There are several implications with $5 a gallon. Figure about $4600 at $5 a gallon in costs, for one car.
This basically means that most of the folks who make $35k a year...are giving up $1800 out of their pocket and cannot make the money back, when they look back at $3 a gallon. They can also figure that their weekly $150 grocery bill, will slide up another $20 to cover gas costs to the grocery, the farmers, and general increase.
Then you can start to figure that the guy is going to cut back on driving. He will plan things enough that there aren’t any wasteful miles on Saturday or Sunday driving. The ten nights a year he would normally go bowling....will be cut back to six nights. The chance to take the family out every two weeks for a dinner.....will go to once a month, as he pays more for gas and simply quits buying meals out.
The wife? Well....she starts to time trips out, with doctor visits and shopping combined. The quick trip to the local grocery she made three times a week.....now goes to once a week only. She’ll pick up a neighbor on occasion and the two will shop together....rather than burn gas.
The trip by the family to visit relatives every June for eight days? Well....it gets canceled this year. And likely won’t occur next year. The tickets for the flight to Grandma’s around Thanksgiving? They went up twenty percent over last year’s and its mostly fuel costs added. The repainting of the garage this year? Won’t happen, you don’t have the extra cash to pay for the job.
So as you start the dominoes falling.....now we have a restaurant trend where everyone is eating ten percent less out because of no desire to use extra gas and no real extra cash left. The airline, hotel, car rental and touristic businesses suffer because folks won’t travel as much. The grocery business starts to see trendy food dumped and bulk items bought more often. Bowling alleys and theaters start to notice a ten percent drop in clients. Movies that were geared toward younger audiences (16 to 18).....suddenly notice that their clients don’t have the gas money to go and if they do go....they are very picky about what movie they see or don’t see......so fewer movies start to get made.
So at $5 a gallon....this is’t a simple game anymore. Folks will start to make a decision and think about how to waste or not waste $1800 in a year. But those with two cars in the family? Or how about three cars (one for junior).....can the typical middle-class family survive paying $9k a year on fuel? The answer is no.
The amazing thing here....even we all cut ten percent of our fuel usage out....the pricing trend won’t likely stop....and will continue (thanks to the Chinese and the Indians going out to buy their first ever car). So our entire future, now depends on a hydrogen fuel cell car and its development...which might be still twenty years away....when fuel cost $22 a gallon.
So settle back and watch for the warning signs, when hotel chains start complaining about empty rooms, airlines start cutting flights which they can’t fill to maximum capacity, theaters who can’t fill more than half of the place on a Friday night, movie producers who can’t make the standard cut on teenage films, and car dealers stuck with SUVs which won’t sell off the used lot.
The first hit will be the bottom of the barrel folks....who make $7 an hour at Wal-Mart. Then later the $35k a year folks. And by next year...even the folks who make $60k a year will start to complain. The next president will walk into a miserable period where the economy is stalled badly and will spend most of his or her four years trying to figure the magic formula.
I'm a stay at home mom. I was considering getting a job to help out now that the kids are older. After figuring the tax situation out and the added fuel costs, it breaks down that we'd actually *loose* money if I went back to work.
Very depressing.
I know people blast the Prius (and other hybrids), but it is very nice to not have to put much money into gas right now.
The impact of rising gas prices has just not impacted the Prius very much.
Now, my mini-van is another story. I’m now spending $70 every time I fill up, and I fill up about once a week at least.
If gas prices go up, then you will see a savings on a Prius.
Now, they are making hybrid SUVs. There is a Toyota mini-van in Japan, but they haven’t started selling it here.
Hybrids are also very nice to drive. They are much quieter than normal cars because the gas motor shuts down at low speeds and stop lights. They also seem smoother to me.