As does a relentless drumbeat of negativism from the media: “Doom! Doom! Doom! Things are rotten and can only get worse!”

Folks need a sense of perspective. One of my wife’s kin recently sighed, “High gas prices have just about ruined our lives.” Ruined? Because it takes an extra twenty bucks to pull your $20,000 travel trailer to the lake? Jeez, people don’t know what hard times are.

In Europe, especially the Netherlands and some other countries, fuel prices have been and still are considerably higher than in the US for decades now, yet for decades, this hasn’t affected the amount of cars sold/miles driven…

Sure it has. For those same decades, the people over there have been buying smaller cars with smaller engines and less of them per capita. You don’t see large (or barely any) pickups, nowhere near as many big cars and all of them come with much smaller or at least more fuel-efficient engines as the norm. They never got so out of whack to begin with and have a vastly better public transportation system in any case. There is no current large reduction in driving because it is harder to reduce when you’re already closer to the possible minimums. Note that what passes for the bottom of the manufacturer’s range in the US markets is about the middle in the Euro market (Golf is the smallest car VW sells here, in Germany, they have the Polo and the Fox below it, Mercedes has the C-class here, over there they have the B and A as well, Ford has the Focus here, over there they have the Fiesta, Fusion, Ka, etc.). “Farmers” over there (and around the whole rest of the world) make do (and seem to do just fine) without hulking Pickups.

Jim

In Europe, especially the Netherlands and some other countries, fuel prices have been and still are considerably higher than in the US for decades now, yet for decades, this hasn’t affected the amount of cars sold/miles driven…

People need/want to drive cars no matter what.

Maybe a case of subjective utility though, I guess you reach a certain point where incremental price raises have less of an impact…

There’s not much buzz going on either about fuel prices anymore, although it’s always slumbering right below the surface, which became especially obvious when our recently elected left wing government (and we would consider democrats right wing, so that means something) decided it was a good idea to raise diesel taxes with an additional 3 cents/liter.

Well done guys, really in touch with your citizens there…

If you simply assess 12,000 miles a year divided by 20 mpg and a $1.35 increase in the price of gas, you get $810. About $16 a week. However it’s the variance in who actually pays that cost, and the indirect expenses that are associated with oil prices, that are really resulting in the reduction in driving.