Americans Need To Pay More For Petrol

When i was learning to drive about 38 years ago, the price of a gallon of petrol here was 3/6 in old money or 17p if memory serves me right. We always bought in gallons and not litres like now.
I have a small car with a 1200cc engine and as it was empty with the warning light on i filled the tank up last week and it cost me £57!
price of petrol here is scandalous and for the record it is called petrol and not gas, and chips and not french fries as mentioned in previous posts.

The majority of the USA doesn't have reliable public transportation. I live in a small city of around 25K people...we have about 3 taxis...that's it--no buses, no trains...and stuff is just too far apart to ride in the snow, ice, rain, heat, etc. The roads are horrendous too...it's difficult riding a bike...some places. The sidewalks here are pretty non-existent--they are falling apart, cracked, broken or just not there...

Tell me what are people supposed to do when the places they live are very car friendly but not walk, bike, ride friendly?

Originally posted by freemarketsocialist

Originally posted by goochball
I believe the United States is the largest consumer of petroleum products, so it makes sense that we would be paying less. Just how you would save money buying in bulk etc.

Good point.

I do think the fact that we are all forced to use US dollars to purchase the petrol would add some as well though.

Wait a second... you do pay in dollars....
You should be paying less. Since the Euro is worth more than the dollar.
You're getting screwed by your own governments.

Originally posted by freemarketsocialist
Or 'gas' as they call it.

I find it very annoying to see Americans complaining about the price of petrol. Why do Americans think they deserve cheap petrol? The rest of us pay a fortune for petrol and we always have.

Why does America get it so easy?

There are places like Venezuela that pretty much give fuel away but any advanced nation pays through the nose. Most nations pay more for fuel than the United States.

Does it have anything to do with the fact that the United States forces other nations to purchase petrol in US Dollars do you think?

We are all getting ripped off and the ones ripping us off are crying about themselves.

This graph shows how easy Americans have it in relation to petrol price compared to the rest of the world.

flowingdata.com...

From the graph you can clearly see that Americans need to suck it up and walk it off. What the heck are they complaining about?

edit on 3-9-2012 by freemarketsocialist because: (no reason given)

edit on 3-9-2012 by freemarketsocialist because: (no reason given)

You're not thinking about the problem very clearly.

Why do Americans whine so much about the price petrol? Because outside of New York, Chicago and arguably San Francisco it's pretty much impossible to survive in America WITHOUT burning lots and lots of fuel.

You see...European cities are typically built on top of older cities that have often been around for hundreds or even thousands of years. The result is compact cities which tend to have narrow streets, not much in the way of parking lots, and consequently...EXCELLENT public transportation.

When the Europeans immigrated to the New World they found continents in North and South America in which 98% of the Native American populations had died out due to smallpox PRIOR to 1600...and then they proceeded to wage a three hundred year long campaign of organized genocide against that remaining 2%.

The result of this was lots and lots of "open" land in which it has historically pretty much always been cheaper to build outwards in a large sprawl than it was to build upwards. Hence, America put it's resources into building highways and parking lots to connect these vast distances between cities and suburbs.

How many people in Europe do you know that have to commute more 50 miles each way to go to work without there even being an OPTION for taking a bus or train? On average, I rack up 30K-40K miles PER YEAR of commuting miles to visit my clients (I'm in outside sales). You'd be driving through two or three different countries just to go to work everyday.

So...I hope that answers your question as to why Americans start freaking out at $4.00/gallon. It's all fun and games until you have to spend 20% of salary to simply transport your body to and from work everyday.

Now...the real question...is why are we such douchebags about building more high-speed rail systems? I don't have a good answer for on that other than to blame our Baby Boomer's. There is not much on planet Earth that makes less sense, behaves as irrationally, or responds with such knee-jerk reactionism as the American Baby Boomer. I have given up trying to figure them out and/or talk sense into them several years ago and am now just looking forward to them dying off.

Originally posted by freemarketsocialist

Originally posted by Schkeptick

Originally posted by freemarketsocialist

Mobil. Shell, BP and Chevron have all our money.

edit on 3-9-2012 by freemarketsocialist because: (no reason given)

Not really. In some cases governments make as much per gallon (taxes) as the oil companies do. They don't like this to be common knowledge, though.

Oil companies take HUGE risks and they have many, many failures. Then when they succeed, they often succeed big. It's why the business is so exciting - it's big or it's nothing. There's not much in-between.

We are supported by this industry, and I'm very much into environmentalism. I know it's easy to look on the outside and just see huge profits, but there's more to it than that. It's a vast industry. The public & governments should always be pressuring these companies to be cleaner and more responsible - but these companies drive the economy and massive amounts of environmental research, too.

I've approached them on occasion for large amounts of money for schools & other charitable events - and have never been turned down. Oil & gas companies predominantly support my childrens' school (it is an overseas private school, our only option here).

When you can't get rid of the "devil" make him work for you.

Ha!

That is the craziest thing I have ever read in my life.

The world has no hope.

We should all kill ourselves.

edit on 4-9-2012 by freemarketsocialist because: (no reason given)

...who's is that guy...the f^cking VP of Propaganda at Exxon-Mobile?

Originally posted by teapot

Originally posted by freemarketsocialist
All oil must be purchased in US Dollars.

And one only has to look at Libya to see where trying to do oil deals in any other currency gets you.

Yep...you got that right.

Originally posted by glen200376
reply to post by n00bUK

 

I noticed about three porkies by various American posters like diesel is cheaper than petrol in the u.k.,not here it isn't.
another said we have a socialist government in the u.k.,lies try corporate whore government.
another was along the lines of you don't drill for oil off of Europe.more bull,aberdeen is Europe's oil capital.
I sometimes think some Americans live in a bubble unable to see out of it.

"American's" aren't living in a bubble....just "American Baby 'Boomer's".

We will start more or less making sense and acting responsibly again in 10-20 years when the rest of that miserable generational cohort finally dies out.

many other countries might pay more for gasoline but they don`t use as much as the U.S. does. most europian countries are smaller than some of our states. europians can drive from one side europe to other on a couple gallons of gas.try driving from california to new york to deliver a load of consumer goods and see how much gas it takes.
i would rather pay $10 a gallon and only use 100 gallons than have to pay $4 a gallon and use 1,000 gallons.
$10 a gallon gas in the U.S. would collapse the world economy. No one would have any money to spend on non essential goods. everything from electricity to food would quadruple in price. China could stop sending all their crappy products here because no one would have any money to buy them.The food we export to other countries would also skyrocket in price.someone has to pay for all that $10 a gallon fuel the farmers use in their tractors to produce the food.