Vargo drives to work in a car she can't afford. It is a white Chevrolet Suburban that churns out a ruinous 10 miles to a gallon and rides so high off the street she has to boost herself into the driver's seat as if jumping into a saddle. Her two-hour daily commute, about 40 miles each way from Lockport, roughly double the national average. Still, there are times when the extravagant vehicle seems the only reliable part of her unsettled life.
"I don't feel safe in small cars," Vargo said defensively, refueling one day at the pump.
She seemed worn and jittery. It was the end of an 11-hour shift. She was headed home to a house shared with two teen daughters and a 4-foot iguana--a place she would soon vacate because she couldn't make the rent.
She can't pay her rent, but she still drives a Suburban that gets 10 mpg.
Later in the piece,she traded her 'burban for a Mustang. A little bit of progress, but why not go further down the path to, say, a used Honda Civic. This woman is living on the edge of poverty and, yet, she still needs those hot wheels. Says it all about the American dream/nightmare.
Btw, this was a great article and punched a hole in the oil companies contention that you can't trace the ultimate source of fungible oil from the gas station all the way back to Nigeria, Texas, Saudi Arabia, whatever.
But what I really liked were the personal stories, about how people all over the globe are impacted by this magic elixir we call oil. Cause of so much convenience, sustenance, and pleasure, but all the center of so much pain, corruption, war, and death. A Faustian bargain, for sure.
And, oh yeh, loved the one about the wealthy suburbanite, real estate lady who had to have that Hummer to impress her clients. Around here, our real estate lady drives a Prius. Now that is impressive!
We should not call it anything, because it has never happened. The MSM are always right, or they wouldn't be the MSM. Soon, there will be no people left who didn't "knew it all along". In fact, it went perfectly as planned. Trust Big Brother.
"Day by day and almost minute by minute the past was brought up to date. In this way every prediction made by the Party could be shown by documentary evidence to have been correct; nor was any item of news, or any expression of opinion, which conflicted with the needs of the moment, ever allowed to remain on record. All history was a palimpsest, scraped clean and reinscribed exactly as often as was necessary."
- G. Orwell, 1984
So true. But we can still call it something. When 2.8 million people (or some subset) are reading it on the back of the front page on a hot summer morning, simultaneously ...
Maybe we can call the day before the publishing Peak Ignorance. I read the article too. Plus, you can see more on the Tribune web site at www.chicagotribune.com/oil and you get some videos too. I have seen occasional PO stuff in the media, like the National Geographic explaining the shrinking (and now gone) swing producer wiggle room.
It's about time. Oh, the heatwave caused a NG spike. $8.10/million BTUs.
A used Honda Civic is still a fool's choice. Americans cannot continue 80 mile daily solo commutes in gas powered vehicles. Her cost would drop from 40c per mile to 30c per mile.
Would you spend 1/4 of your salary to get to work?
In a commute of a thousand miles, you have to start with one step. Changing that commute itself will be happening more as well, of course.
I wonder how much people's variable sense of 'security' (ie, the security of a Suburban) is going to be compatible with one of the next steps, carpooling. I see the 'big car, big house, big yards, gated community' movement as part of a mentality in the US that sees Success and Security in Isolation. I don't think we're homogeneously antisocial by any means, but many people have grown very accustomed to the 'freedom' of not having to coordinate our efforts, deal with quirky neighbors, adjust our needs within a group for the sake of economizing.. Rusty old tools to start to sharpen up again.
My family built a passive solar house out in the Maine woods in 1980 with a lot of images of independence and being less dependent on many things 'mainstream', but it quickly became clear that the facet that was left incomplete was the lack of friendly neighbors and the amount of 'energy' available when multiple families are available to each other to do big lifts, watch kids, etc.
I was thinking about her defensive comment about her Chevy Suburban, something like "small cars scare me" and her decision to replace it with a Mustang. Seems to me that conservatives who oppose increasing fuel efficiency in automobiles have used the 'smaller car = deathtrap' argument again and again. Perhaps this has influenced her thinking (and others) and has actually made many people afraid of smaller cars. Just a thought.
The "small cars are deathtraps" meme actually goes back to the original backlash against the VW Beetle! It really got strong as a tool against the Japanese cars when those started being imported.
It hasn't been without a grain of truth. Small cars designed for putting around on 20-30 MPH streets didn't do so sell when put on 60MPH American streets, or against American land yachts piloted by ppl used to casually ricocheting off of each other's tanks at times. The makers of imports at first didn't have any idea of how many sheer hours Americans spend in their cars, the speeds they drive them, and in what kinds of weather. Now, the import makers all have test facilities out in places like the Mohave desert, far North, and have more of their people over here living the American life and driving the American way.
That the American makers' tries at small cars were horrible (like the Pinto) didn't help either.
The "small cars are deathtraps" meme is very strong in the US, remember it was being used to sell SUVs up until very recently.
Do you have any facts to substantiate this or are these just your opinions?
The makers of imports at first didn't have any idea of how many sheer hours Americans spend in their cars, the speeds they drive them, and in what kinds of weather.
* I think we established yesterday that Americans don't drive substantially more miles per year total than Europeans or Australians (maybe on 1 road trip per year) [Isn't the whole premise of the PHEV that most Americans only drive an average of 30 miles per day????]
* Germans drive way faster than Americans... for many years your legal limits were quite prohibitive in most states...
* What... you have some kind of unique weather in USA that they don't have in Northern or Southern Europe??
Small cars designed for putting around on 20-30 MPH streets didn't do so well when put on 60 MPH American streets
Where exactly are these 20-30 mph streets... and where are the American 60mph STREETS?? Urban speed limits are similar everywhere... as are highway limits
This idea of unique car markets really cracks me up every time I read such car industry nonsense... I remember in Australia... a certain model wasn't allowed to be imported until it had been modified for our "type of roads"... as if they have different kinds of corners/bends... or different kinds of potholes?? Or is it because the cars drive upside down??
canbrit I actually took a lot of this from when I was into motorcycles, personal observations of cars, personal observations of ppl's comments about cars, and what I've read, and seen the short visits I've been there, about Europe.
Maybe you can show me where Europeans are spending 4 hours a day commuting back and forth as most of the population of Southern California does. Maybe you can show me where Europeans are commuting for hours (at a very slow speed) in 110F or higher temperatures as they do in Phoenix and a fair amount of other Sunbelt cities in the US. Maybe you can show me where Europeans are all getting out onto the roads when they're iced-over and in snowstorms, instead of just staying home, or taking the train. The "winter madness" is pretty common in snowy areas in the US, and smart (although not smart enough to stay out of it!) Americans in these areas keep some survival gear and food/water in their cars in case they have to spend the night in a snowdrift. By God they're gonna drive! Whether hot, cold, rainy, etc., no matter how huge the traffic jam, driving is taken to be an unquestioned, holy duty in this country.
I guess if you can prove it's the same in Europe, my doomerosity has to get adjusted upward at least a couple of points.
I spent my teen years in Japan and speed limits on major arterials tend to be about 50 km/hr (30 mph) at the most. I remember one straigtaway where I could open it up whiz along at an astounding 40 km/hr (24 mph)!
When I landed in San Francisco and drove over the Bay Bridge the first time I was scared out of my mind going 55 mph with all the other traffic.
There was a story on NPR a few weeks ago about the drawbacks of Volkswagens sold in the U.S. In spite of feedback from U.S. sales executives, German engineers refused to design in common American things like cupholders. They cited the German lack of understanding of how much time we spend in our cars in the U.S.
cycle you probably saw it on NPR too, remember there are about 6 "old white men" who determine just about all we see, hear, and read in the US, the same stories, once vetted, go around and around and around......
That's why trucks should be on rails and then we could all feel safe driving small, even tiny cars! Too bad that's not how our infrastructure developed, mainly due to roads tax subsidies (and not rail). Trucks could never have competed with rail, had it not been for their "free ride".
Rail could never have reached all farms, building sites and lumber piles. Rail and truck freight complement each other but more of the long haul should go via rail, a switch that should follow from market forces as oil gets more expensive, especially if the railways are well run and electrified.
"A nationwide Quinnipiac University survey in May found that 63 percent of registered voters blamed oil companies for high gasoline prices, while 43 percent blamed oil-producing countries, 35 percent blamed President Bush, and 30 percent blamed normal supply and demand pressures. Many fewer, 19 percent, laid responsibility on "Americans who drive vehicles that use a lot of gasoline.""
It is so much easier to know you are getting screwed than to know who is screwing you. Or whether the victim is in fact to blame.
1600 miles / month * 0.40 /mile = $640 /month. If her salary is $2000, then she is spending 1/3 of her income just to get to work. I don't think the mustang changes the picture significantly.
Aren't there any jobs at gas stations in Lockport or apartments near her job?
The presumption seems to be that if we all somehow move closer to our jobs, or get jobs closer to home, then we will be all right.
This same argument is evidenced in the, "look at what that poor person bought instead of food" argument.
The blame always goes to the individual rather than the society and its defective insane system of living.
Try a thought experiment: Imagine that everyone in the United States all tried to move to within one mile of work.
There -- didn't that hurt your brain a little bit? Especially since the entire American way of life has been tailored to fit the automobile and its needs and not the needs of the people.
Telling the homeless to get a job in this hateful country is like telling a paraplegic to just get up and walk.
If you ain't got enough legs or jobs, neither is going to happen.
Yeah, and what's the timeframe? Everyone move in the next year? Not going to happen. Everyone move in the next 20 years? Hard, but could be done. Everyone move within the next 40 years? It won't be pleasant, but it will happen. 60 years? Not really a problem at all.
It all goes back to how fast production falls off, how resistant people will be to change (I suspect we're going to be hit by many life-changing problems at once, which may "encourage" them to change their lifestyle), and how badly people in other parts of the world want the goodies too.
I actually mostly agree with Cherenkov's gloomy assessment, but not because we couldn't move everyone close enough quickly enough, but rather because people will go broke defending their current lifestyle before they are willing to consider drastic changes.
Once people start moving closer to work , you will see a big change in real estate values. I wouldn't want to own a house in a bedroom community miles from anything except WalMart, your local nail salon and McDonalds.
I wonder how many families a walmart can support?
We are probably going to see lots of deserted home similar to the desolated Detroit suburbs during the GM layoffs.
How will real estate agents deal with this problem? More signs!
There is one dimensional thinking here again. Modern technology allows us to work from home. You don't all have to be within 5 minutes from the office. If you can't drag a horse to water....
Anyone whose job can be done 'from home' are having his/her job done from India and other remote centers.
Be careful what you wish for. Telecommuting works real well from places where people are hungry and paid a whole lot less than us locals. At the speed of light, India ain't so far away...
Well outsourcing is a different issue isn't it. I think we have to get used to competing with Asians for our jobs. Asian salaries have to catch up with the developed world. People have to go back to school, get an education and compete for the job. It's old fashioned and boring I know.
And your job is outsourced before the toner sets on your diploma and you have a home loan's worth of debt. It's to a point that college is rapidly not being worth it - unless you get a degree in subsistence farming. And your parents had better pay for it.
Indian programmers can afford to work cheaper becuse their college is cheaper or they come from the small minority of well-off parents. An American kid can't compete with that becuse college simply costs too much. If I had a kid and was paying for his college I'd give him a graduation preasant of a passport and one-way ticket to Bangalore. If you're going to work for a Wal-Mart wage anyways, you may as well live in a cheap-living-cost country like India.
She can't pay her rent, but she still drives a Suburban that gets 10 mpg.
Btw, this was a great article and punched a hole in the oil companies contention that you can't trace the ultimate source of fungible oil from the gas station all the way back to Nigeria, Texas, Saudi Arabia, whatever.
But what I really liked were the personal stories, about how people all over the globe are impacted by this magic elixir we call oil. Cause of so much convenience, sustenance, and pleasure, but all the center of so much pain, corruption, war, and death. A Faustian bargain, for sure.
And, oh yeh, loved the one about the wealthy suburbanite, real estate lady who had to have that Hummer to impress her clients. Around here, our real estate lady drives a Prius. Now that is impressive!
"Day by day and almost minute by minute the past was brought up to date. In this way every prediction made by the Party could be shown by documentary evidence to have been correct; nor was any item of news, or any expression of opinion, which conflicted with the needs of the moment, ever allowed to remain on record. All history was a palimpsest, scraped clean and reinscribed exactly as often as was necessary."
- G. Orwell, 1984
It's about time. Oh, the heatwave caused a NG spike. $8.10/million BTUs.
Would you spend 1/4 of your salary to get to work?
I wonder how much people's variable sense of 'security' (ie, the security of a Suburban) is going to be compatible with one of the next steps, carpooling. I see the 'big car, big house, big yards, gated community' movement as part of a mentality in the US that sees Success and Security in Isolation. I don't think we're homogeneously antisocial by any means, but many people have grown very accustomed to the 'freedom' of not having to coordinate our efforts, deal with quirky neighbors, adjust our needs within a group for the sake of economizing.. Rusty old tools to start to sharpen up again.
My family built a passive solar house out in the Maine woods in 1980 with a lot of images of independence and being less dependent on many things 'mainstream', but it quickly became clear that the facet that was left incomplete was the lack of friendly neighbors and the amount of 'energy' available when multiple families are available to each other to do big lifts, watch kids, etc.
Bob Fiske
The car is in better shape than the house!
The car is longer than the house!
Makes the statues on Easter Island look sensible
What kind of business?
Mobile Whorehouse?
Still a scary picture.
I was thinking about her defensive comment about her Chevy Suburban, something like "small cars scare me" and her decision to replace it with a Mustang. Seems to me that conservatives who oppose increasing fuel efficiency in automobiles have used the 'smaller car = deathtrap' argument again and again. Perhaps this has influenced her thinking (and others) and has actually made many people afraid of smaller cars. Just a thought.
It hasn't been without a grain of truth. Small cars designed for putting around on 20-30 MPH streets didn't do so sell when put on 60MPH American streets, or against American land yachts piloted by ppl used to casually ricocheting off of each other's tanks at times. The makers of imports at first didn't have any idea of how many sheer hours Americans spend in their cars, the speeds they drive them, and in what kinds of weather. Now, the import makers all have test facilities out in places like the Mohave desert, far North, and have more of their people over here living the American life and driving the American way.
That the American makers' tries at small cars were horrible (like the Pinto) didn't help either.
The "small cars are deathtraps" meme is very strong in the US, remember it was being used to sell SUVs up until very recently.
The makers of imports at first didn't have any idea of how many sheer hours Americans spend in their cars, the speeds they drive them, and in what kinds of weather.
* I think we established yesterday that Americans don't drive substantially more miles per year total than Europeans or Australians (maybe on 1 road trip per year) [Isn't the whole premise of the PHEV that most Americans only drive an average of 30 miles per day????]
* Germans drive way faster than Americans... for many years your legal limits were quite prohibitive in most states...
* What... you have some kind of unique weather in USA that they don't have in Northern or Southern Europe??
Small cars designed for putting around on 20-30 MPH streets didn't do so well when put on 60 MPH American streets
Where exactly are these 20-30 mph streets... and where are the American 60mph STREETS?? Urban speed limits are similar everywhere... as are highway limits
This idea of unique car markets really cracks me up every time I read such car industry nonsense... I remember in Australia... a certain model wasn't allowed to be imported until it had been modified for our "type of roads"... as if they have different kinds of corners/bends... or different kinds of potholes?? Or is it because the cars drive upside down??
Maybe you can show me where Europeans are spending 4 hours a day commuting back and forth as most of the population of Southern California does. Maybe you can show me where Europeans are commuting for hours (at a very slow speed) in 110F or higher temperatures as they do in Phoenix and a fair amount of other Sunbelt cities in the US. Maybe you can show me where Europeans are all getting out onto the roads when they're iced-over and in snowstorms, instead of just staying home, or taking the train. The "winter madness" is pretty common in snowy areas in the US, and smart (although not smart enough to stay out of it!) Americans in these areas keep some survival gear and food/water in their cars in case they have to spend the night in a snowdrift. By God they're gonna drive! Whether hot, cold, rainy, etc., no matter how huge the traffic jam, driving is taken to be an unquestioned, holy duty in this country.
I guess if you can prove it's the same in Europe, my doomerosity has to get adjusted upward at least a couple of points.
When I landed in San Francisco and drove over the Bay Bridge the first time I was scared out of my mind going 55 mph with all the other traffic.
There was a story on NPR a few weeks ago about the drawbacks of Volkswagens sold in the U.S. In spite of feedback from U.S. sales executives, German engineers refused to design in common American things like cupholders. They cited the German lack of understanding of how much time we spend in our cars in the U.S.
Is there a way to ammend/edit my comments?
"A nationwide Quinnipiac University survey in May found that 63 percent of registered voters blamed oil companies for high gasoline prices, while 43 percent blamed oil-producing countries, 35 percent blamed President Bush, and 30 percent blamed normal supply and demand pressures. Many fewer, 19 percent, laid responsibility on "Americans who drive vehicles that use a lot of gasoline.""
It is so much easier to know you are getting screwed than to know who is screwing you. Or whether the victim is in fact to blame.
It's what we sapiens do.
Love to toss that poo.
Aren't there any jobs at gas stations in Lockport or apartments near her job?
This same argument is evidenced in the, "look at what that poor person bought instead of food" argument.
The blame always goes to the individual rather than the society and its defective insane system of living.
Try a thought experiment: Imagine that everyone in the United States all tried to move to within one mile of work.
There -- didn't that hurt your brain a little bit? Especially since the entire American way of life has been tailored to fit the automobile and its needs and not the needs of the people.
Telling the homeless to get a job in this hateful country is like telling a paraplegic to just get up and walk.
If you ain't got enough legs or jobs, neither is going to happen.
We are so going down.
Yeah, and what's the timeframe? Everyone move in the next year? Not going to happen. Everyone move in the next 20 years? Hard, but could be done. Everyone move within the next 40 years? It won't be pleasant, but it will happen. 60 years? Not really a problem at all.
It all goes back to how fast production falls off, how resistant people will be to change (I suspect we're going to be hit by many life-changing problems at once, which may "encourage" them to change their lifestyle), and how badly people in other parts of the world want the goodies too.
I actually mostly agree with Cherenkov's gloomy assessment, but not because we couldn't move everyone close enough quickly enough, but rather because people will go broke defending their current lifestyle before they are willing to consider drastic changes.
I wonder how many families a walmart can support?
We are probably going to see lots of deserted home similar to the desolated Detroit suburbs during the GM layoffs.
How will real estate agents deal with this problem? More signs!
Then you move the water to India.
Anyone whose job can be done 'from home' are having his/her job done from India and other remote centers.
Be careful what you wish for. Telecommuting works real well from places where people are hungry and paid a whole lot less than us locals. At the speed of light, India ain't so far away...
Indian programmers can afford to work cheaper becuse their college is cheaper or they come from the small minority of well-off parents. An American kid can't compete with that becuse college simply costs too much. If I had a kid and was paying for his college I'd give him a graduation preasant of a passport and one-way ticket to Bangalore. If you're going to work for a Wal-Mart wage anyways, you may as well live in a cheap-living-cost country like India.