Because it's a free market economy? Answers both questions, I think.kbluejayk said:
Classic economics: scarcity is desireable because it permits high prices. The prices hurt, but they did in the seventies too, when a buck would get you into the movies. We forgot all that and started buying the biggest heaviest trucks the car companies would sell us—like Hummers, Navigators and Escalades.
Haven't heard an idea yet that will bring gas prices down: except invade the Middle East, seize the oil, raise everybody's income tax to cover it and sell the gas below cost from government pumps.
Get used to it: cars always were a luxury, we just forgot. Living in country houses is for the rich. You and I need a transit system that works, it's business and industry that need the roads to move the goods we produce and buy. And we need them alot more than we "need" to to drive little Tiffany and Kevin to school, thus driving up the price of the goods by using thfuel that moves them.
Get a MetroPass by mail, join AutoShare, take cabs and pocket the savings. Ask the Mercedes dealer when the SmartCars will be in. Check out the Prius. Ask the GM/Ford dealer why she's got nothing to compare.
Stop wasting the stuff; lotsa advice available on that. Biggest stupid waste: idling. Back when gas was 50¢ a litre, it was calculated that after idling for just 30 seconds, you'da been better off shutting down and restarting. Should be about 15 seconds now. So no more drive-thrus, don't run the car for the AC while you wait to pick up little Kevin and Tiffany, turn it off at stoplights (the law in parts of Europe).
Anyone know where I can get a digital gas guage calibrated in dollars and cents?
