[lbo-talk] What would happen if ...

Jordan Hayes jmhayes at j-o-r-d-a-n.com
Mon Jun 9 15:49:10 PDT 2008


... you just simply raised the price of gasoline?

Someone here, a while back, wrote:


> it is necessary to make driving more costly and inconvenient
> to the drivers

So now we know: it might look a little bit like this:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/09/business/09gas.html

[...]

But the pain is not being felt uniformly. Across broad swaths

of the South, Southwest and the upper Great Plains, the

combination of low incomes, high gas prices and heavy dependence

on pickup trucks and vans is putting an even tighter squeeze

on family budgets.

Here in the Mississippi Delta, some farm workers are borrowing

money from their bosses so they can fill their tanks and get to

work. Some are switching jobs for shorter commutes.

People are giving up meat so they can buy fuel. Gasoline theft

is rising. And drivers are running out of gas more often, leaving

their cars by the side of the road until they can scrape together

gas money.

The disparity between rural America and the rest of the country

is a matter of simple home economics. Nationwide, Americans are

now spending about 4 percent of their take-home income on gasoline.

By contrast, in some counties in the Mississippi Delta, that figure

has surpassed 13 percent.

I guess it's having a good outcome: people are eating less meat.


:~/

/jordan



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