Gas prices??? What are we to do??

[twometal]

wow, hows your blood pressure?

Ha ha, pretty good. I exercise and hike quite a lot, and eat pretty healthy. Plus I'm only 21. That was funny though, thanks. For the most part, I try not to let the reality of how much of everything we have all messed up get me down. I'm sure there is a way to fix it, I just don't see it yet.Until then, just gotta enjoy the little things in life, I was serious about the carpe diem part. Gas doesn't hurt me too much, cause I don't really waste money on a lot of anything, so if it goes up, it just means I change my budget. It sucks, but in the short term not much I can do about it. I hike closer to where I live, and probably won't be going to the beach as much this summer.

Though, if I had my own piece of property, I would love to make/buy a still and grow some sugar cane. You can actually run most vehicles on e85 with no changes to their fuel systems at all. And by running pure ethanol in my mr2, I could actually tune the car for it and gain 10 or 15hp. Go faster, save money, and save baby seals? Not a bad deal!

That's a great idea and all, but people have already stopped spending money on those other things. This decrease in consumer spending is why the dollar continues to devalue, pushing us into a recession, and raising gas, food, and consumer good prices even more.

The problem here isn't consumer spending; people cutting down on buying needless things is good. Hopefully we will stop wasting resources producing them. The problem is what our economy is based on. We no longer produce things in our country. We buy, buy, buy. As soon as the buying stops, the economy stops. Many people spend their whole lives working to buy things they don't need, when in fact they never learn to enjoy life, cause they are too busy working hard to buy those things they never get to enjoy. Don't even get me started on consumer debt, credit cards, and how messed up our tax and banking systems are. What's causing prices to go up is the falling value of the US dollar. Which has a lot more to do with how our economy and national bank/debt is setup than anything else. A lot of people are getting richer right now, but a lot more people are getting poorer.

Unfortunately, in doing so, the money in your pocket would continue to devalue, so you would still have less, and while in shape, you wouldn't really be able to afford food for yourself and your family.

The problem with being, not only a developed nation, but the most affluent nation on earth, is that you can't simply go back to acting like a third world country and maintain your standard of living. Sure, we can save our pennies, but that very act makes them worth less, and in the long run won't do a thing to solve our economic issues.

Once again, this shows the problems with our economic system. There is a medical term for growth for the sake of growth; it's called cancer. With our current system, if we stop growing, we die; that's what's happening right now. But in nature, it's the other way around; if you don't STOP growing, you die.

We could have a national "don't buy gas" day?

Or just buy gas as little as possible.

But basically there's nothing really that we can do, unless people start making more and more cars that are more efficient but other than that we're Fu:cens0r:

That would never work. People would just buy gas the day before or the day after. It might have more of an impact if we had a national don't use gas day. And we have the technology to make cleaner, more efficient cars. The oil and auto companies just don't want it to happen, and they have enough power in this country to keep it from happening. Though I don't believe in government regulation, it's the same as the idea of people sueing McDs for being fat. We need smarter consumers in this country. If people start buying more economical cars, manufacturers will start making them. GM created a functional electric car, the EV1, in the 1990s. It had a functional range of 300mi per charge, and could be built for a reasonable price once at full production levels. But people would rather buy hummers than electric vehicles.

i would love to have a hybrid...but at 50K for them there is no way for me to get one. i would save money by buying a 20K car and using what i save per month for other stuff.. we go green as much as we can but the cost of going green is larger than standard materials.

a statement above said to ride a bike to work, as some of us work 1-2 hours away ( driving) this would not work. i wish it could but it doesnt. im actually thinking about buying a motorcycle so i dont burn as much gas during the nice days...

See my above statement, hybrids are a joke. Most of the ones on the market don't realistically average better than 45mpg. VW has been making a diesel version of the Lupo (don't think it's available here due to stupid US standards that don't make any sense and are there because of the oil and auto industries) that gets 78 mpg, and cost's less than 20k brand new. A 1989 civic HF gets 45 mpg in a 20 year old car! (and surpasses all current US emissions standards).

However, most hybrid cars have sold quite well, which is the bottom line. The cars were created because there was a demand for them in the market. Now we (consumers) need to create a demand that will cause some real change.