[galacticsurfer]

I don't drive and as I was curious what it costs per month to drive I looked up some web sites and found them saying that owning a car (here in Germany) costs ca. €400/month= USD 500. 30-40€ of this is insurance. A lot of that€400 I presume goes on the monthly car payments. Surprisingly little seems to go on gas. For example I asked my colleague here at work how much he drives and what mileage he gets then I plugged it into a website which calculates driving costs and for 10 liters/100 Km(don't ask miles/gallon as I don't know) and 1000 Km/month (36km round trip to work plus extras) I got at €1.34/liter, €133/month. Even at double the cost that is only about 250€/month. The cost would double in Europe at maybe USD 200/barrel because taxes make up such a large part of the calculation.

So when do people stop driving? How much does the cost of gas make up out of disposable income (% of wages)? When will Joe Six Pack and Soccer Mom throw in the towel and park permanently or car pool or get into public transport of a bicycle or moped?

Is it actually more important however to ask how much will all the other energy dependent costs rise, i.e. food, heating, electricity? I mean crude prices are not isolated just to retail pump costs. So people have to deal with stagflation,i.e. everyone is losing their jobs because people buy less of everything discretionary as they are spending 20-30% more of income on absolute necessities(food, heating, electriciy, transport) and have less discretionary income so lots of people at Videotheks and bookstores and furniture and electronic shops lose their jobs. Probably demand destruction won't be big enough to counter supply losses(5-10% decline/annum) if this scenario plays out over 10-15 years so prices for crude will stay steady or keep climbing. All plastic packaging and cheap junk food(marketing and brand awareness bye bye) will slowly disappear as generic products(white paper box labeled "spaghetti") and real food(fruit and veggies anbybody?) will be more affordable and preferred in an inflationary environment. Localized food production will slowly be cheaper and organic too as chemicals and transport will make up an increaingly high proportion of production costs.

I got a bit off topic here but I am curious how the whole thing will play out not just for me but to get the big picture. I sell spare auto parts coming from Asia to Europe and obviously this branch is pretty dependent on crude prices but also on the general economy and I sort of want to know when will I lose my job and/or my small import/export company where I work will go bankrupt in terms of USD/barrel.

[thuja]

I'm thinking I could cut a lot of things in preparation for high fuel and food prices...including

Most car travel ( I and my wife can bike to work)
Heating by natural gas and using my wood stove exclusively.
Eating out
Buying luxury packaged foods
newspaper
gifts for friends and family
vacations
retirement account
auto insurance
health insurance
Internet service (The horror!)


In fact when you gat down to it I could scrape by on just paying my mortgage and spending the rest on utilities, the fuel to get me cord wood for my stove and food. That's probably less than half of what I pay out now as expenditure.

But of course, the time will come when increasing gas prices lead to rising unemployment. How long until I'm out of work as a counselor at a hospital? I'd say I'm on the short list. That's one of the reasons I'm thinking about getting a nursing degree. Employment security will be king in the future.

And of course, in the mean time, I get to watch as businesses start to falter and fail one by one in my neighborhood and city. I get to watch as friends lose their jobs, their homes, their path in life and have to confront the need to secure basic necessities. But then we'll have plenty of time to playi lots of games of Gin Rummy and Spades by candelight at my house.

[grabby]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Doly', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('grabby', 'I') am thinking of ordering a couple tons of coal, we have a wood burning stove and coal burns in there just fine.
very very cheap compared to wood.