Believe me - people won't stop paying until there's a cheap, easily accessible alternative.

Up here in Canada it's up to $130/litre.

The UK's looking at around $7/gallon and has pretty much given up complaining.

What we need is a flatulence powered car. There'd be no shortage of fuel at my house.

So Americans will cut back on usage, OPEC will cut the supply by an equal or higher ratio, so prices will remain high, or go even higher.

Supply/Demand pricing doesn't work nearly as well when you have someone artificially limiting supply to boost profits.

Did Adam Smith have a glass crater theory of economics, or was that Robert Oppenheimer?

I've always thought that gas prices were a testament to human adaptability. Not that we can do anything about the prices, but it's amazing how fast a high price seems cheap when it's been higher. I remember how horrible it was when gas broke the $1 a gallon mark, then the $2, then the $3. But now that it's up around $3.60 or so, $3 seems cheap, and god forbid it drop below that! I about crap my pants at $2.80... Maybe it's just me, but I've always thought it was strange. $3.60 is freckin expensive now, but when it goes up again, $3.60 will be the good old days... Dammit /end rant


Edited to add: Oh, and it's $3.68 around here last I've seen. We have the highest state tax on gas in our region. Sometimes it's worth driving to VA (about 10-15 miles for me) for the .20 gallon drop, especially if you have a big tank).

If people think it's expensive now, just wait...

As a person from England I can quite rightly say that it costs me £50 - a litre is about £1.10. To fill up my car which is only a 1.2l engine car which holds about 45 litres in it, i guess. I've no idea how much that equates to in gallons - so I think for the moment, you americans have got it lucky that it's this cost. We've been told that it could rise to £1.50 but unfortunately that's life.

Or they can go with vegetable oil

That doesn't mean we can't b***h about it.

While the price is basically the issue, it is even more an issue because it is on a rather sudden rise. As you can see, in the year 2000, gas prices were "surging" at $1.54/gal, (at that time it was the highest it had been since 1981 when the "record high" was $1.38, this is a rise of 16 cents over the course of 19 years. That's less than a cent a year. It's $3.55 a gallon in NE Ohio right now, and we usually have some of the lower prices in the states. That's a rise of $2.01 in eight years, 25 cents a year (25 times faster a rise than previously).

So did we have it lucky for a while? Yeah. Do we still have it lucky compared to what you're paying? Maybe, that would depend an analysis of our economies that I'm not quite bored enough to perform. Either way, it's a huge sudden increase.