Welp, I guess right here and now, I will call BS on people who say gas today's gas price does not affect them.

I am thinking these kind of folks have their heads buryied in the sand, (or concrete).

I have millionair friends who are griping about gas prices.

Can we do anything about this? Yes!

Write every fricking offical you know. Do one form letter, then send it to them all. But most important of all, you need to tell them that they are OUT of office at the next election. You will not vote for an incumbant period.

Let's start over.

 

you must have gas...crying about it gets you nowhere but pissed.

if you can't stand spending $100 a tank to fill-up, buy a crappy little rice beater and be satisfied.

Do I like the $$$ gas costs...no. It's just 1 more part of life

 

I'm with you on this one...It's good to know there are so many wealthy f150 owners who's disposable income is such that these high prices have little to no impact. I sure wish I was one of those people. My household brings in well over 6 figures and gas has taken so much out of our disposable income that I don't know how we'll handle expanding our clan (hoping to get another bun in the oven).

Selling our 16 cylinders worth of triton delight won't help (resell right now would leave us way upside down) and as a previous poster suggested, changing jobs is not a realistic option/reaction to high gas prices. I can't just change jobs to the other space program down the street

Much like a colonoscopy, I guess I'll just grin and bear it.

 

Call BS all ya want....... I know lots of biz owners that cry about profit loss from high energy costs. What does someones monetary worth have to do with it? It's about cost ratio. If a biz owner has a biz that has high fuel consumption as part of operating costs...You betcha he's gonna b*tch & moan about it.

The squeeze is on folks. Get used to it.

We all gotta do what we gotta do. Right? We (As in me and mine) already had a low mileage lifestyle before the prices shot up. We worked hard to be in this position. The years of work has paid off.

It's not about disposable income. No income is "disposable" to me. But some is for fun! Most of our mileage is from road trips.... fun. We budget for a road trip. We hit the ATM and hit the road jack...........

We're lucky. We don't commute. So high gas prices do not affect us so much.

We don't put more than a few thousand miles a year on any of our vehicles. Even our little 99 Escort ZX that we bought new has less than 50k miles on it.

I'm still keeping my big trucks. I'm still gonna drive them. I'm still gonna "play" with them every chance I get. MK?

 

I love my F150 and will keep it because I don't commute with it. High gas prices are here to stay and will go higher. I think that many will reconsider whether they really need a truck. Over the coming years, I think we will see a reduction in the number of people commuting to work in large vehicles of any kind. That is, unless they are wealthy enough to not care about the cost. Even then, social pressure may play a part in everyone economizing on gasoline. Hybrids and economic diesels seem to be the coming thing. Honda Accord will offer a diesel for 2009. It gets about 55mpg.
Although the oil company profits are obscene, having the government institute a tax on their profits isn't going to help. For one thing, that money doesn't come back to you and me. It will just be absorbed by the ever increasing federal budget. Tax the oil companies too much and we'll be waiting in lines to buy the stuff like we did in the 1970s. Exxon is selling off it's gas stations. It says that the profit margin in retail gasoline sales isn't sufficient to stay in business.

 

Actually, it is about disposable/discretionary income. That's the income that's left over after you pay your bills so that you can go have fun/travel/camp/fish. Most folks are having about $400 to $500 less fun per month these days.

 

I just don't like that term "Disposable Income". Disposable is for diapers, condoms and other yucky things. It implies that it can be flushed away on nothing.

All income is discretionary. We all should use our best discretion when choosing what to pay for.

I also hate the term "consumer". It implies that all we do is consume. Rather than be productive.

I've never been one to B&M about things. It sucks...so it sucks. Complaining just annoys others in the same boat. You know.....the boat without a paddle going up a certain smelly creek?

Strategies for dealing with the gas price problems are good. B&M'ing about somebody else's ability to deal with the problem effectively is the purest form of BS.

No animals were harmed in the writing of this post. Though I'm sure I inconvenienced millions of electrons and a few dung beetles...........

This horsie sure is dead.

 

The only real way to drive down the price of crude oil is to do more drilling for oil domestically and to build more oil refineries here in the United States to handle the higher demands of today's global market. This way we won't be so dependant on foreign oil and OPEC can no longer have as much influence to monopolize the oil markets as they obviously can right now. Sure you can always buy a hybrid that gets 50 plus MPG, but for some thats not practical if you need a larger truck to run a business. Just my $.02 worth.

Jim

 

I agree totally, and then people balk at having to wait 5-10 years for a refinery or drilling to come "online"...They fail to realize that the LONGER we wait, the longer it will be until we get the product...(shhh...Don't mention the jobs that could be created by doing so...that's what a liberal would tell you)