[highsider]

Not to take it off topic, but fuck it I will anyway.

I heat with wood as well - but the wood is cut with a gas powered chainsaw, hauled out of the woods with a gas powered tractor, split with a gas powered log splitter, and hauled to your house in a gas powered truck. So while I enjoy the heat I get, I dont know how much good I'm doing either the environment or the oil problem.

[OreoGitorio]

Originally Posted by greenmonster

LMAO!! or should I be crying instead? This guy scares me. An empty suit. All style, no substance. Wants to "negotiate" with Iran. Wants to "open up a dialogue" with terrorist leaders. Fuckin' naive. Not one single accomplishment listed thus far in his political career. Watched Fox news several days ago...had a clip of a reporter asking a strident Obama supporter to list just one of Obamas accomplishments. The dude was like "Uh, uh, uh, Ummm". Had no come back. Guys a great public speaker, but thats it. Cult of personality.

I just post that picture to piss off RichW... that & I think it's funny as hell.

[Kham]

Originally Posted by highsider

Not to take it off topic, but fuck it I will anyway.

I heat with wood as well - but the wood is cut with a gas powered chainsaw, hauled out of the woods with a gas powered tractor, split with a gas powered log splitter, and hauled to your house in a gas powered truck. So while I enjoy the heat I get, I dont know how much good I'm doing either the environment or the oil problem.

if you use your muscle to haul cut/haul those woods, you'll be ready for your next match in no time without the need to go to the jim. lazy bum. or you could hire those illegal to do it but you'll hve illegal problem. wait.. don't you have horsy? use them.

[Honclfibr]

Originally Posted by vfr99999

.You cannot be talking about our Oil industry must be the state run industry in Europe that taxes the fuel so gas is between 8 and 9 dollers per gallon.

Calculate the cost of driving. I mean the true cost, not just the cost of car + maintenance + gas, but also incorporating the cost of building, maintaining, and policing (maintaining order and safety) the road system you rely on to make use of your car. Divide that by total miles travelled and you will quickly understand the reasons for the gasoline taxes that are imposed upon european drivers. Which, btw, do not come close to 8-9 per gallon, have you ever left this country or are you just spouting nonsense?

There is a conspiracy here, but it is not the government. It is our culture which believes that everyone in America should pay to subsidize your right to drive big ass cars wherever you please. What the europeans pay in fuel tax we pay in income/property tax (goes to maintaining our national/state/local road system) and national debt. All the while bitching about subsidies to public transportation system while we fail to recognize the massive subsidy to personal transportation that comes in the form of a publicly built, maintained, and policed road network.

Take the red pill, and maybe you'll recognize that the "liberal tax economy" is nothing more than us forcing the American people to recognize the true cost of the public goods that they rely on without understanding the costs.

[l3uddha]

Originally Posted by Honclfibr

Which, btw, do not come close to 8-9 per gallon, have you ever left this country or are you just spouting nonsense?

CNN/Money: Global gas prices
and this is from march of 2005. expect them to be higher obviously.

both my german and isreli roommates complained of having to pay over $9/gallon US$ for gas. granted, most of that difference is in the taxes. i got a lot of complaints firsthand from living with them. most of the complaints were about their own countries.

and yet, people complain about the way things are here, even though we've got it on easy-street...

and no, i don't use public transportation. haven't in years, even though i live right outside of boston. i work hard so i can afford a car and a bike, so i don't have to bother with that dirty shit.

[vfr99999]

Price per gallon from Dutch and English friends is 8 to 9 dollars per gallon. The price is calculated in liters for volume and euros fpr price. Honclfiber!!!!!!!!! We do have a fuel tax to maintain roads. Property taxes go mostly to maintain schools. I agree with I3uddha we do have it on easy street but the street is going to get tougher.

[Kham]

i know.. just turn on CNN. this is internet age not middle age. you dont have to leave the fuckin country to know what's going on over there if you really want to. except north korean maybe.

man i didn't tell them to build the highway. i'd be happy with horse drawn cart.. these fuckin idiots can't keep up with high standard of living cost.. like me. as Steve's message said, "definition of fucked: a man has a truck payment, a house payment, a wife, AND a girlfriend and they're all a month late."

[Honclfibr]

Hmm, well, I suppose it has been over a year since I paid for gas over there. Looks like rising fuel prices and the fall of the dollar hasn't done much for gas prices over there, any more than it has here.

I stand by the rest of my argument however. It's not the state run government in Europe that gives rise to high gas prices, but rather that they put the cost burden on those who use the system. It may take a few decades to sort it all out, but eventually people will look back on this time in history and blame the economic problems that we have today in this country (and there's more to come, bet on it) on our complete lack of ability to reconcile the cost of what we do, be it personal transportation or national security or projecting power into other countries, on the US economy.

The economy has been global for a while now, and we've failed to recognize our lessening impact on the world at large. Meanwhile we've spent the last 8 years spending, revaluing and refunding ourselves into a hole that the government is now powerless to get us out of. In fact the more they try (and they have, see my previous posts on how the federal banks have lowered interest rates at a rate that has not been seen *ever* in the history of the US), the closer we come to total economic collapse.

Our only hope is that the U.S. might still exert enough economic influence on the world that when we finally recognize the depths of our economic peril, we might pull the rest of the world down with us enough to soften the blow. But that's a pretty shitty silver lining. No, Obama cannot save us, nor Hillary, nor McCain, nor anyone else at this point. The poor economic policies of the last 8 years have put the economy in a tailspin from which we cannot easily recover.

Four, maybe five years ago, we might have done something about it. But it's too late. We've been proper fucked since early 07 at the lastest, and we're digging ourselves deeper into a hole every day. An economic stimulus package and lower interest rates, to get us out of the hole that unsustainable tax cuts and government spending combined with a pressure towards consumer debt got us into? Even a basic understanding of economics will tell you that's like trying to get yourself out of a hole by digging deeper.

I don't want the US economy to fail, I rely on the US economy, but I can see the writing on the wall. I've been shorting this economy since early November, and I'll continue doing so until we start showing signs that we recognize the trouble we're in (it's worse than we've seen so far, just look at the government response to it and you'll see how desperate they are) and are taking the right steps to correct it.

But I tell you, there's not a single candidate today who's willing to admit the kind of trouble we're in, or the steps we need to take to correct it. No, that would be political suicide, simultaneously cutting government spending and raising taxes is political suicide no matter what party you're in. Instead, they talk about "stimulus packages" as if they didn't know they're trying to shock-start a corpse. Yeah, we're fucked, and they know it to, otherwise you'd never see the Fed chopping rates like they are while the Hill scrambles to pass a refund package that's like putting a bandaid over a gaping wound. Sometimes you have to lose a limb to save the body, but instead we're desperately trying to stop the bleeding as we deal with multiple organ failure.

[Honclfibr]

Originally Posted by vfr99999

We do have a fuel tax to maintain roads.

Does our fuel tax pay for the cost of our road system?

If not, then where does the rest of the money come from?

So sad, we've bought in as a country to the idea that you can get something for nothing.

[Kham]

professor honky teaches economic. so honky, economy is already dead? what does it mean? there are more people dieing of starvation, crimes up, etc.? if this is gonna be like airplane about to crash, fuck im ready to go rampage.

[TheIglu]

I've used nearly a gallon of gas for my Stihl taking down and logging quite a few trees. Also, the little Remington electric dealie I have works great a limbing and cutting! (yes, electricity still costs, but it's far cheaper to run an electric saw than a gas)

My tractor is diesel. It will run on most anything I toss at it.

I agree, wood is not a viable heat source for people living in a metropolis. I'm willing to agree that Stoneman, Chris and me all do a little more labor getting the wood and burning it. But you know what? We aren't rightly fucked and completely helpless to the oil market. I filled up last night. 188 gallons since early December, ~310 since the day we moved in, Sept 11th. That includes hot water. Not bad, right? Ok. Not good enough though. On demand system is going in once it's warm enough to turn the furnace off. Wood burning boiler AND stove being put in next summer. THREE options to heat the house, one of which is nearly free. Moving/cutting/splitting the wood? I've used ~10gallons of diesel in the 20 hours I've put on the International so far. The hours used for logging will be minimal. A nice sharp splitting maul is no match for a splitter in speed and ease, but it's FREE other than my time. I'd rather be tired and sore while proudly looking upon an indefinite source of heat that I paid nearly nothing for while the rest of the population demands a politician "fix" what isn't broken, just gluttonous and wasteful.

So while people keep bitching like crazy until gas is back down to $1.00/gallon (here is a secret, IT WON'T HAPPEN), I'll be using the money I would of spend on a new exhaust for the ZRX, new suspension for the CR125 and a new trailer for a new heating system that will save me double that in the next five years.

The same people who want to shut off Welfare are also the ones saying gas prices need to drop since it's hurting the poor so badly. Can't pick and choose.

[l3uddha]

Originally Posted by TheIglu

So while people keep bitching like crazy until gas is back down to $1.00/gallon (here is a secret, IT WON'T HAPPEN), I'll be using the money I would of spend on a new exhaust for the ZRX, new suspension for the CR125 and a new trailer for a new heating system that will save me double that in the next five years.

i didn't know anyone was complaining about that. I thought people were worried about gas prices skyrocketing and crippling our economy. cheap gas has enabled this country to accomplish everything it has over the years. you wanna hear people bitch about gas prices, try over in europe. the economy is nowhere close to dead now, but letting oil prices run rampant is a sure way to kill it.

what works for you isn't going to work for society. we could all run electric saws, but there's already an energy shortage. if gas prices doubled or tripled, i'm sure you'd realize real quick just how much you really rely on it.

it'd be nice not to have to rely on oil, but we've been saying the same thing since the 1970s, and any change is decades into the future. self-sufficiency is great, but most people dont have the luxury to take all this time out of their busy schedule to chop wood. the only kind of self-sufficiency that might work, would be a windmill spinning freely in the back yard, but even then there's the startup cost, and all sorts of zoning issues and regulations that prevent people from doing it. my parents wanted to do this years ago for their 2.5 acre property on the south shore, but the street and town committee wouldn't allow it because windmills are "big and ugly" or something.

to say you dont rely on oil is dillusional, and to think people have the time and/or strength to chop wood or gather energy themselves by other means is insane. if people everywhere take time out of their lives to do this, they lose work, spend less, and the economy tanks. once again, this isn't the 1800s. i think you've been hanging out in the woods too long.

[TheIglu]

Originally Posted by l3uddha

i didn't know anyone was complaining about that. I thought people were worried about gas prices skyrocketing and crippling our economy. cheap gas has enabled this country to accomplish everything it has over the years. you wanna hear people bitch about gas prices, try over in europe. the economy is nowhere close to dead now, but letting oil prices run rampant is a sure way to kill it.

what works for you isn't going to work for society. we could all run electric saws, but there's already an energy shortage. if gas prices doubled or tripled, i'm sure you'd realize real quick just how much you really rely on it.

it'd be nice not to have to rely on oil, but we've been saying the same thing since the 1970s, and any change is decades into the future. self-sufficiency is great, but most people dont have the luxury to take all this time out of their busy schedule to chop wood. the only kind of self-sufficiency that might work, would be a windmill spinning freely in the back yard, but even then there's the startup cost, and all sorts of zoning issues and regulations that prevent people from doing it. my parents wanted to do this years ago for their 2.5 acre property on the south shore, but the street and town committee wouldn't allow it because windmills are "big and ugly" or something.

to say you dont rely on oil is dillusional, and to think people have the time and/or strength to chop wood or gather energy themselves by other means is insane. if people everywhere take time out of their lives to do this, they lose work, spend less, and the economy tanks. once again, this isn't the 1800s. i think you've been hanging out in the woods too long.

And you feel competely entitled to a certain lifestyle. I understand that. Entitlement is the cause for the vast majority of our economic problems currently.

Pricey gas? Guess what? The economy can evolve.

BTW, gas prices HAVE trippled.

I choose to live in a somewhat financially responsible way. I am not betting on our government babysitting my finances and our luxorious way of life. If it comes to it, I'll sell the truck for a Corolla. Even at $10 a gallon, my weekly expenses will be reasonable.

Not enough time due to their busy schedule? Are you kidding me? Put down the remote, don't go the bar, shut off the PC and then see just how much free time there is. So many people talk about how hard previous generations had it and how much work they did but are completely unwilling to do anything that may inconvenience them in the least.

If gas gets really expensive, will you do something so simple as to take public transportation? Or is that just too much of a sacrifice for you to make?

Really now....

If you take care of yourself, you won't feel the need to cry/whine about situations like this. IMO, gas prices should be on the back burner for our government issues. When cars start getting better gas milage than they had TWENTY years ago it really won't be that big of an issue anymore.

[Doc]

Gas triples and the gas companies post record profits... coincidence?

[Honclfibr]

Originally Posted by Doc

Gas triples and the gas companies post record profits... coincidence?

Wait, you mean when commodity prices rise, the companies selling those commodities make more money?

It's a CONSPIRACY!

[TheIglu]

Originally Posted by Doc

Gas triples and the gas companies post record profits... coincidence?

SO, do you WANT a government that butts into the private sector OR NOT?

CAN'T HAVE IT BOTH WAYS.

[burnham]

Originally Posted by TheIglu

I've used nearly a gallon of gas for my Stihl taking down and logging quite a few trees. Also, the little Remington electric dealie I have works great a limbing and cutting! (yes, electricity still costs, but it's far cheaper to run an electric saw than a gas)

My tractor is diesel. It will run on most anything I toss at it.

I agree, wood is not a viable heat source for people living in a metropolis. I'm willing to agree that Stoneman, Chris and me all do a little more labor getting the wood and burning it. But you know what? We aren't rightly fucked and completely helpless to the oil market. I filled up last night. 188 gallons since early December, ~310 since the day we moved in, Sept 11th. That includes hot water. Not bad, right? Ok. Not good enough though. On demand system is going in once it's warm enough to turn the furnace off. Wood burning boiler AND stove being put in next summer. THREE options to heat the house, one of which is nearly free. Moving/cutting/splitting the wood? I've used ~10gallons of diesel in the 20 hours I've put on the International so far. The hours used for logging will be minimal. A nice sharp splitting maul is no match for a splitter in speed and ease, but it's FREE other than my time. I'd rather be tired and sore while proudly looking upon an indefinite source of heat that I paid nearly nothing for while the rest of the population demands a politician "fix" what isn't broken, just gluttonous and wasteful.

So while people keep bitching like crazy until gas is back down to $1.00/gallon (here is a secret, IT WON'T HAPPEN), I'll be using the money I would of spend on a new exhaust for the ZRX, new suspension for the CR125 and a new trailer for a new heating system that will save me double that in the next five years.

The same people who want to shut off Welfare are also the ones saying gas prices need to drop since it's hurting the poor so badly. Can't pick and choose.

I think a lot of people will be saying "why the fuck didn't I do something like that" over the next few years. Not necessarily wood burning, but solar heat and electricity, passive solar homes, or plain conservation. I think we are beyond a point where this economy can be "fixed", a major recession is over due. Oil prices will double again. Most people have missed the boat, we spent it all when times were good and have nothing invested, nothing saved, and we are tits deep in debt. In the last ten years I've wired at least 500 new houses. One geo-thermal. None with any solar collectors. Nobody cares yet, and when they do the cost will have been inflated to the moon.
I'd like to hear more of your ideas about the stand alone heating system. I have some ideas of my own, and as I said I'm an electrician. I would be willing to come out with my van and give you some help just to get some experience with alternate heat systems.

[TheIglu]

Hell, I'd like to hear some more of my own ideas!

I'll keep you updated. Solar panels will sit atop my addition and it will be a south facing two story room with tons of glass and stone floors to soak up the passive solar.

[l3uddha]

Originally Posted by TheIglu

And you feel competely entitled to a certain lifestyle. I understand that. Entitlement is the cause for the vast majority of our economic problems currently.

1) pull your head out of your ass.

Originally Posted by TheIglu

Pricey gas? Guess what? The economy can evolve.

BTW, gas prices HAVE trippled.

2) i was referring to tripling from where they are now. and yes, the economy will shit itself.

Originally Posted by TheIglu

I choose to live in a somewhat financially responsible way. I am not betting on our government babysitting my finances and our luxorious way of life. If it comes to it, I'll sell the truck for a Corolla. Even at $10 a gallon, my weekly expenses will be reasonable.

3) your attemt to come off as better than everyone else for chopping fucking wood is failing. i'm glad you think you can be self sufficient, by all means go ahead and do what you gotta do. that's not how society works however. i suppose you want senior citizens out there splitting logs.

fyi: i and most of the people I know are very financially responsible. we enjoy the pleasures of life when we can, because we fucking can. we do this through hard work, not the government's babysitting. again, i think the constant scent of pine has made you dillusional.

Originally Posted by TheIglu

Not enough time due to their busy schedule? Are you kidding me? Put down the remote, don't go the bar, shut off the PC and then see just how much free time there is. So many people talk about how hard previous generations had it and how much work they did but are completely unwilling to do anything that may inconvenience them in the least.

4) dillusional. people have families. they work 2 or 3 jobs to support them. a lot of the people i work with put in 70-80 hours a week and then go home to their wife and kids. i agree that some people should get off their asses, but in your self-proclaimed richeousness you're fucking the hard-working middle class over.

fuck the rest of your post. your whole argument is just not feasible and you obviously live in an entirely different reality out in the middle of nowhere. and fyi, you seem to be complaining more than anyone else...

[l3uddha]

Originally Posted by burnham

I think a lot of people will be saying "why the fuck didn't I do something like that" over the next few years. Not necessarily wood burning, but solar heat and electricity, passive solar homes, or plain conservation.

you do realize this is new england, correct? solar power just not practical here, and the cost of maintenance and support outweighs the benefit.

[Honclfibr]

Originally Posted by l3uddha

fyi: i and most of the people I know are very financially responsible.

They say the average baby boomer has 45k in retirement savings.

That's pretty fucking scary right there.

[Doc]

[burnham]

Originally Posted by l3uddha

you do realize this is new england, correct? solar power just not practical here, and the cost of maintenance and support outweighs the benefit.

Are we talking about today or next week or next year? What maintenance and support cost do you refer to? My friends house in Deerfield NH seems to do just fine with its current photovoltaic system. They even sell power back to the utility some times. I do agree, it is the least appealing alternate source of energy I can think of at this time in this area. Do you have some better idea's?

[l3uddha]

Originally Posted by burnham

Do you have some better idea's?

without getting into a whole nuclear discussion, i'll say wind has potential on a small scale, but as mentioned earlier, the chances of putting a windmill in your yard in some areas are slim to none. it's bullshit on a larger scale. look at germany, for example, who has implemented a whole clean energy campaign with wind and solar energy, but the taxes that go along with it are outrageous. from a german's mouth, "we were better off before".

i've already said this before and i'm not repeating myself.

[Honclfibr]

The real problem here, as Clayton points out, is a complete lack of accountability for our own actions. For pretty much the entire Bush administration we've been accepting, hell DEMANDING a combination of increased government spending and tax cuts. This combined with a new wave of debt and consumption led us to where we are today...with a massively inflating currency fueled by and an unsubstantiable financial system, both fueled by debt-spending both at the public and private level.

Now see, what would normally happen in a situation like this is that the housing market would crash, the stock market would drop, the economy would slow down, unemployment would rise...and with it, oil prices would fall. See, a recession has a deflationary effect, if there's less money out there then the money you have buys more shit, got it? Recessions are part of an economy.

Only we've lost sight of that. Either that or we as a country are so credit-strapped to the hilt, with retirement looming for our aging boomers and them panicked that their precious few assets (most of which are in the stock market and/or the real estate market) will fail, that we've some how wrapped our heads around the idea that we can fucking SPEND ourselves out of a goddamned recession. And the government (which we've pretty much bankrupted over the last 10-20 years) is stepping in to help, by chopping interest rates and tossing around the idea of bailout programs that they're hoping will somehow prop up an economy that's slowly realizing what a mess it's gotten itself into.

So you get what you're getting. Inflation AND a recession. Sure, the recession might take a bit longer to set in than it would have without the bailout program. But meanwhile costs of living are rising so that by the time we all recognize that we're not going to be able to spend ourselves out of this hole, the little money we have saved will have little value. And meanwhile, the government will have exhausted what little means it has to stimulate the economy (interest rate cuts and tax refunds, you can't cut rates below zero and while I suppose we can have them keep dumping money out of helicopters, eventually we're going to recognize that's not going to help) and we'll get what we'll get. A prolonged recession, possibly even a depression given that it's timed pretty much right as our aging penniless boomer population is starting to retire, where they will be a drain on this country's social security and health care system like we've never seen before.

So continue to stick your heads in the sand and whine about oil prices if you want, but eventually you're going to have to recognize that there's no real way out of the mess that we've created for ourselves, and the only way to weather the storm is do exactly what Clayton's talking about: reduce consumption, squirrel your nuts away, and for god's sake maybe fucking learn from this shit so we don't make the same mistakes again.