At 6/26/08 04:15 PM, Earfetish wrote:
At 6/25/08 10:05 PM, cellardoor6 wrote:
US: 5.701
UK: 3.967
More than two thirds of what you use.
That's vehicle miles traveled per capita, not fuel used per capita.
You guys should use public transport more often.
Yes, and you people should abolish all automobiles and ride solely on a highly integrated, futuristic network of Maglev rails.
Easier said than done.
Is it rare for a city in the US to have a good public transport infrastructure?
It depends, but I'd say that the typical US city has a way, way less developed public transit system than a British city. I've observed it. It's not simply because we have lesser taxes to pay for it. It's because more Americans drive and see public transportation as crap, therefore there is less incentive to invest in public transit in the first place, or create taxes for it.
I've only used public transit a few times in Seattle, it's actually not that bad. But there is absolutely no way I could live my life depending on it.
Also, you can't just focus on cities. You have to consider the suburban sprawls in the US... where public transportation is inefficient. Have fun taking 10 buses, and waiting in between each one, taking hours and hours, just to get somewhere that would normally take an hour by car... you know, where you can actually go from point A to point B.
You guys should buy more efficient cars. There's no excuse.
Except there is. Smaller cars are less safe and have less utilitarian capabilities. They aren't one size fits all vehicles like large sedans, vans, SUVs, and pickups are in the US. All they are good for basically is carrying a few passengers and a little bit of cargo. If you're someone who NEEDS to carry large amounts of people and large amounts of cargo, it's simply not an option. A larger car is a necessity because it meets their needs, albeit more expensively.
"Lots of shopping to do," bollocks, you could cope just as well as a similarly-burdened European in an efficient car.
You guys really have no clue what you're talking about do you?
You're taking this very narrow British view of your own society and applying it to the entire US as if your way is absolute status quo.
Does everyone in the US live in the middle of nowhere, or do all the schools house about 60,000 pupils?
No, but the typical layout of an American city/suburban area is over a much larger area than in the UK.
If I use my suburban childhood as an example, my highschool was about 5 miles away from my house, my after school job was about the same distance in the opposite direction of my house. If I wanted to go to a decent mall, I'd have to go about 8 miles. And since it's the suburbs, my friends lived over a large area around as well, requiring longer drives for that as well.
In fact, now that I think about it, there wasn't even a way to walk from my house to my school, I'd have to illegally cross roads to do that, or take an interurban trail that would have been a huge detour.
I live in a built up conurbation and my high school was about 3 or 4 miles from my house, and I would have no problem with the short walk, although admittedly I caught a bus every day, whenever I'm in that area now I definitely walk home and my school was hardly any distance. And there were at least 8 primary schools within 5 miles and at least 5 high schools. Any built up conurbation needs that many schools.
And you're doing what but validate my point that American infrastructure is more spread out than yours?
I live in the suburbs. Are you saying you don't have suburban schools in the US?
Can you be anymore incapable of understanding a society that is different than yours?
What about all those movies where a suburban teacher moves to an innet city school? How is it even possible, unless you're talking bollocks, or unless the US is the most badly-planned place ever, or every house is by itself with acres of land - it completely does not compute.
It doesn't compute because you're incapable of understanding that there is a difference here.
The widespread use of cars, powered by cheap fuel, has both caused and facilitated living on an area where things are spread out over larger distances. It's not badly-planned if you consider that driving in the US is a more casual, and cheaper thing to do than in the UK, and that a much lower proportion of the country depends on public transportation in the US than in the UK.
That's why low fuel prices are more crucial in the US than in the UK.
Yeah man, we drive two-thirds the amount you do
That's vehicle miles traveled, not gallons/liters consumed per capita.
We're getting screwed somewhere, maybe by you guys, and maybe everyone else is too. You guys are being treated by a government that is pretty ace at controlling oil and you're allowed to bathe in the stuff.
So here comes your real argument.
You're angry at the US. You think the US controls oil prices. So is it our fault that your gas is high, or are you bitter that our gas is cheaper? Or both?
You just need someone to point the finger at apparently, hence the sheer lack of logic in your argument. You're just bitter, and the US is a convenient scapegoat. That's why you refuse to acknowledge the greater dependence on cheap fuel in the US, you refuse to acknowledge the different levels of necessity in consumption of gas.
I bet you WANT Americans to pay the same amount that you do. Just so you can feel better, regardless of what the actual relative negative impact on our respective countries would be.
I'm telling you the economic reasons for gas being cheaper in the US.
Nothing to do with gas being almost entirely controlled by the US and the dollar?
LOL. That's not why gas is cheaper in the US. The US is a large producer of oil and gas. Much of the costs that get spent in your country to import, refine and distribute oil/gas don't exist in the US to the same degree as a proportion of consumption. Our taxes are also much lower throughout that process, including the taxes imposed on each delivered gallon of gas. That is why gas is cheaper in the US. The fact that cheap gas is so important to Americans is the reason our government continues to keep taxes low in the whole oil/gas business, to prevent it from translating into high costs at the pump. Your government doesn't do that.
But oil and gas prices being higher in general in the world is partly due to the value of the dollar, but the US can't engineer the price of oil/gas in the world like you're suggesting. It doesn't work that way. It seems like you're suggesting that we WANT oil and gas prices to be high... You apparently believe that the US has the desire and power to manipulate oil prices to be higher at our whim.
But you guys complaining about how expensive it is to wait by yourself with your 7-door jeep in traffic every day on your journey to work when you could quite easily remedy the situation and realise how cheap your petrol actually is.
You keep complaining about your gas prices, but you could easily remedy the situation and realize that you don't use gas it as much, or need gas it as much as us; therefore spending more on something you consume to a significantly smaller degree makes your higher price way, way less painful especially considering your ueber-awesome short commutes and tendency to ride buses and trains you've mentioned.
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/ene_oi l_con-energy-oil-consumption
Considering we travel two-thirds the distance of you guys and have a fifth as many people, you guysd are still like woah
Doesn't that contradict your argument here? You're trying to argue that we don't need cheap fuel as much as you, but then you link to a list that shows that the US consumes (thus, depends on) oil at a vastly higher rate.
The resentment is strong in the UK in this aspect I guess.
"Those damn AmeriCUNTS control the oil and that's why it's expensive here and dirt cheap over there! My Mum burned a whole £10 worth of petrol in her Panda last week, what an atrocity, it's all AMERICA'S FAULT URGH!!!"