Quote:
Originally Posted by Steppenwolf1980
Well, I think that you don't have to only look at the oil companies alone. There is a huge difference in European and American way of thinking. See, you guys are used to see a car as a naturally and cheap part of your everyday life. A new car costs shit in the United States, so does the petrol (or at least it used to cost shit until a couple of months). The reason for that is that your government won't earn much money with sold cars and gas, but on the other hand they don't need more money, because they don't have to spend it for their citizens like here (e.g. you have to health insure yourself, which is something completely unimaginable over here. When I get hurt, I go to the hospital or the doctor and get cured, without ever seeing a bill for that).
What I am trying to say is that we here also see the car as a necessary part of everyday life, but we never felt it to be cheap. As BeeHappy already told, for the price that you pay for a brandnew LT2 Camaro in the U.S., you'll get here only a tiny grannycar or a small Korean vehicle... Also, there are heavy road taxes here (I pay about 1600 dollars a year for the Camaro), insurance (about 2000 dollars a year full comprehensive cover) and then the gas price. Driving a car isn't cheap anymore and this isn't going to change.
Maybe you guys in the United States are now at the borderline to realize that, too. I understand that it is very hard to accept such drastic changes that affect your prosperity, but since oil is going to go out of stock in a couple of decades, the increasing prices are just a normal result of capitalism. I guess the big problem in the U.S. is not only the change of mind at the population, but also having an alternative to using your car. The public transport's really kind of retarded in most of the U.S. cities, most people don't have a choice but using their own cars to get to work or elsewhere. That whole we-have-no-money-but-gas-is-getting-more-expensive-thing is for sure nothing to have solved within a year or two, right?
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You're right, everything is expensive. If we were to improve public transportation to where it needs to be for people to use their cars less, the govt would have to subsidize it for years maybe even decades before enough people used it for the system to actually be self-sustaining (if ever). That's not even including the initial cost to build better train systems and road systems. It may never even work in the US like it does in Europe, ever heard of the suburban sprawl? Ever notice how much landmass we have per person compared to Europe? That's a lot of long train tracks and roads to be built/improved. Cheap cars made it too easy to travel long distances, so people can now live 50 miles (83km) from work. But to find a public transportation route to get to your job 50 miles away can be a pretty daunting task.
Our country has spent a lot of money on other things such as defense, which I agree we need, but you can't have everything. If you want everything, you're going to have to pay for everything literally. Believe me, with our culture of spending before you have it and racking up debt, more taxes would bankrupt millions of people because they have so much debt. It's sad but true. Let's not even touch the healthcare issue as social security and medicare/medicaid is the second largest source of govt spending behind defense already, just imagine what our taxes would be like if the govt paid for healthcare, public transportation, education reform, AND our ridiculous national debt.
I love our country, but we're in a sticky situation. The first priority should be to reduce the spending deficit either by actually cutting spending where we can or actually raising taxes. But as I mentioned, millions of people can't afford a tax increase. I have little mercy for the ultra rich though, you can tax them
We need a major culture change, I agree, but not regarding our cars, regarding our spending before we have it. But that's just me.