Californians cut back on dining to feed their cars

[sabra]

http://www.kesq.com/global/story.asp?s=3788322&ClientType=Printable

Californians cut back on dining to feed their cars

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - Californians rely on their cars and more than 70 percent say they regard rising gasoline prices as serious or very serious.

The latest Field Poll shows 40 percent of Californians say they're cutting back on spending for food, clothing and dining out to pay for gas. Among those making less than 40-thousand dollars a year, the number cutting back on other spending rises to 54 percent.

Most say they're shopping around for cheaper gas, but that uses gas, too. Nearly 60 percent report making fewer short drives and shortening weekend or vacation car trips.

So, who's to blame? Those polled most frequently mentioned oil companies and the Bush administration. Foreign oil-producing companies get a good chunk of blame, too. And 30 percent blame folks who drive gas-guzzlers.

[NNN0LHI]

1. The restaurants are all dying around here

Seriously I am talking about places that I used to have a hard time finding a seat for lunch are empty. I am the only schmuck in the place except for the help. Its unbelievable.

Don

[Yavin4]

2. Here's The Real Blame: YOU DESIGNED YOUR CITIES POORLY

Desiging a metropolitan area where EVERYONE is forced into driving a car in order to function. How about designing a urban area whereby people can use public transportation at 50% of the time. That would alleviate a lot of the problems.

I don't want to bash Californians, but sometimes they are the most spoiled people on the planet. They want the very best state funded higher education schools, but they don't want to pay higher property taxes for it. They want $1 a gallon gasoline, but they reject and fight public transportation projects.

You can't have 8 million people on the road every single day and think that gas prices are going to be low.

[shanti]

3. come on now!

some of us DO use public transportation voluntarily.

[Zomby Woof]

5. jesus fucking christ

Do you have ANY IDEA how high property taxes are for post-Prop 13 people?? New homeowners are SCREWED if they want to buy, because of the BLATANT unfairness of the property tax system in CA!

You can move next door to someone who has owned their house since the 60's, and they are paying maybe $300 a YEAR, whereas the new homeowner may have to choke up $10,000 or MORE. That is the result of the faux populist tax revolt that gripped the state in the late 70's.

We aren't fucking spoiled, we're taxed DISPROPORTIONATELY. It widens the gap between the haves and have-nots, and causes the revenue to falter, which is why they state government is in a morass.

Most of us here accept a higher cost of living to live in paradise, but once it jumps into UNFAIR territory, we're going to bitch, and loudly at that.

Spoiled my fucking Zomby ASS.

[candice]

7. Living in Paradise?

...depends on when you came to California. My father thought everybody and his brother had moved to his paradise of Southern California after WWII, but was he ever wrong. They just keep coming. I moved to Northern California and had a few years before the rest of the world moved here, too.

[Zomby Woof]

8. All things being relative

I have lived in 5 states on both coasts and in-between, and 2 countries. I have visited 35 states. I can say with confidence that California kicks all of them in the balls. Some states have pockets of beauty, and some have NONE. I will take California in all its crazy glory over the rest of the vast wasteland of America.

[progressivebydesign]

10. Left California after 40 years when I realized other places were nicer.

You get into this bubble in California and don't realize that other places are friendly, full of trees lakes and nice communities. The beaches in California are really pretty, but unless you're renting or bought a house 20 years ago, you can't live there. Only in either congested cities or suburbs or treeless hell-holes where people drive 2 hours to work every day in the heat and smog.

California is nice.. but not the nicest I've seen. It's fun when you're 20 to be there, but doesn't hold the appeal once you hit 40 and want some open space and clean air.

[Yavin4]

11. Then Start A Proposition To Repeal Prop 13

and raise the property taxes on the older homes. As for gas prices, look at the world. Nations like India and China are becoming fully industrialized, so higher gas prices will be the norm.

[Zomby Woof]

12. Oh believe me

We are.

[DBoon]

6. As compared to Texas?

Large cities in CA do have mass transit systems that work well. BART in the bay area, the MTA (including a large supporting rail network) in Los Angeles, and a large established light rail system in San Diego.

And voters HAVE voted for tax increases to fund these.

You need to go somewhere else to find examples of bad urban planning. The idea of California as a haven for the auto-centered lifestyle is 30 years out of date.

[KayLaw]

4. Someone on a travel board. . .

asked the other posters what they were doing to compensate for the extra they're paying at the pump. They said they were carefully planning their errand/shopping trips and cutting down on or cutting out restaurant meals.

[Megahurtz]

9. Too many SUV's on the roads,

Get rid of those Stupid Ugly Vehicles!

[pippin]

13. AGREED!

California (southern Cal especially) is also home to all those frigging SUVs and Hummers. Something about the idiocy of people around here when it comes to ownership of these obscenities. I know people living on the edge with practically no pot to piss in who drive these behemoths, and in southern California people often drive over fifty miles a day to go to work. If they were stupid enough in the first place to buy these gas guzzlers I have little sympathy for the fact they can't afford to spend on anything beyond feeding their monsters. God! How Americans have become so stupid is beyond me.