Gas Prices on the Rise: What's Your Freak-Out Number?
When gas prices hit $3.50 a couple of years ago, the pinch I felt at the gas pump was offset by the sudden and dramatic decline in the number of cars on the road in Los Angeles.
For about a week, there was no traffic -- I sailed to work, even during rush hour, on clear freeways.
Then, people got used to the high number and figured out how to cough up the extra dimes and got back on the road. The "freak out" number of $3.50 was absorbed and adjusted to.
Gas prices are heading up -- way up -- and everybody knows it. So what's the new "freak out" number to come?
And how high does the number have to be to kill off car sales? From Bloomberg Businessweek:
Consumers are signaling it will take higher gasoline prices than the worst of 2008 to curb new- vehicle sales, according to AutoNation Inc., the largest U.S. auto retailer.
The “freak-out number” at the gas pump is likely about $4.50 a gallon for unleaded regular, Mike Jackson, chief executive officer of the Lauderdale, Florida-based company, said in a telephone interview. AutoNation rose to a 13-year high today after reporting profit that topped analysts’ estimates.
The auto industry can better handle higher oil prices that helped push General Motors Co. and Chrysler Group LLC into bankruptcy in 2009, because inventories now are lower and manufacturers have added smaller vehicles to their lineups, Jackson said. Brent crude oil earlier today climbed to the highest since September 2008 after protests in Egypt against President Hosni Mubarak.
It seems, well, insane for an entire economy to turn on what happens in Freedom Square in Egypt. It seems crazy, too, for us to keep nudging our freak-out numbers higher and higher. But what choice do we have?
Except, you know, to start drilling.
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Comments :
Re: Gas Prices on the Rise: What's Your Freak-Out Number?
Last time gas prices reached and surpassed $3.50, we didn't have unemployment numbers of 9% or higher. I wonder how climbing gas prices will slow or delay the economic recovery. When consumers pay more at the pump, they have less to spend on other things. Simple concept, but it could have huge implications.
Jul '10
Re: Gas Prices on the Rise: What's Your Freak-Out Number?
I have a simple Freak Out Number.
Zero!
Which is the number of new wells in the Gulf of Mexico, off the coast of California, in ANWR, or just about anywhere else in order to develop our domestic production to counter the dependance upon foreign sources for our energy needs.
Dec '10
Re: Gas Prices on the Rise: What's Your Freak-Out Number?
Mike Jackson is probably about right: $4.50 nationally, $5.00 in California, will cause people to squawk.
But stop buying cars or driving? Maybe at $15 or $20 a gallon. How many smokers have really been priced out of their habit by prices of $0.25 a cigarette?
America adapted in the 20th century to personal transportation and the internal combustion engine. It will be a lot easier to convert personal transportation to other propulsion and energy sources than to remake the entire landscape to eliminate personal transportation. (That doesn't mean that the Left won't try, by attempting to make energy for personal transportation unaffordable and by declaring "sprawl" -- that is, the right to live and work where you want -- to be a catastrophic environmental problem.)
Jul '10
Re: Gas Prices on the Rise: What's Your Freak-Out Number?
People bought a lot of scooters last time.
I ride a motorcycle that gets about 50 mpg.
People will adapt.
Aug '10
Re: Gas Prices on the Rise: What's Your Freak-Out Number?
I walk to work. I own a car, but I only use it to get up to the lake in the summer, to drive to my parents' house every third Sunday or so, and to get groceries every second week or so. Gas prices don't bug me.
I roll my eyes when people lecture me about "reducing my carbon footprint", since my carbon footprint has been tiny ever I moved out of my parents' house and into my almost luxury condo.
Dec '10
Re: Gas Prices on the Rise: What's Your Freak-Out Number?
Huge implications, yes -- but where you see those implications as detrimental, the other side sees them as beneficial. Just think! When people can't find work where they want or buy houses in suburbs where they want to live, it'll be so much easier to get them into planned transit communities where they'll never need a car. And they'll be working in industries that promote well-being, rather than destructive ones like car manufacturing.
(That doesn't mean UAW members will be unemployed, though: there will still be a need for cars for the people in charge of the government and the economy -- which at that point will be the same thing -- because those people will have work that takes them beyond the perimeters of the transit communities.)
May '10
Re: Gas Prices on the Rise: What's Your Freak-Out Number?
$3.50 may be a gasoline buyer's freakout number but $120/barrel is a whoopdeedoo number for oil speculators.
Feb '11
Re: Gas Prices on the Rise: What's Your Freak-Out Number?
My freakout number is low. We are just starting to cross the $3 mark in Georgia and I feel myself starting to lose it. I use my grocery card for a 40-50 cent/gallon discount at the "no ethanol" station. If it weren't for that I think I would be freaking out already.
Sep '10
Re: Gas Prices on the Rise: What's Your Freak-Out Number?
I dunno, I guess my freakout number is $8. Or something like that. On the plus side, every day the prices go up, our reserves become worth even more. In the end, we'll drill, but thanks to the environmentalists, when we do it, we'll rake in some serious cash.
Jan '11
Re: Gas Prices on the Rise: What's Your Freak-Out Number?
I'm a cheapskate. I freak out any time gas goes over $3.00. Looks like we're back to mac n cheese and hotdogs for a while. I jest, but does anyone know whether the administration considered how $5.00 gas will impact their "kids eating healthy" campaign? Organic Tuscan arugula is getting kind of pricey even when it is locally grown.
Dec '10
Re: Gas Prices on the Rise: What's Your Freak-Out Number?
I'm not going to freak out about the prices, period. I'll drive less for personal use, ride a motorcycle when I can, and charge more when I drive for business,
I am looking forward to the acrobatics from the White House on why they can't be held responsible for any of these "necessarily skyrocket"-ing prices.
I expect Obama to implement price controls. Then I can freak out about the shortages.
Re: Gas Prices on the Rise: What's Your Freak-Out Number?
I still think the last spike to four-buck gas tripped off the great economic clusterfug of 2008.
The high price of gas won't convince petrophobes that we need to drill; it'll just prove how we need to get away from gas, and explore sustainable green fuels derived from the sweat glands of leprechauns, or something. The price rise will be seen as oil company greed, nothing more.
Dec '10
Re: Gas Prices on the Rise: What's Your Freak-Out Number?
By the way, Rob, that's some pretty violent imagery you have there. Aren't you worried that someone may start packing a semi-automatic gas pump with a high capacity holding tank?
Jul '10
Re: Gas Prices on the Rise: What's Your Freak-Out Number?
When gas prices hit $3.50 a couple of years ago, the pinch I felt at the gas pump was offset by the sudden and dramatic decline in the number of cars on the road in Los Angeles.
One of my favorite activities is taking a life-threatening drive along twisty Highway 1 in Marin County.
I hate having to share my racetrack with grandmoms and flat-land tourists who don't understand that a 15-mile-per-hour posting on a hairpin turn really means "We advise drivers of lesser skills than Kenneth, in lesser vehicles than his, to go home."
$8-per-gallon gas would be a real boon for me.
Edited on Feb 8, 2011 at 12:02pmMay '10
Re: Gas Prices on the Rise: What's Your Freak-Out Number?
And those things cost more, because the shipping of products from manufacturers to retailers requires gasoline. Life in general becomes more expensive.
Exactly. The general public response will be determined more by the pace of rising prices than by the extent.
People always gripe about the cost of gas. Only a handful actually change their habits in reaction.
Obama will send out national credit cards before he opens more areas for drilling.
Oct '10
Re: Gas Prices on the Rise: What's Your Freak-Out Number?
IE: Explore sustainable green fuels derived from the sweat glands of leprechauns,
Good Lord man !!! Do not give these green folks new ideas !!!
Try capitalizing on Santas elves first, they toil all year and you know where they are... Might not play out as they are unionized by now.. Therefore never break a sweat...
Dec '10
Re: Gas Prices on the Rise: What's Your Freak-Out Number?
I don't agree. I think the 2008 spike in fact scared the Democrats stiff because they saw how incensed the electorate got, which is why even Nancy Pelosi came out publicly in favor of lower gas prices.
I am sure that the Democrats were hoping that $4 a gallon gas would tank the economy and propel them to victory in 2008. When it had the opposite effect -- when people started nodding their heads to Palin's "drill, baby, drill" -- they backed off that approach and looked for another catastrophe to exploit.
Dec '10
Re: Gas Prices on the Rise: What's Your Freak-Out Number?
Kenneth: When gas prices hit $3.50 a couple of years ago, the pinch I felt at the gas pump was offset by the sudden and dramatic decline in the number of cars on the road in Los Angeles.
One of my favorite activities is taking a life-threatening drive along twisty Highway 1 in Marin County.
I hate having to share my racetrack with grandmoms and flat-land tourists who don't understand that a 15-mile-per-hour posting on a hairpin turn really means "We advise drivers of lesser skills than Kenneth, in lesser vehicles than his, to exercise caution."
$8-per-gallon gas would be a real boon for me. · Feb 8 at 11:52am
How selfish! Think of the auto wreckers, search and rescue divers, and coroners and morticians whose livelihoods would be ruined by the reduction in Sunday drivers on Hwy. 1.
May '10
Re: Gas Prices on the Rise: What's Your Freak-Out Number?
Would anyone here seriously "go long" in oil futures contracts if they suspect that oil prices will continue to rise? Anyone trade commodities?
Dec '10
Re: Gas Prices on the Rise: What's Your Freak-Out Number?
Gee, I thought you needed the collusion of the president to skyrocket the price of gas. I mean, that was the story during the Bush years.