What is Digg?407 Comments
- HookmasterCH47, on 05/29/2008, -13/+80I'm in Norway for a few weeks, and then to Scotland, and i've got to say that us Americans are extreme cry babies for whining about petrol... It's upwards of 7 dollars a gallon (my liters to gallons conversion isn't that great). Regardless, it's insane. I feel for our European brothers.
- fishbone, on 05/29/2008, -28/+93Americans whining about gas prices crack me up. You really don't know ***** about what you're talking about.
- Dpack1, on 05/29/2008, -4/+35Yeah, because the americans always have motor blocades and strikes by tanker drivers that actually get big oil to freeze prices... oh wait... no thats what they do in Europe... In america they just get on Digg and complain about it cos thats what makes a real difference.
- zadadka, on 05/29/2008, -7/+34UK
£1.24 litre deisel, that's $11.14 per gallon.
BTW America, distances are irrelevant to the consideration, do you really NEED a 4+ litre Chevy to go to the store? No.
Will a 2litre car get you there in the same time? Yes.
As for engine sizes and economy, well, it's your pocket, you figure it out.
Either way, quit whining. - mgbuddy, on 05/29/2008, -1/+25Uhmmm... We had cars with bad mileage, and bad public transport also before the 75. But, you know, setting gas to 8 dollar per gallon quickly solved that. Just try, you will see...
- EserVerx, on 05/29/2008, -6/+28We'll trade you gas prices for your universal health care.
- masamunecyrus, on 05/29/2008, -11/+33People always talk about gas prices in other countries and how good we have it in America, but very few articles discuss the actual situation, relative to the living conditions. On average, Americans drive around 3x farther than their European counterparts. And though now fuel-efficient cars can be bought, for a long time they weren't hardly available. And even now, if you can't afford much, if you're limited to what used cars are cheap, and they're likely not fuel efficient. And America is currently totally reliant on cars for nearly all transportation. When all this is taken into account, sure, Americans had it well off when oil was cheap, but Americans are also more vulnerable and affected by increasing oil prices than many people of other countries.
- Oppslagsverk, on 05/29/2008, -3/+23Even if it's expensive and all in Norway, we actually have the cheapest gas compared to income in all of Europe. And everybody complains. We sure are spoiled.
- inactive, on 05/29/2008, -2/+21taxes taxes...Taxes!
- p9s50W5k4GUD2c6, on 05/29/2008, -5/+22"One big reason for the difference is that European governments put a much higher tax burden on fuel than the U.S. does. State and federal taxes currently make up just 11% of the pump price in the U.S., according to the Energy Information Administration; in France and the U.K., taxes account for an average of around 70%."
Take out your 70% taxes from $8.54 per gallon and YOUR cost for gas is $2.56.
So why is the US paying MORE for gas - on a tax adjusted basis - than Europe? - PaulOwen, on 05/29/2008, -1/+16The Air Force was giving gasoline to children? How irresponsible.
- inactive, on 05/29/2008, -3/+18It's not the same. Most of that added cost to petrol prices is just tax which Europe uses for general welfare programs and healthcare for it's citizens.
Plus europe has public transportation systems at least 10x more developed than those of the usa which run on electricity, thus car owners need not drive everywhere all the time, like they do in the usa. - Reaper2806, on 05/29/2008, -0/+15The article notes that there's been protests lead by truckers, set to get worse potentially leading to blocking major roads in London. They ARE doing something about it.
- synagence, on 05/29/2008, -2/+16Yes gas prices are higher here ... but the americans don't help themselves...
I lived in a nice smallish town in california for a few months a couple of years back and while my office was less than a mile away from my apartment i COULD NOT walk there .... there were no pavements (sidewalks) ... no crossing places ... nothing. I HAD to drive .... i had a rental car .... was a 3 litre v6 thing in a sedan ... i got lousy MPG ...
The US governement and states need to wake up and make Americans ... or at least give them ... the chance to depend on cars less. Start taxing the large SUV's to hell ... encourage fuel-efficiency.
Its not all about pump prices ..... its more about the total culture in america being pushed further and further into inefficiency ... that has to change! - fancypantscz, on 05/29/2008, -6/+20So why don't the truckers just raise their prices? Oh right, because they would start loosing business to rail. Sorry but if you chose to base your lively hood off of burning fossil fuels and you couldn't see higher gas prices coming then well, YOU SUCK. As for the taxes, I don't even have a car and yet my taxes go to build roads that have to be repaired every year because of all the trucking. I've been living here in Prague for the last 6 years watching all sorts of interest groups successfully lobby the government to divert tax money away from our great public transit network to expanding the ***** road network. Considering the fact that fuel prices are not coming down, lowering fuel taxes is pissing in the wind. Trucking, like much of the government subsidized airline industries dependent on cheep fuel to turn a profit are simply stupid ways to try and make money in this era of rising fuel prices. Ultimately, their attempts to lower taxes will fail because unlike the US federal government the EU parliament actually plans for the future.
- RedRummy, on 05/29/2008, -17/+31at least the US complain about it - we europeans just sit back and take it
- thebluebird, on 05/29/2008, -0/+14I think we should rather find a way to use less gas in our cars than make gas cheaper
- tauntz, on 05/29/2008, -5/+19It's $7.70/gallon for diesel here and the price seems to increase by $0.10 every week. Sometimes I wish I was living outside of Europe..(not, not In USA.. I mean.. somewhere where life is good :) )
- MrSteamTank, on 05/29/2008, -4/+16I'm not even American(Canadian) and I have to completely side with the American posters here. Europeans should get off their high horse and realize the ridiculous taxes their government puts on taxes. These taxes pay for things non-existant in the US such as a decent public transit system. I live in a city blessed with a half-decent transit system(Ottawa, Canada) but many Americans have no option. Have any of you ever been to LA or Miami?
Should Americans change their driving habits? Definitely! However, now they are in a bit of a bind because their whole country infrastructure is based around driving. - comedianX, on 05/29/2008, -10/+22Yes, we Americans complain about high gas prices because we drive further than Europeans, have no good public transportation options and our cars don't have as good gas mileage.
- Carlsen, on 05/29/2008, -0/+12Aye, the truth.
If 38 mpg is a good thing in the US, their auto industry is twenty years behind the EU.
God damn, Florida ain't hot enough! Get me one of them GMC trucks with a six litre V8 that turns out 200 bhp, now THAT is american efficiency for ya! Al Gore, go piss yourself!
Absolute morons, if you drive an enormous car you deserve to pay. Pardon the trolling, but american cars suck, big time. I love an american late 60's musclecar as much as anybody - but come on, this is 2008 and it's still the same thing going over the counter. - SiliconRain, on 05/29/2008, -2/+14In a lot of American cities, you guys have world-class public transport, but everyone complains about it. I can only think this is for one of two reasons:
1 - You have unrealistic expectations of what public transport should be like, i.e., you shouldn't have to do any walking at all to get from the front door of your house to where you are going
2 - You like to blame the public transport system for your laziness to make you feel less bad about poluting the air and jamming up the roads with your gas-guzzling automobiiiiiiles - BloggerJohn, on 05/29/2008, -2/+14Hi *waves* maybe if you traded in your 36 cylinder 1200 ton cadillac for something a little smaller then you would actually get more than 1mile to the gallon.
And I'm sorry - 'you have to drive further' ? What the hell sort of argument is that? You think the US is bigger than Europe? Here's a clue, we have about 300,000 square kilometers more than you! - FairDinkumMate, on 05/29/2008, -2/+13"Prices are all about supply and demand" - EXACTLY
Yet you rarely hear an American refer to DEMAND, just supply. Such as:
* OPEC should produce more
* We should be able to drill in ANWR
* Oil companies are charging too much
etc
Yet the reality is that the US can have a much greater influence on DEMAND than they can on supply. Like this:
* The average age of the US car fleet is 9 years
* The US car fleet averages HALF of the MPG of the European car fleet
* If US consumers purchased more fuel efficient vehicles from today, at least half of the US car fleet would be twice as efficient within 9 years.(That's already a 25% reduction in DEMAND for gas in the US)
WIN, WIN, WIN
Forget the 'gas tax holiday' & the like. Encourage the US Government to take this money & use it to encourage the purchase of fuel efficient cars. The people that buy them would WIN by using less gas, WIN if the government offers an incentive & WIN in the longer term as gas prices stabilise from the reduced demand(which would also help those that actually NEED large vehicles like farmers & truckers)! - tama00, on 05/29/2008, -8/+19Americans whine period. 'omg terrorists!', 'omg britney spears', 'omg gta4 is going to kill babies', 'omg 911', 'omg paris hilton', 'omg ombama said something', 'omg oil prices' etc..
my advice is to just ignore them. - inactive, on 05/29/2008, -19/+30whining fat americans "boo-hoo gas is $4 a gallon. better only buy one gas guzzler." lol!
their unchecked consumption is whats causing these problems. the world is subsidizing americas way of life. - warbird, on 05/29/2008, -1/+12Yeah, good idea! Replace a whole fishing fleet with sailboats. Its probably not gonna cost much, and you can do it in 2-3 days, right?
- econoar, on 05/29/2008, -2/+13I'm in Florence for the summer and it's $10.50 a gallon out here after all the conversions. But everyone has their ***** figured out and they drive small electric cars or Vespas.
- insanebrain, on 05/29/2008, -0/+10In holland it's E1.60 / L.
- MagicBobert, on 05/29/2008, -2/+11Media Portrayal of Americans != Actual Americans
- Wandel, on 05/29/2008, -1/+10You know, you could stop buying SUV, that should help some with the mileage.
- superspud, on 05/29/2008, -0/+9That is just it though; the mass-transit in London is one of the best in the world, like it is in Paris and Berlin. Step outside the city and you cannot survive without a car. You say that fuel prices have gone up $15, its gone up the same over here too! I used to be able to fill my car up for £50 - now it costs £80, that is a difference of $60.
- Grimdotdotdot, on 05/29/2008, -0/+9What about the Digg portrayal, then?
- pardonator, on 05/29/2008, -0/+970%.
In the UK it'd cost me $115 to fill up my car compared to the US rate of $39. - SiliconRain, on 05/29/2008, -0/+8It's not just Jeremy Clarkson that is fed up with America, you know...
- inactive, on 05/29/2008, -0/+8Many kids still live in Brussels I'm sure so why aren't they being given gas money now?
- BloggerJohn, on 05/29/2008, -0/+8You think you're pretty clever dont you?
Answer me this then,
To drive my car to london and back costs me £25 ($50)
To get a return train ticket costs me £25 ($50) and I have to wait around
Which should I choose? - jamesdew, on 05/29/2008, -2/+10UK public transport is terrible
- siwu, on 05/29/2008, -3/+11I'm french. When I filled my tank last week, I had to pay 1.44 euros/liter on discount pumps. That's $8.5 a gallon. But I've seen it go as high as 1.63 euros a liter (~$9.6 a gallon) on Total pumps.
It costs me roughly 60 euros to fill my car, that is, about $95. Do I whine? Not much. Sure, it's pricey, but my car (2001 Toyota Yaris 1.3L) is doing only 32mpg (I should look into why actually), and here it's considered a _gas guzzler_. People will look at you in shock when your car does less than 30 mpg.
Most cars here (especially diesel) run at ~5.5l/100km (~45mpg) or less. For instance, the new Peugeot 407 ( http://images.businessweek.com/ss/06/04/diesels/im ... ) is advertised as having a mean mileage of 4.4l/100km (53 mpg) on diesel alone. Actually, it seems they managed to go as low as $3.8l/100km (64 mpg) on http://www.greencarcongress.com/2005/08/peugeot_di ... .
Well, I would be VERY HAPPY to pay $4 a gallon of gas. _VERY_. - warbird, on 05/29/2008, -5/+12Fishing for tuna has temporarily stopped in Japan, due to high gas prices. They can't turn a profit anymore, as prices has doubled in the last year.
- jdepp, on 05/29/2008, -1/+8Europe taxes gas at a higher rate than the US, and the gas tax isn't set consistently. The Europeans are protesting to get tax subsidies. eg. 'Public' transport in Britain gets diesel fuel at a significant discount - they can claim a ~20% rebate on fuel tax that is only available to 'public transport' - that could make sense as policy when the public transport truly was a state run operation, but Britain privatized public transport, so now one lot of companies get a subsidy to operate government approved routes, while the competition serving every other route doesn't.
Equally, the fuel price in France is 2/3 what it is in Britain, so you would have to be insane to base a lorry business in England at the moment. The best strategy is to have trucks with big enough gas tanks that you fill up only on the contenient, make deliveries to the UK and then GTFO before refueling, and people doing this are able to out-compete the native lorry drivers. Britan needs to price its fuel competitively with the rest of Europe, or our lorry drivers all need to emigrate.
The real issue is that fiddling with taxes is only going to forestall the problem by a few years. Prices are going to rise inexorably because we're reaching the point where there is more demand than ability to get oil out of the ground. The prices are adapting until the bottom x% of demand is priced out of the market. - BloggerJohn, on 05/29/2008, -1/+8Dugg! Truth.
- Dpack1, on 05/29/2008, -1/+7No, we've actually managed to freeze petrol prices here in england before by strikes held by tanker drivers refusing to deliver petrol to the stations. By only allowing petrol to emergency services and military vehicles big oil and the government were forced to not increase prices for a while. And i've no doubts that these current protests, blocades and 'go slows' will do the same thing.
How's it working out for the americans and their Digg complaints? i hear your prices have tripled in the past few years, its only gone up about 10 - 20 pence in the past 3 here which isnt far off the price off (a DECENT) inflation rate. - drmangrum, on 05/29/2008, -0/+6For the last ***** time. America is NOT Europe. Most European countries have extremely high taxes on oil. It's expensive because they make it so. If gas is $8.00 a gallon in England, but 47 cents in Kuwait, that should give you a clue. It doesn't cost THAT much to refine and transport oil. A very large portion is taxes and profit.
- arjie, on 05/29/2008, -0/+6Perhaps, but 70km is 40 miles, and I wouldn't have any trouble if I needed to do that because I just have to stay on the same train for a few more stops. Hell, some of the buses that reach that station are air-conditioned and travel over 50km to get there. If I lived near the High Court I could, in the morning at 8, travel by air-conditioned bus to college and then by rail further on (to some of the outlying colleges); the journey costing slightly more than $1. Or in the opposite direction. And the buses are usually near full, so it's comfortable. It's the trains that are crowded.
And inside the city, I can get from anywhere to anywhere else on Rs. 15 (a third of a dollar) within one change of route. Of course my city is tiny in comparison, it's a fourth the size of LA, but you're the developed world, dammit. - moleeyes, on 05/29/2008, -2/+8"I'm in Italy right now and nearly everyone lives directly in the city center." That's impossible, what city are you even talking about? In the UK people often commute from miles away and sometimes the public transport isn't reliable enough to trust.
- chops76, on 05/29/2008, -1/+7There's always Canada...all the benefits of being in Europe plus none of the drawbacks of living in the USA...
- rsvguy, on 05/29/2008, -0/+6The USA is a net oil importer. You use more oil than you dig out the ground.
What that means is that you are competing on world markets for the additional oil you need and that drives prices up (supply and demand).
The fact that the $US is falling against all the other world currencies is the problem. You have less buying power and so your relative price increases.
The countries that have appreciating currencies are less affected by the rising price of oil and in some cases it may actually falling!
You CAN blame Bush for this one as it's his economic policies that have devalued the $US. ;-) - FeargusMcDuff, on 05/29/2008, -0/+6Better still, if you taxed your petrol to a worldwide average you'd have a new taxflow to pay for new public transport, at the moment you're having some sort of vicious cycle: No public transport --> Use car, pay little tax --> no public transport...
- csrster, on 05/29/2008, -0/+6The European countries with the highest gas prices include the UK and Norway which are also major oil producers. According to at least some analysts I've read, the main factor in the current high price of crude isn't supply or demand but _speculation_. Ie the whole thing is a bubble, like dot-com stocks, and will eventually crash.
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