it back. Clearly there are parts of England other than London where public transport doesn't munch. Wish I'd found them. Mind you, being northern England, I guess that shouldn't surprise me. No one believes me when I tell them life's better up there £8 a week for a bus pass sounds really cheap to me. Try £13.50 for a weekly pass to travel 3 miles.

I suppose it's also an added bonus that being in Sheffield you never have to deal with Great Western Railways. Their name is synonymous with late, over-crowded or plain cancelled trains, along with ridiculously high fares. Since they also run the bus service in Bristol, you may begin to see my point. Also, no trams here.

Remind me again why I think Bristol is a great city to live in?

DW

Holy crap, only $13K?!? daaaaamn... that said, it isn't like I have the spare money for a car like that but still.

Last I checked, gas over here was $4.02/gallon. But I don't own a car, so it doesn't affect me at all. But walking six miles (was three miles, but I moved to the opposite side of town) to communicate with you guys is a female dog... <_<<br />
But I should have a bike soon, so it won't be that bad. >_>

Do your parents drive Hukos?

also, this affects all of us USians. Higher prices at the pump mean higher prices for groceries and other store bought goods. And with the dollar as weak as it is already D=

By that I mean me directly as in I'm not paying for gas. Stepdad drives, but I don't get any money from him at all, and he's an ass anyway.

But beside that, the dollar is weak, I agree with Boston on that. I mean, how much does it cost to make a penny? $.17 or something like that? I forget and I'm too lazy to google it. >.>

$3.71 here in California. Feel the burn! Yeah, I'm quite pissed. I remember the outrage when gas went up to like... $2.00 or something. I'd love to see that again. I remember my sister telling me about the good ol' days of putting $5 worth of gas in, and you'd pretty much own the day with just that.

~T2K

$3.59/gal as of yesterday here in Covington, KY. Fortunately, I drive a Corolla, which is notoriously fuel-efficient. Unfortunately, it also means about a 35-dollar bill when I DO need to fuel up. Additionally, going back to the complaining thins, Jin raises a point. Americans don't have as good a mass-transit system overall as most European countries, we don't have as many in-city rail systems. Gas price jumps, as Jin said, muck up our lifestyle, as we rely more on our cars to get anywhere very far. You don't see a good rail system outside of maybe San Fransisco, New York or Washington DC, from what I've seen.

Over $4 a gallon here now. This is so wonderfully fun.

~T2K

So far, where I am, gas has been anywhere between $3.40 and $3.60. I paid about $35.00 to fill up today.

I feel sorry for the people with diesel engines. At the station I filled up at, diesel was $4.17 a gallon. I remember when diesel used to be cheaper than gas.

Apparently in the UK today is "Walk to Work Day". I managed to do so at the last minute, the rainstorm that hammered down over breakfast having cleared up 20 minutes later.

DW

I think gas around here is in the $3.50 range. Fortunately I only drive about four miles a day, sometimes more for when I get Tom Clancy novels at the library or something. It's still pretty annoying though, especially since I have to listen to mom complain each day. Her car gets like 5 MPG more than mine, too. ><