bike2math

We had a local news story about Gas prices on NPR today. Our governor was one of a handful of governors who signed a letter to president Bush asking him to ease gas prices for the sake of the unfortunate poor and to keep the economy from faltering.

I get so mad thinking of my tax dollars being used to support other peoples gasoline habits! Hurry up and let your ellected officials know if you don't support this sort of thing (I don't have much hope, at some point there will be subsidies)

This is the sort of thinking that created tax funded support funds for tobacoo farmers after people stopped buying their product. Or relief for people who find they have to much debt. People should be forced to adapt to the changing situation or be allowed to continue down whatever path of suffering they lay out for themselves without help or hinderance from the goverment with MY MONEY.

ModoVincere

Welcome to the libertarian view point.

asuperstar103

I ride my bike lots of places I go around town just to boycott the cost of gasoline today! It use to take me $20 to fill my tank, now it costs me $35 just to get 3/4 tank!!! If I could ride my bike to work I would!!

bhtooefr

I would almost say I'm not a libertarian, I'm a Darwinist.

Adapt or die.

acroy

it is a tempting viewpoint, is it not?

acroy

i do wonder , how much tax support this would be: the federal tax something like 18 cents per gal? how much would this knock off? if the fed wanted to lower prices, it would seem simple to lower or the tax. don't see it happening though, since at 380 million gal per day, that's $69 million dollars a day in fed gas tax

1ply

In the big picture it adds up, but to someone putting $30 in the tank it would be $1.20. Not really enough to make a difference worth talking about as that dollar or two will be wiped out by rising prices very soon. But the gov't would still be out millions per day.

"adapt or die" can I use that one in my sig


Darwinism - the new world religion.

bhtooefr

Go for it.

Thomasdregos

If your budget has been squeezed so tightly that you cannot afford the gas for your commute then what money do you have to move closer? Closer to work usually means higher housing costs not to mention the costs of moving and down payments on the new housing! If you just making ends meet before the gas crunch then you are really up the creek!

heywood

Then how come most people in ancient Rome lived into their 70's? About the same as today..

Most of this we live longer now than back then stuff (baring plagues & such) is a load of codswallup..

maddyfish

Proof?

https://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0005140.html
https://www.longevitymeme.org/article...2&article_id=9

Here's your Roman life expectancy
https://geography.about.com/od/popula...expectancy.htm

"Historic Life Expectancy
During the Roman Empire, Romans had a approximate life expectancy of 22 to 25 years. In 1900, the world life expectancy was approximately 30 years and in 1985 it was about 62 years, just two years short of today's life expectancy."

Buglady

OK, I have to jump in here, because I did a lot of social history and population studies in university. My degrees are in Biology (including statistics) and in Classics (primarily Roman history). This is one of my hobby horses...

Life expectancy at birth and maximum lifespan are two very different things. Throw in a high infant mortality rate and you can drag your entire population's life expectancy (which is the average age at which people in that population will die of ANY cause) down by several decades; a high maternal death rate can also drag the average down. The rate at which human beings physically age has not changed; even in the Roman Empire, people were routinely living into their seventies IF they made it past childhood (50% infant mortality rate in some areas). It's a common misconception that people aged faster in the past and that everyone was wrinkled and ancient by age forty.

Modern life expectancy figures are high because we have been able to address childhood mortality rates (infant deaths, contagious childhood diseases, and accidental deaths have all been reduced in the developed world). When an infant is born today, he or she has a pretty good chance of living through things that would have been fatal a couple of generations ago. Maximum lifespan may be changing as well, but it is a little early to tell since we are only about four generations in. We will need to see what the twentieth century cohorts look like.

maddyfish

^^ Of course you're right, who cares if babies die, we shouldn't count them, you're right.
Dead is dead, people live longer now. Doesn't matter why.

Buglady

Um, sorry, I don't really understand what you are saying, Maddyfish. Could you clarify please?

I was just trying to shed some light on the way the statistics of life expectancy are calculated (a simple average of the age at death of each member of a population). Babies ARE counted, then and now, that's why the average has been changing upwards. Of course it is a good thing that we are now able to treat childhood illnesses (I'd have died of measles at age 12, or of a concussion at 4, without moden medial treatment), but it's a simple fact of history that being a young human being has always been a very, very risky thing.

wahoonc

Statistics are a wonderful thing, but can be used to the delight of the person choosing them What I find interesting is that Cuba which is supposed to be a backwards 3rd world country actually has a lower infant mortality rate the USA and appears to have a pretty decent health care system based on prevention. So much for supposedly being one of the richest nations on the planet.

Aaron

diff_lock2

Lol you guys in the states complaining about gas prices, cracks me up (well actually makes me question WTF your complaining about, you have some cheap a$5 fuel there)

bhtooefr

Simple. We're not used to $3/gal. We're used to $1-2/gal.

You guys are used to the higher prices.

For us, $3/gal IS expensive.

wahoonc

Chatting with a friend in the Netherlands yesterday...if we have the conversion rate right he is paying close to $9 a gallon, said they have cut back to one car trip a week. The rest of the time they commute on bikes, said something about digging his grandfather's old bakfiets out of the barn

Aaron

diff_lock2

lol so hows 9usd a gallon sound!!!

The thing is people who own huge heavy fuel WASTING cars complain. Just get a frekin car that uses less fuel, or better yet get bike lol. Oh and one thing that sucks in the states (or so i hear) is public transport. Also im not sure i would like to ride on a bus with all the advertised crime over there.

wahoonc

Some areas are better than others, but you have to remember we have a lot of distance to cover. For example The Netherlands is about the size of the state of New Jersey...and we have 50 states many are much larger. Mass transist exists and is viable in many of the large cites but the smaller the town the less likely it is to have decent mass transit. The town I am moving to doesn't have mass transit, doesn't really need it because it is only about 12 square miles (31 square kilometers) and fairly flat. What irritates me is that we have an Interstate, 3 major US highways and a double mainline rail through town, but no Amtrak, or interstate bus service. If we want to use any of those it is a at minimum a 35-45 minute drive. Hopefully that will change in the future as fuel prices rise.

As far as safety in riding mass transit...again it varies from area to area.

Aaron

acroy

just buy yerself a gun