[Ledgem]

This thread moves so quickly...

Originally Posted by kyp275

Gonna have to disagree with you on this one. While the rich and those that are doing well can certainly afford it, I doubt the majority of people can simply go out and just buy new cars whenever they want, I certainly can't. Doubling the gas bill for those who are already struggling would be devastating, you're gonna have people who would have to choose between food or gas, and some who would end up spending the majority of their take home pay on gas alone. Also, which car gives 45+ MPG in the city again?

Originally Posted by GDB

Yes, because the people who cannot afford to pay an extra $100-$300 a month in gas expense can oh so easily go out and buy a brand new, fuel efficient car! And clearly, if they cannot afford double gas prices, netting that cost against better mileage means they don't mind paying the cost for buying that new car, because somehow it all breaks even!

Responding to both posts - I don't see why there's this immediate jump to the idea that people need to buy a brand new, high-end hybrid vehicle. Hybrids aren't new; from what I've seen, used hybrids are somewhat scarce due to high demand, but they're out there. Given some of the crazy things that people take out loans for, an auto loan to go for a more fuel-efficiency vehicle is also an option.

People need to calculate it out for themselves. If the cost of a hybrid comes out to a net loss compared with the older, less efficient vehicle, then obviously it makes no financial sense. In that case, perhaps it doesn't need to be a hybrid; perhaps they could simply trade in their truck that has a perpetually empty flatbed for something like a Smartcar.

What I'm getting at is being realistic. Some people want to drive huge, fuel-inefficient vehicles, while others want to drive overpowered and inefficient sports cars. I'm not judging their preference in vehicles, but we need to be realistic about the cost of gas and our finances. If gas prices rise and you don't want to give up your truck, you are going to be paying more. You can whine to the government to subsidize and drill more all you like, but eventually you will have to deal with reality: drive less, alter your driving style, and/or change your vehicle. If there are no trucks that get the mileage you need to be able to afford shuttling yourself around and you really don't need the capabilities of a truck, then it's time to get real: you're not going to be driving a truck.

We talked a lot about entitlement this past election, and it seems like there's a lot of it when it comes to Americans and cars. People seem to think that they should be able to drive what every they want, and to hell with the mileage: gas prices are the government's fault (or the fault of the greedy oil companies, but that's a rarer sentiment).

Originally Posted by kyp275

Carpool is only feasible in the city provided you know someone well enough that lives close by and your work/whatever schedule allows you to carpool. In the suburb? forget it. Relocation is also not an option for everyone, nor are biking practical in all areas (certainly not in places that snows). Your ideas would probably work best in localized scenarios where the needs matches up favorably, but not as a broad policy for the whole country.

Carpooling is feasible anywhere. The internet makes it even more feasible, as websites designed for carpooling could allow you to see other peoples' routes and acquire rides that way. It's no longer limited to word of mouth, or putting up flyers on telephone poles.

I can think of two major obstacles getting in the way of making carpooling more popular. The first big one is trust: it's one thing to carpool with friends, family, or co-workers, but it's another to sign up for a carpooling service and then ride with total strangers (both accepting them into your vehicle or getting into theirs). The second is scheduling and control of schedule: nobody wants to spend even one minute waiting on someone else to get out of their house, or getting out from work. Nobody wants to risk being made late because their ride was late, or because someone on the route was late. There are plenty of other reasons, I'm sure, but here's the rub: if gas prices get high enough, people will feel that the benefits outweigh the trade-offs.

As to riding a bicycle in the snow, I have a contact in Canada who does it. I thought he was probably one of the only nuts in the world to do it, but then I saw a few people doing it here in Pittsburgh. I doubt it's pleasant, but it's clearly possible. If you can't afford the gas for your vehicle, then you have no choice.

Just to clarify, none of these ideas are meant to be policy for the entire country. Regions are varied, as are people's needs. The point is that there are an awful lot of people driving inefficient vehicles with capabilities that they absolutely do not need; there are a lot of people who are driving when they could be biking; there are a lot of people driving solo when they could carpool with little inconvenience. People make excuses to resist taking up any of these ideas. Plenty of those excuses are valid, and those suggestions truly can't work for the individual. Yet there are plenty who make excuses to resist change, but who really could take up the suggestion and would benefit from it.

Originally Posted by GDB

I drive 20 miles each way to work. I have co-workers who drive 2-3 times that far each way. No way in hell bicycling is the answer.

20 miles sounds like a lot, but try reading stories about people who commute by bicycle. People who commute long distances, people who have major hills on their commute, people who are out of shape - the stories of their overcoming the obstacles are pretty inspiring. It really opened my eyes to what's possible. I can't commute by bicycle (I'm doing 30-40 miles each way and have some massively huge hills along my path, not to mention that it's almost all highway), and perhaps it's still not something that you could do. Regardless, it made me realize that you don't need to be within a five-mile radius of your destination or live on flat land for a bicycle to be feasible.

Originally Posted by Triple_R

You know guys, Europe isn't perfect.

Europe has plenty of its own problems. Surely that's clear with what we've seen in Greece and Iceland, amongst other nations.

Frankly, if your argument is simply "Let's do what those other guys are doing. Who cares if some of them have just about bankrupted themselves, we should follow them anyway" that's not a terribly compelling argument.

What first-world country isn't in debt at this very moment? I've briefly searched online and had trouble finding a list that wasn't about who was most in debt.

Originally Posted by Triple_R

If you want to convince people of a particular policy idea, then argue for the merits of the policy itself. You don't need to point to other countries to prop it up. A good idea is a good idea no matter where it originated from.

It's useful to compare with other countries, though. Just as we can't know exactly how a person's body will respond to a certain medication, we have an idea of what will happen based on how others responded. Each country is a petri dish of sorts, a grand experiment in policies and people. What happens in one might not play out exactly the same in another, but we have an idea of what to expect.

On the topic of health, the arguments are quite easy to make. According to 2010 data, the USA spends approximately double what many European nations spend per person in healthcare dollars. As a percentage of our GDP healthcare takes up more for the USA than for other countries by far, which is even more impressive when you consider how much larger our GDP is than many of these countries. And what do we get for it? Bearing in mind that a person's birth and their death are the most expensive parts of their life in terms of healthcare, our infant mortality rate puts us amongst those of third-world countries, and our average life expectancy of 75 years for men and 80 for women (according to 2010 data) is approximately four years shorter than many of our European and developed Asian peers.

I am not going to over-simplify and say that adopting a European model would fix our numbers, drive down costs and raise the average life expectancy immediately. There are reasons for these numbers that go beyond the setup of our healthcare system. However I can see many reasons why it would help, and without going into the specifics of those reasons, I'd put it this way: if we're all going into debt (and we all most certainly are), I'd rather live longer and have to pay less. Who wouldn't?