Date: Sat, 4 Mar 2000 10:12:13 +1030 From: Mark Newton <newton@internode.com.au> To: chat@FreeBSD.ORG Cc: "Koster, K.J." <K.J.Koster@kpn.com>, "'FreeBSD Hackers mailing list'" <freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG>, Wes Peters <wes@FreeBSD.ORG> Subject: Re: Great American Gas Out Message-ID: <20000304101212.A384@internode.com.au> In-Reply-To: <38BFEEA8.1A465CFC@softweyr.com> References: <59063B5B4D98D311BC0D0001FA7E452201313909@l04.research.kpn.com> <38BFEEA8.1A465CFC@softweyr.com>
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On Fri, Mar 03, 2000 at 09:56:08AM -0700, Wes Peters wrote: > "Koster, K.J." wrote: > > > Oh, those Americans. :-) > > Let's see: $1 per gallon in the US. $1.2 per litre in the Netherlands, > > times 4.5 (or thereabouts) is $5.4 per gallon in the Netherlands. > > Everyone in the Netherlands drives cars; everyone thinks gas is expensive. > > This means that the gas prices in the US can go up 440% and people will > > still drive cars and buy gas (and complain about gas prices, of course). > > First, this off-topic for -hackers, so I've directed replies to -chat > if you want to continue. Sage advice :-) > Second, I know people that commute distances that would cross your > country. I suspect the average American uses a lot more gas than the > average Nederlander. Bah. In Western Australia there's a sheep station called "Little Texas" which just happens to have a land area larger than the state of Texas; I live in Adelaide, so I have to go 600 km East or 3000 km West or 3000 km North to find another population centre with more than 50,000 people; the nearest interstate Capital city is 980 km away. Our cities are also a hell of a lot more widely laid-out than yours: Adelaide, with a pop. of 1.1 million, has the same surface area as New York City. So let's accept that distances in the US are pissant little commuter hops, shall we? :-) > Third, our gas prices here are held down by all sorts of weird > government intervention, bizarre market shenanigans, and a public that > doesn't understand that the price of gasoline has risen only 4x in the > same period that the price of cars has risen 10x. That's certainly > NOT a "natural occurence". Our prices are held *up* by the fact that over 50% of them constitute State and Federal taxes. > Fourth, I'm paying $1.48/gal right now, and I want the price to go > DOWN, not UP. I'm paying A$0.83c/L right now, which is roughly A$3.73/gal, which is roughly US$2.76. That means the US price of petroleum can rise by almost 100% and people still still drive the kind of distances which usually constitute international travel. - mark :-) -- Mark Newton Email: newton@internode.com.au (W) Network Engineer Email: newton@atdot.dotat.org (H) Internode Systems Pty Ltd Desk: +61-8-82232999 "Network Man" - Anagram of "Mark Newton" Mobile: +61-416-202-223 To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message
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