OT: Gas

I went into the 7-11 gas station the other day and asked for five dollars worth of gas.

The clerk farted and gave me a receipt.

I paid $2.78/gallon in New Hampshire Monday.

To avoid paying $3.75/gallon at the car rental return.

Same thing in COS a few weeks ago, except it was $3.10 instead of $4.25 :-(

...Jim Thompson

It was a *joke*, guys!

Should I have put _OT:Gas (joke)_ in the subject field?

John

Oh, a joke.

Meanwhile, the conversation continues...

dollars

Just worked out the current Oz equiv pump price out of interest:

Au$1.32 /litre x 3.875 = Au$5.15 /gall ~ US$3.87 /gall.

Not sure how our standard of living/wages compare.

Yes. You have to check on government charges I suspect. Things like GST and Federal and State taxes which we have.

But one day soon even these prices will look cheap.

Cheers.

Rob skrev:

the price in Denmark at the moment is a little over 10DKK/litre that's over 6USD/gallon ....

-Lasse

Not for those of us who are old enough for Medicare ;-)

...Jim Thompson

• I was impressed with the very comfortable live styles I saw during my two-week visit to Switzerland this summer. Unlike us, they maintain what would appear to be a higher standard of living with easier working conditions, despite balancing their budgets, taking excellent care of their health, taking good care of their old, and saving for the future.

Manufacturing exporting is important to their economy, and they worry a lot about sales competition with China. But they remind themselves they used to worry about competing with the US, and Japan, but they managed to come out OK, and that China is just the next challenge, and the next big market. E.g., one fellow I visited has been making multiple trips to China to help install huge apple-juice processing plants they've been selling them; he writes PLC control code and codes the human interface displays.

My wife's uncle's small town, where we stayed, has a large plant making underground high-voltage power-transmission cable. When my wife's uncle worked there before retiring, he helped develop this product to expand away from the truck tires they made and provide more high-paying jobs for the townpeople. It appears this is the kind of thing you find everywhere you go in Switzerland.

BTW, Switzerland spends plenty on defense, every male has to serve (most keep their weapons at home after they muster out), but they use it to stick to their own defense, which they take seriously.

I filled up Friday at $2.90. With Katrina gasoline went from $2.52 to $3.30 (same station) in three days. It was slowly winding its way back down but Rita stopped the fall, at least temporarily.

Was the difference taxes? Taxes are fixed so will look smaller as the total doubles.

They can keep their taxes too.

No thanks. You can keep that too.

Hello Jim,

It must have really leveled out for now, especially back east. Yesterday I filled up the rental car at a station in NY, just a few miles east of JFK airport. $2.94. Then on the way back home after the flight I filled up my car at a Costco (northern CA). $2.84. Other stations around here are a few cents higher than that.

There used to be a huge difference between the two coasts lately but somehow it has vanished.

It all sounds expensive to us but those of us who have been in Europe will painfully remember plunking down over $5 a gallon.

Regards, Joerg

Joke? - like when you are driving along in the car with the windows up and ask your passengers "can you smell petrol?" :-)

I believe that US health insurance costs now make European taxes look quite attractive.

Graham

I'm sure you were. In case you hadn't noticed, the US is *not* Switzerland, nor does it ever have any more chance of being Switzerland than I have of being Billy Gates (he lives rather well too, or so I'm told). Come on Win, you can do a better.

Come on Keith, show a bit of ambition. The U.S. could catch up with Switzerland within a generation if you improved your education system to their level - though you'd also need to improve your social security system to the point where the children of the unemployed and the very low-paid ended up well-enough fed to take full advantage of the improved education system.

It would help if you also improved your electoral system to the point where you didn't need to be a millionaire (or supported by a millionaire) to get elected - it probably wouldn't make that much difference to your political climate, granting the right wing bias of your media, but it would go some way to encouraging the poor to see self-improvement (by education amongst other possibilities) as a reasonable ambition.

None of that would cost that much - giving up on the ill-advised military adventures would more than cover the bill.

What would be expensive would be cost of undoing a century of right-wing propaganda by re-educating the non-poor part of the population to the point where they could see this as an investment in a more productive work force, rather than as some bleeding hearted socialist boon-doggle. I look forward to seeing you exhibit the effecitveness of the anti-socialist brain-washing.

-------------- Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

For those of us who aren't old enough to know about it, and who are still paying the big bucks for health insurance (mine is over $15k/year), could you explain how that works? I don't see how I'll be able to keep paying so much after I retire.