5 dollar gas...are we ready?

[Jimjamesak]

Re: 5 dollar gas...are we ready?

And companies will again have to cut back on wages or eliminate positions to "save" money to pay for the increase in gas.

The good news is the current CBA for my Union and my Company doesn't expire until 2012. The bad news is the current CBA for my Union and my Company expires in 2012.

[Twitch Boy]

Re: 5 dollar gas...are we ready?

I've owned a couple Wranglers and liked them a lot. All had the old 4.0 straight six, now defunct. While they weren't gas sippers by any means, I wouldn't characterize them as gas hogs either. Now I'm in a Dodge pick-up with a V8 that's getting very painful to operate and I'm definitely looking to get into something a great deal more economical. Even seriously considering some compact or sub compact little four cylinder cars...which until now, was a possibility I would have never entertained. Right now I'd take the Wrangler MPG over what I get with the truck in a flash.

I have the newer model with the Chrysler *coughminivan* V6. Bumped up the tires from 225 streets to 265 AT's. Returns about 14 MPG, mostly city. 12 in winter when it's cold or if I have it in 4WD. I think it has one or two more MPG to give once it warms up as well. I also live relatively close to work, so I guess I should quit my complaining - I go through about a half tank a week, and put in $30 at the halfway point. Not a huge deal in the long run for me, but still sucks *** day to day.

As for the subcompacts...hoo boy. I drove one of them as a rental a while back. Hyundai Accent, to be specific. I thought I was driving one of those plastic red Fisher-Price pedal cars. The entire thing is plastic and feels brittle, like one false move and it's going to shatter into a million pieces. Even the start-up bonger is designed for maximum humiliation. It has a cutesy little "ding-dong-ding-dong" like a kid playing a toy xylophone. If I were test driving it, I would have stopped the test on the spot as soon as I started it up and heard that. I wouldn't care if they ran on unicorn farts and Obama's tears. They're a disgrace to the automotive community.

If 15 MPG is the price I have to pay to never turn the key on one of those again, I'll pay it with a smile on my face. I LOVE my Jeep. It's mine (the largest purchase I've ever made by myself,) it gets me to work in a blizzard, it's unique as heck, and it's flat-out FUN to drive. I have a shiat-eating grin on my face every time I hit some rough terrain and go bouncing around like a pinball, or park on top of a 2-foot ice berm for no other reason than I feel like it. You only get one life. ONE. You have to make the absolute most of it and enjoy it while you can. The Jeep helps me do that. I'm not going to live in misery just because the economy says I should.

(If you REALLY want a subcompact, that's why God made Mini Coopers.)

[walrus]

Re: 5 dollar gas...are we ready?

I have the newer model with the Chrysler *coughminivan* V6. Bumped up the tires from 225 streets to 265 AT's. Returns about 14 MPG, mostly city. 12 in winter when it's cold or if I have it in 4WD. )

You're kidding me? I can get that in a freighted one ton GMC PU with a 6 liter, automatic and 4.10 gears

[unofan]

Re: 5 dollar gas...are we ready?

Those same people also talked about how moral $8-10 gas would be for society.... they honestly think it'll make us better people. And then you wonder why I think they're totalitarian goose steppers.

edit: the funny thing is, I want to dumpload a ton of $$$ on one of these nice shiny new hybrids even if gas costs $1/gal. We're dealing with the same crew of morons who are dumping the electric lightbulb because their culture has taught them through their wizardry (I'd have a hard time calling it "science"... "sorcery" is more like it... sorta how numerology is to math) that its wrong. But no, their culture has divined them a truth, and dammit, they're going to believe. Gotta wonder if they're going to bring out a statue of a cow onto the national mall soon. We're going to moralize ourselves into the poorhouse but somehow making a balanced budget makes you devil incarnate. I thought being put in the poorhouse for the whims of man was an evil thing. That's what I"m told about all the evil rich people who are bankrupting me. So, you somehow become less evil when you make $75K in the 'burbs and want to take me to the same poor house. I have two choice words for that... and neither of them are printable.

I wonder if we sent that to Congress and the US Treasury a lightbulb or two may go off.

Nope, not a chance.

BTW, does the price of oil follow the price of gold or is it the other way around??

It's not Libya, it's the dollar that is dropping against other world currencies. Five years ago or so, the Loonie was $0.65 US, now it is $1.04. Gold has gone through the roof. Those Arab shieks can't buy the same amount of Mercedes with a barrel of oil than they used to. So, the price goes up because they need to keep the Mercedes plants open.

I don't have it handy but can somebody look up the historical price of oil / oz. of gold? I wonder if it a flat curve?

So Mr. President, Mr. Speaker, and other ilks of the Federal Government, what are you going to do to restore the vitality of the $??

Same here -- I've been full-time unemployed since Jan. 09 and these past few months have been the worst, with no help from the price at the pumps around here.
Both of our cars run on 93 octane, which is running right around $4 per gallon.



What irritates me is that in 08 the media was screaming about rising gas prices and how they were all the fault of the Bush administration. Today -- stone silence from the media, even though prices have soared past those in 08.

Go figure!

Wow, the butthurt in this thread is laughable.

[Kepler]

Re: 5 dollar gas...are we ready?

Wow, the butthurt in this thread is laughable.

There are probably 25,000 Hummers in NoVa with "Taxed Enough!" bumper stickers (generally crowded out by NRA, Palin, and Marriage = One Man + One Woman stickers, and maybe a borderline racist anti-Obama sticker just for kicks). These are not people I will be sad to see weeping.

They could have tried to put a tax on gas to pay for the wars back in 2003 to put their money where their mouths were. But no. Always the easy way with that crowd: all hat and no cattle.

[amherstblackbear]

Re: 5 dollar gas...are we ready?

(If you REALLY want a subcompact, that's why God made Mini Coopers.)

You're not kidding. I thought they were all hype. Then, a few years ago, I drove one. If you don't have a big dumb grin on your face when you're behind the wheel of one of those things, you might just be dead.

Not sure if it's the best choice for the upper peninsula, though...

[bigmrg74]

You're not kidding. I thought they were all hype. Then, a few years ago, I drove one. If you don't have a big dumb grin on your face when you're behind the wheel of one of those things, you might just be dead.

Not sure if it's the best choice for the upper peninsula, though...

Why not? They're probably about light enough to pull them behind a snowmobile if you had to.

[The Rube]

Re: 5 dollar gas...are we ready?

I like Mini Coopers, but if I'm going to way overpay for a vehicle because of the name, I'll stick with my Wrangler. Even before it was fixed up, it somehow was still worth almost $7K. On trade-in value. Now that it's fixed? Close to 10K. I have no clue how.

[Twitch Boy]

Re: 5 dollar gas...are we ready?

I like Mini Coopers, but if I'm going to way overpay for a vehicle because of the name, I'll stick with my Wrangler. Even before it was fixed up, it somehow was still worth almost $7K. On trade-in value. Now that it's fixed? Close to 10K. I have no clue how.

Yup, Wranglers are one of the slowest depreciating vehicles on the market. (Ironically enough, so is the Mini Cooper )

When I went shopping for mine, I was seeing '05s and '06s with 40K on the clock going for $19K. My '10 new was $23K. I could probably get $20K for it right now.

A trade-in for the '12 is actually a viable option for me.

[The Rube]

Re: 5 dollar gas...are we ready?

Yup, Wranglers are one of the slowest depreciating vehicles on the market. (Ironically enough, so is the Mini Cooper )

When I went shopping for mine, I was seeing '05s and '06s with 40K on the clock going for $19K. My '10 new was $23K. I could probably get $20K for it right now.

A trade-in for the '12 is actually a viable option for me.

I paid about $18K for mine, in '01. It was a '99 with 17K miles on it.

[Kepler]

Re: 5 dollar gas...are we ready?

I got in a discussion with someone about highway spending. I said we should raise the federal gas tax from $.18/ga to $.30/gal since it isn't indexed for inflation and hasn't increased since 1993. He said we can't do that since it'd hurt Jane Doe, the single mother with 2 kids who can barely afford to get to work.

Fine, I said, let's just raise income taxes instead. Nope, that was a non-starter. It had to come from the waste in the discretionary spending account. Of course, he couldn't tell me where this mythical waste was or how it was going to fund not only our highways but increased mass transit, too (he's all for mass transit, but not out of any new taxes - shocking, I know).

I'm sure he also wouldn't means test entitlements because "that's my money, earning interest," and he won't uncap payroll taxes because "that would be unfairly burdening the investment class."

That guy is everything that's wrong. He should get a medal or something. I love when people say "we'll just trim the fat." They may as well say, "well, I'm out of ideas..."

[Bakunin]

Re: 5 dollar gas...are we ready?

If you means test the benefit side, you shouldn't have to uncap payroll taxes.

[Kepler]

Re: 5 dollar gas...are we ready?

If you means test the benefit side, you shouldn't have to uncap payroll taxes.

Why not do both? In fact, why not just do away with the whole concept of "payroll tax" or "capital gains tax" and make everything income tax?

As we've said, the goal can't just be a zero balance. We have to run large surpluses for a very long time to pay down the debt. We've shown we know how to run a 30% deficit. Let's see a 30% surplus. Imagine the US economy unburdened by any debt.

[Bakunin]

Re: 5 dollar gas...are we ready?

Why not do both? In fact, why not just do away with the whole concept of "payroll tax" or "capital gains tax" and make everything income tax?

Yes, and as long as we're indulging ourselves in this fantasy, let's also scrap all credits and deductions. It'd certainly be interesting to see where the rates would be set in such a system to break even compared to the way we are currently handling it.

And attempting to get massive surpluses is something this electorate simply won't bear - the level of cuts and increased taxation necessary to accomplish that would cause both the left and right to riot.

Personally, I'd be satisfied if we turned the current debt level into the equivalent of a 30 year mortgage (but even *that* is probably out of reach with the people we have in charge).

[Kepler]

Re: 5 dollar gas...are we ready?

Yes, and as long as we're indulging ourselves in this fantasy, let's also scrap all credits and deductions. It'd certainly be interesting to see where the rates would be set in such a system to break even compared to the way we are currently handling it.

We pay about 15% of our tax bill in debt service right now, correct? So zeroing the debt would result in a defacto 15% income tax reduction across the board. My home mortgage interest deduction is nice, but it aint THAT nice.

My version of "fair tax" is to have 100 marginal tax brackets. All income is included, no deductions, no exemptions, no distinctions.

Say the 99th percentile of income is, I dunno, $15,000. That means the first $15,000 should be taxed at 1%. If the 98th percentile is $17,000, then income between $15,000-$17,000 is taxed at 2%. And so on to the top. If the 2nd percentile of income is $1,000,000 and the top percentile is $2,000,000, then income between $1,000,000 and $2,000,000 is taxed at 98% and over $2,000,000 at 99%.

The question then become, what's a percentile -- the number of earners? I think even better (and fairer) would be the total value of earned-dollars. So, take all total income, T, in the United State. Start aggregating from the first dollar of each earner across the full population. Go up dollar by dollar and keep adding to the provisional subtotal, S. When S = T/100, that's the dividing line for the 1% tax bracket. Continue upwards to the top.

A continuous function with continually varying rates all the way down to 10 or 20 significant digits would be even better. I'm sure some fluid dynamics engineer has that figured out for how high pressure oil pipelines work. (Ouch. Too soon?)

Fiat lux.