EU drivers to U.S. drivers: Tough luck

[lovuian]

http://feeds.bignewsnetwork.com/?sid=c4e2be3e9edf80fe

Many British and French drivers think U.S. drivers are a bunch of cry-babies for moaning over the price of gasoline.

Get used to it, says Caroline Gregson of London, who fills up her Mini Cooper for about $7 a gallon.

Likewise, Eric Chantala of Paris: Come here and see the prices we have. Chantala pays $75 to fill up his VW Golf. That's more than $6 per gallon.
more...
We are not getting any sympathy overseas!!!
:hurts:

[Gatchaman]

1. Have their gas prices doubled in the last 2 years?

If not, they can kindly shut the fuck up. It's not the price, it's the insane rate of increase, and the obscene profits that are the problem.

[valerief]

2. Well, they're not driving the consumer tanks we call SUVS either. n/t

[Deja Q]

3. They pay more taxes and some claim they have better public transport...

and their use of the land isn't as... frivolous... as the US plans it out...

:shrug:

And undoubtedly they get paid living wages in the first place.

Perception works both ways too.

[Oversea Visitor]

4. Spin

Plain spin

[magellan]

12. It's not actually

My husband's son and his friend are visiting from the UK and have been driving all over the US. They think the gas prices here are wonderful compared to what they pay back home and have no sympathy for US drivers. I finally had enough of their cheek and explained wages here to them...They shut up quick.

[Oversea Visitor]

16. Of course they pay more

And yes to them US price wondeful
If you here in my country you say our oil price wonderful too
It was like S1.40 US a gallon now like $2.00 a gallon

We have that increase like 2 months back
Whee there was riot at the Twin Tower
Of course not reported.

Who likes to pay more, please I think when their price increase they dont like it too
But the twisting of how news reported JUST SPIN total SPIN
Not telling whole truth just spin part that is needed.

[magellan]

18. Oh, the NEWS part of it is spin, agreed

No one in the media bothers explaining that you can't decide whether another country's better off than yours simply by figuring out how much your tank of gas would cost somewhere else. At US wages $2.00/gallon of gas would be a dream to most Americans now -- but if they had to earn those $2.00 in your economy they might find it a hardship! (Just like having to come up with $3.00/gallon is considered a hardship here, but not in the UK.) That's what I took pains to explain to my stepson this evening.

The media just tries to paint a happy face on everything. And the kids, well, they're happy go lucky and buy it.

[Oversea Visitor]

23. Gee

Have you ever experience our traffic jam.
Normal to see each house having 2 cars or more.

Our car usage versus public transport as bad as US

Haha your are right when you think it terms of US dollars
But we do all right can have a meal for even less than a riggit if not fussy.
That is like maybe around 27 censt US :rofl:
Of course imported stuff expensive except if they from China :rofl:

You think our country cheap
Go goggle our car prices
You car price looks like heaven to us.

[Benhurst]

5. Europeans have excellent mass transportation and national

health.

We are the World's Only Superpower, for what that's worth.

If they want to hold the average American in contempt, it should be for allowing the Bush Crime Family to have hijacked this country.

[Spider Jerusalem]

17. We are a Potemkin superpower.

All front and no substance. If not for our military, and the fact that the rest of the world continues to prop us up and aid our ability to maintain that military by purchasing US Treasury debt instruments, we'd be no superpower at all. Take away our fourteen aircraft carriers, our strategic arsenal, our nuclear submarine fleet, and our armoured divisions, and what do you have? A nation with an economy slowly rotting from the inside, with a decimated manufacturing sector, with most major industries posting operating losses, a crumbling infrastructure, massive indebtedness, and an increasingly disaffected population who are themselves largely hugely in debt and at serious risk of facing near-term financial crises including loss of the credit that makes their way of life possible and foreclosures on homes they may not be able to continue paying for...does any of that sound much like a 'superpower' to you?

[ForrestGump]

22. Mass transit has been on the chopping block for decades here

It's shameful. Some municipalities have good systems in place, but public transport in most US cities and regions is deplorable.

It needs to not be.

But look at the intentional dismantling of the Los Angeles trolley system, by collusion of auto and oil types, to see how thoroughly our dependence on automobiles has been not just encouraged, but forced (actually, it's kindof like how the market basically forced everyione to switch to CDs and later DVDs, as a more trivial parallel). Amtrak is next to useless for cross-country or inter-city travel and instead of goods traveling by relatively efficient train they're being hauled by gas-guzzling semi trucks.

Out here in the West, at least, you're nobody if you don't have a car. You're also out of luck, because public transport is so sparse and restricted, and the distances so great and becoming greater even to commuter suburbs. Outside of a few cities, it's hard for Americans to get to work, to school, or to provide their children school and extracurricular activities without having at least one car in the garage. It's not like that elsewhere, and not just because the US is so much larger than most other nations (though that is definitely a consideration). But being a car culture doesn't mean that we have to suck up energy and resources as we do.

[Doremus]

6. They also don't hog 25% of the world's supply...

because they've learned to conserve.

They're so far ahead of us, I'm not surprised they look at us as spoiled children stomping our feet and demanding more more MORE.

Us and our wasteful, indulgent lifestyles that we've been brainwashed to believe we're entitled to by birthright. We suck up more oil per capita than anybody else and bitch about $3/gal. when everybody else has been paying twice that for years.

Sadly, in that regard, and many more, we are 'ugly Americans.'

[lovuian]

7. Ya know they don't want to admit it but they are hurting too

their prices are going up up too... but like you said they are ahead of us.......

[SoCalDem]

8. Caroline Gregson of London, can drive her mini to her medical

clinic without having to stop at the bank to get an equity loan to cover her medical treatment, and if she becomes "redundant" she can also get some subsistence money without having to jump through flaming hoops and or kissiing asses from London to Leeds. She might also enjoy a lengthy "holiday" without having to sit under her boss' desk or worry about her job being gone when she returns. She might also have a secure "pensioner's" life ahead for her as she ages....and if she becomes a "mum", her place of employment might even be willing to give her a generous maternity leave..

So Caroline, lots of us might want to do some trading spaces :)

[DBoon]

9. Well if we are going to pay European prices for gasoline

We should get 7 weeks paid vacation and government paid medical care, too.

[AndyTiedye]

11. More Than Half The European Price is Tax (Which Pays for Transit, etc.)

[Stockholm]

19. Bumpersticker material right there

Excellent said.

[bluestateguy]

10. If we had the western European social welfare state I could handle it

yet somehow I don't think that $3 gas is going to result in national health care and free public university tuition in America. So I will continue to complain.

P.S. We are also a much larger geographic county than these Euro states, making public transportation an unrealistic option for every single American.

[Maddy McCall]

13. Don't they have national health care and better social services?

Don't those gasoline taxes partially fund those social programs?

[CountAllVotes]

14. fair play Europe

However, I'd like to know how many of YOU have to commute 100+ miles a day for a crap job with NO benefits? Few I suspect, very few.

:kick:

[Mikimouse]

15. Ummm, whose fault is that? It isn't theirs...

If We, the People, really got together and forced the issues that we should force(Public transportation, living wage, no more oursourcing for corporate profits, etc.), we wouldn't have to be driving all over creation to get to our jobs either.

[rman]

20. It leaves out a few relevant facts,

Such as the fact the Americans are economically adjusted to relativly low gas prices - meaning that a significant increase in prices will hurt economically even if those prces are still lower then those in Europe. Also the average driving distance in the US is larger then in Europe.
Not to mention that everything else (heating, electricity, health care) has gotten more expensive as well.

[ForrestGump]

21. I've lived where gasoline was five or six dollars a US gallon

Over half my life, actually.

It's easy to see the US as a nation of crybabies (in more than just this respect, for that matter), but the truth is that I still get sticker shock at the price of fuel these days, no matter how great it may be in relation to other countries. Many in those other countries, too, don't put in the same miles that many of us have to...not their fault, or anything of the sort, but I suspect that the overall cost of fuel as anend-of-year budge line item may turn out to be more equal than would at first be obvious.

I ride a motorcycle with a six gallon tank, and even so it cost me $16 at Costco yesterday for what's likely a week's worth of gas. I'd hate to be spending $50 or more to fill up even a smaller car these days. I happened to use cars during recent gas price hikes -- rental or borrowed -- and it sure wasn't a barrel of laughs to see that bowser LED tell me I'd just pumped over $50 of dead dinosaurs into the tank.

The only bright side to it all is that the idiots who drive Hummers are getting a little karmic kick in their collective behinds. People like that are guilty of the most conspicuous of conspicuous consumption and contribute disproportionately to the US' outsized ecological footprint. We are the worst offenders, with emissions and with use (and waste) of resources, and many other nations -- in Europe and elsewhere -- show us that we can still be technologically advanced, industrialized, enjoy a high overall standard of living, and not be such energy and resource hogs. I just don't know how the changes that need to be made can be made, at least uintil we're forced to make them when it all goes to Hell (seems to be what it takes, unfortunately, as the '70s energy crisis showed us).

[radwriter0555]

24. LOL, gas prices aren't that high in France. I paid $1.37 per litre

yesterday on the french Riviera.

How that translates to $6 must be a GOP math thing.

[muriel_volestrangler]

25. Here's the calculation:

€1.27 per litre in France (source)

* 3.78 litres per US gallon

* 1.26 dollars per euro (source)

= $6.05 per gallon.

If you found somewhere with $1.37 per litre, you were probably buying diesel.