Gas for $3.99 a gallon

[MoeHayNow]

Yes, I know there are other "gas price" threads.
But seeing the sign (at a Sunoco in Michigan) made me wonder "How long will people keep sucking it up?"
Fortunately, for the time being, my wife and I are gainfully employed and can pay the high dollar for gas.
But I've read articles where people have to decide whether to buy gas or food.
How long before there is rioting in the streets?
When gas is $4.00, $4.25, $4.50, you see where I'm going here. What's the tipping point?

[TheDebbieDee]

1. There should be no rioting in the streets...........

The rioting should take place in the lobby of the Executive office buildings in which these criminals are housed.

[villager]

2. Michael Ventura on "$4.00 a gallon"

And he wrote this three years ago!:


Letters at 3AM
$4 a gallon
BY MICHAEL VENTURA


America is over. America is like Wile E. Coyote after he's run out a few paces past the edge of the cliff – he'll take a few more steps in midair before he looks down. Then, when he sees that there's nothing under him, he'll fall. Many Americans suspect that they're running on thin air, but they haven't looked down yet. When they do ...

Former Federal Reserve Board Chairman Paul Volcker, a pillar of the Establishment with access to economic information beyond our reach, wrote recently: "Circumstances seem to me as dangerous and intractable as any I can remember. ... What really concerns me is that there seems to be so little willingness or capacity to do anything about it" (quoted in The Economist, April 16, p.12). Volcker chooses words carefully: "dangerous and intractable," "willingness or capacity." He's saying: The situation is probably beyond our powers to remedy.

Gas prices can only go up. Oil production is at or near peak capacity. The U.S. must compete for oil with China, the fastest-growing colossus in history. But the U.S. also must borrow $2 billion a day to remain solvent, nearly half of that from China and her neighbors, while they supply most of our manufacturing ("Benson's Economic and Market Trends," quoted in Asia Times Online) – so we have no cards to play with China, even militarily. (You can't war with the bankers who finance your army and the factories that supply your stores.) China now determines oil demand, and the U.S. has no long-term way to influence prices. That means $4 a gallon by next spring, and rising – $5, then $6, probably $10 by 2010 or thereabouts. Their economy can afford it; ours can't. We may hobble along with more or less the same way of life for the next dollar or so of hikes, but at around $4 America changes. Drastically.

The "exburbs" and the rural poor will feel it first and hardest. Exburbians moved to the farthest reaches of suburbia for cheap real estate, willing to drive at least an hour each way to work. Many live marginally now. What happens when their commute becomes prohibitively expensive, just as interest rates and inflation rise, while their property values plummet? Urban real estate will go up, so they won't be able to live near their jobs – and there's nowhere else to go. In addition, thanks to Congress' recent shameless activity, bankruptcy is no longer an option for many. What happens to these people? Exburb refugees. A modern Dust Bowl.

<snip>

http://www.austinchronicle.com/gyrobase/Issue/column?oid=oid%3A268467

[phantom power]

3. I don't think there is any one tipping point.

Some people are already past the tipping point. They're selling their cars, taking public transit, when they can. Those who can't do either are, I assume, in big trouble.

Other people who either make more money or live close to work won't hit the tipping point for a while yet.

[elocs]

4. Let's be real here: in the U.S. we still have some of the cheapest gas & food prices in the world.

Low income people will be hurt, but they always are (I must say I am a low income person who has not been hurt). For most of the rest it is a choice of where the money is spent--can't have all of the goodies, the cars, the electronics, the eating out all the time, the "stuff" that gets put on plastic. It comes down to you have to spend your money on what is needed to live first. We have been very spoiled here. Most of the rest of the world has done this forever so I don't think you will see them shedding a lot of crocodile tears for us.

[barb162]

5. It's about $8.00 in Europe and I don't see them rioting.

Maybe people will start moving closer to where they work.

[Warpy]

7. They don't actually need cars in Europe

because there is adequate mass transit.

Many people here in the US have no alternative to driving a car unless it's driving a two wheeled motor vehicle. Distances to work are often too far to bicycle.

[Warpy]

6. The tipping point has already happened

which is why people are registering to vote in record numbers and most of them are registering as Democrats or independents while the GOP is losing registered voters.

I don't know when the first national strike will happen, but I can feel it coming. I can imagine it being led by the people hurt the worst by these prices, the truckers.

People are on a buying strike now, whether through necessity or just disgust.

[jaxx]

8. And then there is keeping the lawn mowed.

Nearly 4 bucks a gallon and the grass keeps growing.