I Think 50 Cents More Per Gallon Will Be the Tipping Point

When gas goes to just above $2.50 in the Heartland, small town America there will be major, major economic backlash. Some think the magic number if $3 but not for anyone outside of the "high price" living markets in this country. In fact, impact will begin at $2.25 and people will pull a plug on a great deal of their life style at $2.50. If we hit this number, I guarantee you that the people will positively hate Bush and republicans by late fall of this year and they will openly begin bitching that the oil companies own the republicans and this country. They will also tear the face off of any suggestions of more war,etc. They will become totally absorbed with the homefront and when that happens more and more of the filth the repubs are pulling on the citizens of this country (like tax cuts for the wealthy) will start finally being looked at, bitched about and challenged as they should have been in the past. Keep watching the pump, Repubs, because it's better than any poll numbers you keep feeding yourselves.....and Dems START yelling and pointing to those numbers as one might yell at a game "score board, score board"!!!!!!!!!

for high grade. Here in Chicagoland, the lowest regular price is between $2.11 and $2.23 at the budget stations. Even Sam's club was $2.08.

Last Thursday, it rose 10 cents between 2:30 pm and 3:00 pm.

That's why I said that it's when over $2.50 hits those places that aren't in the "high price" district. Hell, $3.00 isn't anything for people with wages in and around our big cities. But it is a big thing in all of those "red" areas. Remember, even in red states, it's those big areas that vote blue. All those otherr parts of their state that are the small towns and little turn in the roads are what make those states "red"----and for those people, even $2.25 means you start changing your life style.

Like walk or ride a bike. Alternative fuel funding time? I won't even mention what Gas costs here in San Diego Ca. But no one is winning with this administrations policy's. Well, maybe the big Oil companies. Ya think? :think:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=104&topic_id=3309148&mesg_id=3309148

By working with our new best friends the Iraqis to ship some more of their oil our way. (Like they have a choice.) The price of gas will (like magic!) go down, and it will be seen as a good thing we attacked Iraq and kicked Saddam out, or it never could have happened!

Bush's power to do much. The oil cartel in this country now rules and he is just a puppet that they can have "removed" if need be and I think that scares the boy.........

I always thought that if "Peak Oil" were true, and this administration knew about it, that they would want to encourage SOME kind of conservation. They wouldn't want us to just blast through the remaining oil on Earth as fast we can, turning the entire planet into a "Mad Max"-type apocalyptic wasteland in just a few years. But now I'm thinking, why wouldn't they?

it was almost undoubtedly the discussion of the confidential 2001 energy meetings in the WH.

of food.....

Things are bad and we haven't even begun to feel the pain....

Can you imagine what President Kerry would be doing right now? He'd be announcing new CAFE standards for fuel efficiency and promoting renewable energy sources....Not so with the current Oil loving administration....

Once that price gets through the economy, people in the "Heartland" will feel the pinch.

i forgot about the food/gas connection for a minute, but you are right. it will affect people in every way, not just at their own gas pump.

I already noticed in the last year that everything in my usual grocery bill is up atleast 15-30%. Imagine if this happens again. To some, myself included, this is a mere inconvenience and I might grunt about it, but to most people, especially those who are literally living paycheck to paycheck to put food on the table, this means going hungry or decreasing their nutritional content or giving up something else (when there really isn't much to cut back on anyway).

I have been feeling for a year now that a very serious and great economic depression is on its way, one that most people couldn't possibly imagine unless they have heard the stories from their Grandparents and the Great Depression. But this time instead of an FDR type President who wants to help people, we have an Administration and Neo-cons who want to dismantle anything that reaks of Gov't New Deal handouts....

Gawd help us all....I feel sick to my stomach about all this and I feel sometimes so helpless, because I've been talking about this for so long and so few seem to be listening.... :cry:

:hug: it's depressing to try and talk some sense into people at work whose main interest is in watching reality shows, shopping and dieting. maybe it will take something drastic like this to get people ANGRY!

rock bottom, they aren't going to get it or seek change/help...Unfortunately, not everyones "rockbottom" is the same and everyone has different threshholds...most people get it when hit w/ a 2x4...others, it takes a Mack Truck to hit them to "get it"...

Sadly, America needs a Mack Truck to hit them, but its going to be more like a "nuke" that will occur...they won't know what hit them....

Then they will get it...and sadly, it will be too late for most... :hug:

PS: I hate to sound so pessimistic...believe it or not, I have spent my life being an eternal optimist (and my husband even more so) and yet we are realists....things are in deeper shit than anyone can imagine and most smart people I know are in deep denial and those that realize it are doing what we have been doing - liquidating assets, buying property outside of the US as well as Gold and Euros and "downsizing" even in their lifestyles....We are about to sell our multi-million $$ home in Kentfield (zip code 94904 - you know how real estate is here) and instead "buy down" a house that is about 1500 square feet less and under a million in order to cash out our equity and get it out of the country. Irrational? Some might consider it so, but considering my husband and I both have MBA's from two top Ivy League schools and one of us got our degree in Economics, I can tell you this much - It's going to get bad.....And meanwhile the Greed that is driving for example the Real Estate market here in the Bay Area (and California) as a whole is going to crush a lot of people, especially those that are over extended or who have ARM mortgages. The wealthiest in the area I live in here in Marin, will be just fine...they will just buy up more Real Estate and they have plenty of cash reserves. But imagine people across this country who have credit card debt up the wazoo, are one paycheck away from any job security and have been using their houses as ATM machines....It's going to get ugly....

into the ground, because they couldn't afford to get them to market. This, at a time when we had 20% unemployment and tens of thousands were going hungry.

And farming is so much more expensive, now.

cost of running all the farm equipment to till and plant, to spread fertilizer and pesticides, to harvest and ship to market?

It could conceivably make it less costly to not plant to begin with. Adding it all up, can farmers turn a profit with the new fuel prices?

And now that farm subsidies were just reduced in the Bush budget, what effect will that have? :eyes:

planting some crops. Fewer crops planted = fewer fertilizers and pesticides used = increased prices for fertilizer and pesticides. Increased fuel + increased prices for fertilizer & pesticides for those who do plant + reduced production of crops = costlier farm products = higher food prices.

Could go through the roof. $5 loaf of bread? Fresh corn, $.75/ear? Apples $3.50/lb?

Well, I've been needing to lose some weight.

I guess we all will be losing weight....sadly there are those who don't need it... :cry:

How are folks in NC feeling? Don't know about you, but I grew up in a Republican family...my father, his parents etc. all life-long Republicans and many of them were farmers....I can tell you that everything I was ever taught about the Republicans is not being reflected in their "fiscal policies", "economic policies", outsourcing of jobs, growth of government and the intervention of gov't into personal issues (think Terri Schiavo)...I'm just sick to my stomach about how this administration is destroying our nation...and its the family farmers, the middle class, the laborers, the average joes and jills and families trying to make ends meet that are going to be hurt.....

I don't want my tax cuts! My country is more important!

"I don't want my tax cuts! My country is more important!"

$2.28 a gallon. The woman behind the counter thanked me for not yelling at her about the price. I suggested she start asking the screamers who they voted for in November.

and I have to say I had always thought 2.00 would be the breaking point... but everyone is still driving around the SUVs etc, going strong.

Walmart was still packed yesterday with the dirty sweat pants wearing trolls who hadn't showered since Friday. Looked like business as usual to me.

We are a lake town and I expect to see everyone getting out of dodge on the weekends here in a couple of months, towing that ski boat, dropping 500 in the tank for a weekend.

Maybe 3 bucks would do it I have no idea, its amazing.

General Motors can sure feel the difference.

considered for alternative uses: housing for the homeless, rolling greenhouses, immobile driveway ornaments to show how rich the owner wants to be but isn't.

We'll have to get above four bucks a gallon for your tipping point. Two bucks and change is really nothing, although it will cut into the suburbanite's entertainment and vacation budgets.

What I do expect to see is a lot of property sales in distant suburbs, as people start to realize that 80 mile commute to and from work is not really worth it so that the kiddies can have a bigger swing set in the back yard. I also expect to see another rise in urban gentrification, even extending to neighborhoods like mine (unofficially known as the War Zone).

Right now, they're raising the water temperature gradually enough that the frog doesn't realize he's about to get boiled. If they'd been stupid a year ago, and done a dollar hike in prices overnight, then you would be correct.

Two years ago when I bought a used mini-van, I really wanted to look at SUV's first. They were really, really hard to find. In fact, the lot I bought the van from didn't have a single one in stock. I drove by the same lot this weekend and I didn't see a single car. Just an imposing phalanx of SUV's and pick-ups.

Jay

but I am afraid that's the old way of thinking about American politics. There has been a paradigm shift, I think, and now everything is tied to the End Times or some such shit. I tell you, I have never seen the level of cognitive dissonance as is alive in the country today. There is willful ignorance, vicious indifference, mad yearning for destruction, and an abject hopelessness out there that is genuinely disheartening. You go back into the bowels of this country and talk to the people who support Bush - they make no sense, at all; they don't even seem to pretend to. I don't know, maybe I am just fed up with the citizenry of this failing state, but I can't see anything short of civil war making any difference, at all. Maybe it's just a bad Monday...

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cigarettes anymore or have to cut down THEN you will hear them scream. As people 'reorganize' it means that oil barrons will do okay, of course. But say goodbye to how many businesses and industries that are not essential and people can "cut down on" or eliminate. And that means bye, bye to all the people working in those industries which just ads to the unemployment problem, and thus the collection of taxes to make wars go round and on and on. Few people have another $900 to throw without adjusting some place else. You better hope your employment or the employment of whomever you live off of isn't one of those "adjusted" areas.

we've already seen 2.49 a gallon :-(. i think 3.00 will be the tipping point myself.

that $3.25/gallon is when people start changing their driving and buying habits. Coincidentally, it is what gas would cost if it had increased in price with inflation over the last thirty years, according to this report.

Remember the old apocryphal story about how you can drop a frog into water, and as long as you raise the temperature slowly, the poor critter won't even realize it's being cooked.

People yell when the price of gas goes up quickly. When it happens slowly, nobody notices.

For what it's worth, gas is already well over $2.50/gal in many parts of California. Of course, we also have higher gas taxes than most.

The public in general has already decided to give Bush a pass on virtually everything. They won't hold high gasoline prices against the Repugs, they'll just blame all politicians. The hard core right (about 40% of the population) will never blame the Repugs for anything. Another 10 to 15 percent will buy into the Repug counterattack that the Dems blocked all their "great" energy proposals that would have prevented this.

The only gain for the Democrats is that used correctly, they could keep the Repugs on the defensive for the rest of the Busholini regime.

Man I wish we could do to Chimpy what the idiot Repukes managed to do to Gray Davis.

point will be decided by the rate of price increase. If gas jumps to $2.50 on average *tomorrow*, people would complain big time. However, they might accept gradual increases in gas price as inevitable and modify their spending pattern and still support the Repubs. Even if they really feel the pain, you may be quite sure they'll blame the 'Raghead Arabs', Clinton, OPEC, China and not Bush & his oil buddies.

Doesn't that solve all our oil supply problems? Prices should begin to drop immediately, right?

1929 here we come!!!