<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by sparkydon:

Early to be doing math here but is around 82 cents a litre,works out to about $2.80 a gallon i believe....Nathen?!?!?
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3.81 litres to the US gallon, would make it close to that but convert to US Dollars and your gas price lowers to somewhere around two dollars or so, but then I am betting that your rate of pay is higher, so let us transfer all this down to,

how long on average would you work for the gas you buy?

here we get about 3 1/2 to 7 gallons and hour for the regular Joe.

and of course, we all know how warm and sunny it is in Canada so you don't have to worry about heat.

Pat, with my quite modest standard of living, I can safely say I don't qualify for the "elitist" tag. Point is taken that the poor are hurt by high gas prices. But you say we must solve the problems of people first, before we worry about the environment, and I disagree with that. Why? Because the problems of the people are never really solved, they fluctuate back and forth depending on who's in control. So if we put off Mother Earth until then, whenever "then" is, we all perish. We need to address both problems in the here and now. Both can be worked on at the same time, by all people who care.

And my contempt is not aimed at the working poor. It's aimed at the rich Suburban Yupps who drive their 8mpg monsters every day to work 50 miles away, because they want to live out in the exclusive suburbs, while whining about high gas prices. You know yourself that many of these people can easily afford the gas. They could choose vehicles which get good mileage, but they choose not too, for a variety of lame reasons. Now they're into Hummers. I can't shed tears for those folks.

Perhaps the answer is to tax the car not the gas, and maybe even grandfather some cars so they do not pay the tax at all. An old car such as mine does not get great gas milage but it is not wasting natural resources being replaced every five years either.

cheapest gas here is $1.67, with most running $1.74. guess where the lines are? public transportation isn't an option from my house. i'm only about 15 minutes from the "big city" of binghamton, but they don't care to run buses out this way. mark is still laid off and is now having to branch out to jobs 50 miles away in his search. not that he wants to live that far away from his job, but when the area where you are has become depressed, you have to go where the jobs are. not going to be a good thing if the prices keep climbing, but what you can do?

lcj, I understand where you're coming from and I certainly understand that you're not really an elitist. What I meant was that in recent years I've come to understand why that term would resonate with some people who logically should be voting with the left...you'd think, but in fact they've been turned off and have moved to the right in their voting too much of the time. Believe me when I say that ecological concerns for the future, even the near future, are going to take a back seat to today's concerns for people who need to feed their families. I know your distain is for the people who are using more resources than they need, but the reaction that it's a good thing if they can't, even if it means some poor can get even less of what they need is the kind of thing in general that's hurting the left IMO. It's a difference in priorities. The Green party's support in 2000 was mostly educated people who could be middle class if they so choose, whether or not they've chosen a more modest lifestyle. They got little support from labor or minorities and that is very important. If the whole constituency that should logically constitute the left of center voting block doesn't get it together we get more rape of the environment right along with more poverty and homelessness. It's much easier to make all the problems worse at one time than it is to fix them all at once.

Remember the gas shortage (?) in the 70's??

High prices and only available on Sunday's in some places, long lines, etc.

Gas here is confusing. Most places are at least $1.62, but my husband found a gas station for $1.52. There seems to be little rhyme or reason. Remember after 9/11 when some dealers wanted to charge $3 or $4 a gallon? I'm sure all those SUV urban tank drivers are feeling the pinch at least a little. It just aggravates me to see one person driving one of those things to the grocery store.

Just received an interesting email telling which companies import oil and which don't. (If anyone wants the whole email, let me know and I'll forward it to you.)

Shell ...............205,742,000 barrels
Chevron/Texaco.......144,332,000 barrels
Exxon/Mobil..........130,082,000 barrels
Marathon/Speedway....117,740,000 barrels
Amoco................62,231,000 barrels

If you do the math at $30/barrel, these imports amount to over $18 BILLION!

Here are some large companies that do not import Middle Eastern oil:

Citgo................0 barrels
Sunoco...............0 barrels
Conoco...............0 barrels
Sinclair.............0 barrels
BP/Phillips..........0 barrels
Hess.................0 barrels

Thanks, Pam, that's helpful for more informed choice.

Filled up last night (at a Citgo) ... $1.76 gallon for cheapest. Ridiculous.

One factor that has to be figured into all this is state and local taxes, these alone can add forty cents or more to the cost. Once we factor in the federal tax, the price of gas is much lower. I know here in tennessee both the county and the city can add their own taxes to gasoline.

Our local TV Station has a daily report of the lowest gas prices around and right now it's 1.45, but the normal is still 1.55 to 1.59.


another area where all this comes into play is smoking, I pay ten dlooars and twenty cents a carton for mine, but in orther areas of our country, they are six dollars a pack. At sixty dollars a carton I think I could cut down,

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Nathen:


At sixty dollars a carton I think I could cut down,<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Nathen, please DO, we'd like you to be here with us a long time! <img src="http://www.arlo.net/ubb/smilies/smile.gif" width=15 height=15>