Poll: Many Fear Financial Hit of Gas Prices (64 percent)

[sabra]

http://www.normantranscript.com/feeds/apcontent/apstories/apstorysection/D8BUCN500.xml.txt/resources_apstoryview

Poll: Many Fear Financial Hit of Gas Prices

The Associated Press

With gas prices soaring, almost two-thirds of those surveyed for an AP-AOL poll expect fuel costs will cause them financial hardship in coming months. That was sharply higher than in April, when about half felt that way.

...

The average price of a gallon of regular gasoline was more than $2.40 per gallon at week's end, compared with $1.86 a year ago and about $2.21 in April, according to the auto club AAA.

The poll conducted for The Associated Press and America Online News found that 64 percent say gas prices will cause money problems for them in the next six months, while 35 percent did not think so. In April, 51 percent expressed concerns about the cost of gas.

Those most likely to be worried about the financial impact are people with low incomes, the unemployed and minorities.

[unrepuke]

1. $2.999 in L.A. yesterday reg/unleaded. See? not $3/gal at all...

I see a lot of Chevy Suburbans for sale at store parking lots these days.

Cheap.

[Barkley]

29. Regular is $2.55 in Cincinnati - nt

[Jeff In Milwaukee]

39. It was $2.03 in late July

I was in Cincinnati and noted the price, which jumped $0.20 nearly overnight.

[HockeyMom]

32. It jumped 10 cents in one day to $2.65

I was driving home from work and passed a lot of stations. MAJORITY of them jumped it, but there were still a few HONEST ones that kept the same prices as yesterday.

They get their shipments on Saturdays, so what they are selling is the cheaper priced gas from last week. Hell, it is JUST ONE DAY and yet most of them couldn't wait to raise it until tomorrow.

TEN CENTS????

[katty]

49. $3.37 in WLA today

[AValdoux]

2. If one more person tells me...

... adjusted for inflation its not a record price.

... its higher in Europe.

... think how much a galllon of milk goes for.

Where to begin? I don't live in Europe & we don't have mass transit here. I can't run my car on milk & I have to get to work. Will the 'magic inflation fairy' adjust my wallet after I pay over $60 to fill up. My salary hasn't doubled in the last 5 years like the price of gas.


AValdoux

[etherealtruth]

3. Tax relief for middle and low wage earners would make sense ...

... but wait, the "energy bill" gives tax breaks to the corporations producing energy ... despite the fact that they have had record profits ...

I don't even pretend to understand (even basic) economics, but I can NOT imagine fuel prices ever going down again ... I can't imagine the Chimp and his evil cabal doing anything to provide relief to middle or lower wage earners ...

This just falls in line with the effort to destroy the middle class :evilfrown:

[alarimer]

8. They should pay a windfall tax

Fat chance of that though.

[rfranklin]

4. Look at the bright side...

ExxonMobil has record profits!

http://aolsvc.news.aol.com/business/article.adp?id=20050728141309990005

"Exxon Mobil-operated projects that are key to the future volume growth continue to be on budget and on or ahead of schedule," said Exxon Mobil chairman and chief executive Lee R. Raymond.

The strong second quarter enabled Exxon Mobil to produce a record $15.5 billion in net income, or $2.42 per share, for the first six months. That 38 percent boost is up $4.2 billion, or $1.71 a share, from the first six months of 2004.

Not only has it surpassed last year's two-quarter mark. Exxon is just $1.5 billion off its three-quarter performance from last year. If Exxon continues at this pace, it could record more than $30 billion in net income; last year it netted $25.3 billion.

Revenue for the first half reached $170 billion, which is up from $138 billion after six months last year.

"They made a lot of money last year, but now they are printing it," Gheit said

[alarimer]

7. I get sick of that too

Along with all of those celebrating the high gas prices. Apparently they live insome la-la land where their salary keeps up with the cost of things. While hopefully, automakers will start making and selling more fule efficient vehicles, it will take a LONG time before that will even help. Meanwhile, prices go up (but salries don't) and people stop buying stuff and the layoffs begin (or rather continue but get worse). My worst fear is that this will cause a depression. If it does, I will be out of a job too. People stop buying fishing licenses because they can't afford to go fishing anymore, the state stops funding my agency and bingo, laid off. I suppose that is a worst-case scenario.

[trogdor]

9. Christmas will SUCK.

I think everybody's getting fleece pullovers this year.

[alarimer]

21. I wonder what airfares will be like by then?

I'd better start saving.

[jpak]

38. They're effing outrageous now

I just booked my Christmas flight - up $150 over last year.

My lump of coal came early this year....

[pitohui]

40. too early to book a christmas flight

you never get the best price booking this far in advance, try 6-8 wks in advance next time unless you see a real bargain price

there are already some hints of fare sales, there will be more, airlines are desperate

[jpak]

45. Had no choice

I will be at sea (with no internet access and limited coms) from early October to mid-December.

The Christmas fares were not that different from Labor Day fares - I checked. And all the (not-so)cheap Christmas fares were for overnight layovers (ugh).

If shit really hits the fan with crude prices between now and Christmas, what I paid might seem like a bargain...

[pitohui]

46. that's just bad luck then

it's actually prob. too late to get a good labor day fare, that's not a good comparison

there is a seasonal rise & fall of airfares, buying in august is never ideal, buying too close to departure date or too far away from departure also means you pay more

i don't know what you paid but it's unlikely to be a bargain this far out, airlines are struggling to survive, in august they try to cash in on the last of the summer vacationers, yet this august there have already been some desperation sales on delta & united

in fall it will get even more competitive

regardless of the cost of fuel, airlines must get butts in seats, & consumers have been getting some unbelievable bargains, i should know, i've gotten quite a few of them

we all do the best we can

sometimes personal circumstance makes bargain shopping impossible

but the airlines are not gonna be in position to hike prices by december, no way, no how

[zanne]

16. Good point, AValdoux

I take it you've been watching CNN? Salaries have not been adjusted for inflation, either.

[Fovea]

17. I do sympathize

Someone needs to make a big ass bumpersticker that says.
'Vote for Mass Transit, or Walk!'

[Javaman]

24. Yeah, but I don't buy 16 gallons of milk every two weeks.

Besides, with gas going up, the price of milk will too.

[pitohui]

41. yeah i gave up milk yrs ago

milk is an option but getting to work, grocery store, doctor, etc. is mandatory

[Roland99]

5. The cost of gas is affecting my life

I had an interview where I'll likely get an offer (base is a bit less but bonuses would make it more per year).


But, I'd be driving 120 miles roundtrip. That would be ~$10/day or about $250/mo (more than three times what I pay now.) That plus the initial lower salary would be too much.

[Cobalt Violet]

10. The more I pay for gas the less I can afford to eat.

[City Lights]

6. I paid $2.52 for 87 octane this morning in the Phoenix area. eom

[WannaJumpMyScooter]

22. Just paid 2.55 at my brother-in-law's gas station

he got an email today from his supplier, he expects his next drop, tonight to have to retail at 2.75

Overfucking night, a 20cent increase.

let's see, that is what...8% right?

[alkaline9]

11. anyone not concerned...

...is either too rich to worry about such inexpensive things, or too dumb to realize that these prices WILL CONTINUE TO RISE AND WILL NOT GO BACK DOWN.... EVER!

[Ezlivin]

12. Worse, the price will vary

And every time it goes down a tick, reports will come out blaring, "Oil prices drop!"

We are cresting the Oil Peak and the prices will fluctuate for a while, but the trend will be steadily upward.

Don't you feel as if you are watching a train wreck occurring in slow motion?

[Strelnikov_]

14. Yep. And Most, Even Here, Have No Idea n/t

[Jamison]

13. If you think it's bad now, just wait.

Until crude hits $100+ per barrel.

Believe me it will happen, and maybe even before year's end. All they have to do is make up some excuse such as terrorism, hurricanes, etc. to drive the price up ever higher.

[Roland99]

15. I remember thinking someone was NUTS when he said it would hit $70

Well, we're here!

[Fovea]

19. Back in May

Goldman Sachs predicted $105/bbl in Jan 06.

And when I reported that, yeah, a lot of folks thought I was nuts.
I am not happy to be right. I do think that there will be a price stablilization at around $3.85/gal, sometime in March.

I think that is the tipping point, where that second car stops getting used, and everyone who can, starts using mass transit.

[Roland99]

20. I wonder how the boating industry is getting affected?

I can't imagine people waterskiing as much in those gas-guzzling boats on their local lakes.

[pitohui]

43. overnight

an empty lot near my hood suddenly became a parking lot full of used boats for sale

but who will buy

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

33. $67 today

So we're not far off.

[katty]

50. Agree-w/are almost at $70...$100 not far behind that

[deadparrot]

18. George's friends are happy. Ergo, "Amurkins" are happy.

Carry on.

[katty]

51. satan's monkey,georgie & friends, making a pile of $ on oil boom

[WePurrsevere]

23. Higher Gas prices... Higher heating oil prices... Higher food prices...

When gas and oil go up all prices go up and yet for most Americans income doesn't keep up with inflation. Our income stays fairly stable or drops even lower.

How many people who were earning decent "middle class" incomes are now asking "would you like fries with that?" if they're even "lucky" enough to have that much of a job. How are those on fixed incomes like seniors and the disabled who are just a bit over the "low income" help income limit going to be able to afford to stay even semi-warm or eat? Don't tell me Social Services because that's been cut back by RePIGs too and if you are "foolish" enough to own your own home you're either screwed or you can take out a second mortgage and get further and further in debt just to survive.

Ya know Americans truly need to take a good long look in the mirror and ask themselves if they and those they care about are truly better off then 5 years ago. Look at where we're heading.. is this unholy mess what you want to leave your kids, grandkids and great grandkids? If you honestly can't see or don't care about what's truly happening here then you need to do some serious soul searching and internal work and realize that we're ALL in the same boat, it's sinking faster all the time. YET there's a BIG energy plug (bio-diesel, methanol, solar, etc) that could help save us all.. it's just out of one person's reach a bit BUT *IF* we all work together to reach it, grab it and stick it in place we and our future would be so much better and brighter.

[Javaman]

25. So 35 persent don't see gas effecting their money...

That's about right. That's the repuke base right there. 10 percent of the ultra wealthy. And 15 percent of the moderately wealthy. The rest of us poor slobs are the ones that are going to take it in the gut.

Now think about it, if you have an average job making average money, life will be a struggle and you will have to cut back on many things, or take mass transit or ride a bike to work, etc, however think of the working poor in this country, that depend upon day care living on a very limited or strick budget. Gas goes up, they are fucked, no other way around it.

Moron* has taken away hope. He has done nothing except award his cronies and backslappers with more breaks and bigger profits. He has done nothing to help the little guy. No plan for alternative energy.
I longing look back to the election of 2000 when Gore was talking alternative energy sources. Dreams crushed by the appointment of moron*. It makes me sick, as if a good friend passed away. I see our future being sold off to the highest bidder in morons* world, piece by piece.

We had our centry, like Englands was the 19th century, the 20th was ours. China has the 21st locked up.

[Maggie_May]

30. Is it not funny

that the wonderful highway bill that was sign by this idiot had no money for forming more mass transit in the U.S.A.

[kestrel91316]

56. Our brand new mayor in LA, Antonio Villaraigosa, has as one of his

MAIN objectives, the major improvement of LA's mass transit system. Not a moment too soon!!!

[FlemingsGhost]

26. But, hey ... Gays still can't marry, right?

Suck it up, America. You had your chance.

[leesa]

27. All you GOP voters....tough shit!

[Maggie_May]

28. I so agree

but what sad is that us hard working people are getting the blunt off there stupid mistake. The high gas prices our paying for the next R's election.

[newswolf56]

31. Some hardships gas prices are inflicting on me are potentially deadly:

with gasoline so expensive I can no longer afford to use my automobile, I have to walk or ride the bus, which means I am exposed to the depredations of the viciously predatory youth who -- day and night and good neighborhood or bad -- delight in terrorizing elderly Caucasians: this is not robbery but deliberate hate-crime. Going to my doctor's office -- a hospital/clinic complex in precisely the bad neighborhood from which many of these youth originate -- will now, with me on foot, become an occasion of absolute fear. It was a five-minute drive (there is no bus connection). Now, without the car, it will be a 30-minute walk in each direction: 60 minutes of DMZ alertness and combat-zone terror every time I need to refill a prescription or see my doctor -- my vulnerability infinitely worsened by the hospital's policy of criminally prosecuting anyone who carries any otherwise-legal tools of self-defense onto its premises. And without the protection of an automobile, I will never again dare go out after dark -- not ever, and not for any reason. Nor will I be able to go to the gym where I now work out several times a week: I go in the evening -- the best time to use the exercise machines and the indoor track without long and vexing delays -- but because the gym has the same prohibition as the hospital, and because it is so unsafe to be out after dark without the protective armor of an automobile, my work-outs will of necessity stop forever and my health will rapidly decline accordingly.

Another hardship -- one I hugely resent -- is the time that bus travel steals from your life. You can read (or even nap) on a subway or train, but you cannot do either on a bus -- the motion is too jerky -- so literally all you can do is sit in your designed-for-maximum-discomfort seat and fidget, wishing desperately you were anywhere else. (Bus seats are deliberately designed to be uncomfortable to discourage homeless people from riding.) As a consequence, trips to the grocery store via bus will now become at least twice-weekly six-hour expeditions of back-pack pain and slow-bus misery: this in contrast to shopping by automobile, which normally takes me about 45 minutes once or twice a month. (The alternative is shopping at a local non-chain yuppie grocery and paying food prices that are about 35 percent higher -- which I can't afford under any circumstances.) And even getting my hair cut ever again will be nearly impossible: there are no local barbershops, nor any nearby. My longtime barber, only a 15-minute automobile drive away, is a two-hour, three-transfer bus trip in each direction. In other words -- including the typical wait on the barbershop -- getting a haircut (like grocery shopping) will now kill an entire day. And my volunteer activities will cease entirely too: I won't spend six hours of misery on a bus (three hours each way) -- not to mention expose myself to the associated vulnerability to crime at the bus stops and while walking to and fro -- for ANY reason that isn't absolutely essential.

Bottom line, my apartment will become a literal prison, fear and discomfort will rule my consciousness, and the amount of time I have to spend on basic survival chores will increase by something like 700 percent minimum, from about 2.5 hours per month to at least 16 and more like 18 to 20, possibly even 30 or 40 hours because of all the careful selection and repeat trips necessary when you're shopping into a back-pack rather than a car trunk.

All this misery because the politicians have betrayed us by refusing to build proper mass transit and -- in my town -- provide proper police protection.

Fortunately I am semi-retired. For people who work 40 hours a week, the time required by this new reality will simply be impossible -- unless of course they are fortunate enough to live in the desperately few American cities that, like New York, have genuinely efficient public transport. (But since the impending collapse of the American economy means there is now no hope whatsoever that such transport will ever be built, maybe that's indeed part of the Bush/Christofascist/Radical Muslim/theocratic purpose behind these skyrocketing oil prices: forcing women out of the workplace and back into the home merely because, without automobiles, one half of any given lower-income couple will now have to focus full time on running household errands.)

[RamboLiberal]

35. At least the grocery trips - I'd say if you only have to go

by car once or twice a month, the gas prices would more than offset the expense of taking a bus once or more a week. Unless you're getting free senior citizen bus fare.

Are you giving up your car? A 5 minute trip can't use that much gas that you have to forego your trips to doctor/pharmacy. I'd be trying to combine as many functions as possible in to one or two auto runs a month.

[pitohui]

44. i think you have to give up something else & keep the car

i'm afraid i'm a bad example, in a similar situation, i gave up my medicines, which i do not necessarily recommend, but it did free up some $$$

in yr circumstance, in many people's circumstance, we must drive or our lives & businesses are hopelessly disrupted

[Roland99]

34. I'm having to tell my daughter "no" to picking up her friends

[Brooklyn Michael]

36. Bush should follow his own advice.....

....and "jawbone those guys from OPEC to get the price of gas down", like he said Clinton should do back in the 90's.

After all, acording to scriptures, you can get pretty far in the Middle East with the

JAWBONE OF AN ASS

[4dsc]

37. High prices are my financial gain,

unfortunately, in my line of work, my company gets to charge a huge fuel surcharge on every load I take. My last check alone had over $1000 in fuel surcharges.. And the higher the fuel costs, the most I make..

[shantipriya]

42. High Gas Prices

I still don't see any significant change in oenership or driving habits of our people. They will deserve whatever happens to them and the nation for their selfish attitude about the oil consumption.

[Danmel]

47. 18 cent increase in 4 days near my house

I bought gas on Thursday for $2.45/9 and today at the same station, it was $2.63/9 ! What happened to cause a price jump like that? It stings, it really does! I have no choice but to drive where I live- and there is no where to move to with mass transit that I can afford to live in and send my kids to school in a good school in. It sucks.

[Doremus]

48. I do sympathize, but it's not like we didn't know this day was coming.

Not that Shrubco or the MSM wanted us to know about it. But there have been several books written about peak oil in the last few years and many threads here discussing it.

We all will do now what we should have been doing and what practically everyone else in the world has been doing all along -- conserve.

Might as well get used to the idea because it's here to stay, unfortunately.

[Danmel]

53. I know

and part of me thinks that gas really does need to go higher- like it is in Europe- to spur conservation- unfortunately, it does hit me pretty hard. I drive a Camry, my husband drives a small car- we have two kids and have never owned a large vehicle or SUV- never felt the need for it. I try to be mindful of what I use and make environmentally sound choices.


I live in the NYC burbs- cars are necessary-= if I could afford to live in the city and send my kids to a decent school there , I would. I would like to think I could send my kids to a NYC public school and feel secure they'd get a good education, unfortunately without a guarantee they'd get into one of the select high schools, I simply don't have enough confidence in the system to risk that for my kids. Since I can't afford to do that, I'm stuck here in the burbs, which believe me, is not my first choice.

It pisses me off that these idiots who have to drive Suburbans, and Tahoes and Navigators (and Hummers) are driving up my costs when I try to be responsible. And it mightily pisses me off that the Govt can pass an "energy" bill that doesn't raise mileage standards or do anything meaningful to encourage conservation when our men and women are getting slaughtered in Iraq for oil.

[Name removed]

55. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[VegasWolf]

52. and the other 36% think Brain is doing a great job! Bwahhahaa!

[Cha]

54. TAKE IT TO THE

STREETS!

[FryLock3000]

57. This is gonna eventually hurt big oil....

The higher gas prices rise, the more people will look for alternate modes of transportation. My brother (who drives an suv) has already decided his next vehicle will be a hybrid. He says he spends around $1800 per year on gas right now, and with a hybrid he would spend around $500 on gas. I am also looking into eventually getting a hybrid. If enough people do this, it will definately make a dent in big oil's pockets.

It's gonna take more than environmental activism to change people's minds. But higher gas prices just might.

Can you imagine a world where wars weren't fought over oil????