How then, do we move backwards? How does a society, with most of the people having no clue of future events, move from being dependent on a vast and intertwined network of goods and services produced by the indigenous people of whereever, to a local resource and renewable energy based society, and do so in the timeframe available (20-30 years using the most liberal extimates, 10-20 with resonable estimates, 5-10 with worst case scenarios), all the while prices on everything increasing, world politics getting more militaristic, governments continuously reducing civil liberties, shortages of goods on the market and weather patterns resembling bad Hollywood movies?
Joined: Mar 07, 2007 Posts: 288 Location: Houston, TX
Posted: Tue Jul 01, 2008 12:00 pm Post subject: Howcome gas is $5.44/gal in India, and people lined up??????
Look at the video below. Thousands of people are waiting on the line to buy gas in a country where minimum wage is less than $0.50 an hour and gas is $5.44/gal.
Where do these people find the money to buy expensive gas?
Better yet, howcome Americans are complaining about $4/gal while making hundreds more times of Indian wages?
Something does not make sense here.
What happens if chinese and indians start to buy gas without waiting in the lines? Wouldn't their consumption skyrocket? Even with today's suppressed demand, they are pushing the price of oil, imagine what is going to happen when they can buy whatever amount they want.
Posted: Tue Jul 01, 2008 12:32 pm Post subject: Re: Howcome gas is $5.44/gal in India, and people lined up??
Probably contract workers for software development here in the United States. We probably contract out atleast 100 of them for our old mainframe applications written in Cobol.
They take turns coming to the United States making a bunch of money only to bring it back to India and buy, well whatever it is they buy.
Posted: Tue Jul 01, 2008 1:12 pm Post subject: Re: Howcome gas is $5.44/gal in India, and people lined up??
Quote:
because in a poor country that gas represents a genuine reduction in effort and a gain in living standards.
Exactly. A lot of people just don't get it. I try to explain the cases of Japan and Korea industrialization, where average person went from using about 2 barrels per person per year to 17 barrels per person per year.
China and India and Indonesia and Brazil, etc, will try to get their consumption up to those high rates for exactly the reason you mentioned. It represents true improvement in standard of living. Trying to stop it is like trying to stop the tide.
The average US and Canadian uses about 25 barrels per person per year. We are now in demand destruction to take us down to about 20.
Joined: Jul 17, 2004 Posts: 480 Location: Amerika (most of the time)
Posted: Tue Jul 01, 2008 1:41 pm Post subject: Re: Howcome gas is $5.44/gal in India, and people lined up??
misterno wrote:
Look at the video below. Thousands of people are waiting on the line to buy gas in a country where minimum wage is less than $0.50 an hour and gas is $5.44/gal.
Where do these people find the money to buy expensive gas?
The beauty of numbers. Your question is equivalent to asking how can people in the US afford $1 million houses when the minimum wage here is only $5/hour.
India is a country of roughly 1 billion people. Let's say 70% of them are dirt poor (which from my travels in India is a decent approximation). That leaves 30% or 300 million who enjoy some level of middle class existence and use motorized transportation in some manner. (Mind you we are already at the population of the US). Now with the economic boom underway more of those people in the 70% will start to move into the middle class and get more motorized transportation. As their income rises they will be able to afford the expensive gas to put in their scooters, motorcycles and cars. _________________ Simon's Law: Everything put together falls apart sooner or later.
I don't think of all the misery, but of all the beauty that still remains.--Anne Frank
Joined: Aug 13, 2004 Posts: 1179 Location: Richmond, VA, Pale Blue Dot
Posted: Tue Jul 01, 2008 2:50 pm Post subject: Re: Howcome gas is $5.44/gal in India, and people lined up??
Not only that. Let's say they drive 2% as much as we do because they can still fit on a bike (no not all Americans are 300 pounds, but you get my drift).
So...200 miles a year or roughly 320 km at an average efficiency of 50 mpg (scooters + manual transmissions) or roughly 21 km / liter.
$5.44 = ~235 / 3.7 = 63 rupees a liter
320 km / 21 * 63 = 960 rupees
...which is affordable by the middle class there who earn roughly 4500 a month. They have no heating bills by the way...
Edit: oops, it's even more affordable when you convert rupees per gallon to rupees per liter... lol _________________ "If you are a real seeker after truth, it's necessary that at least once in your life you doubt all things as far as possible"-Rene Descartes
"When you have excluded the impossible, whatever remains however improbable must be the truth"-Sherlock Holmes
Posted: Tue Jul 01, 2008 3:29 pm Post subject: Re: Howcome gas is $5.44/gal in India, and people lined up??
....and the average American car is the size of a tank compared to everywhere else........ We were in France with a Hyundai Accent 1.4 l and it felt large compared to the 1 litre vehicles.
I bet in India there is full use made of small cars and scooters. _________________ formerly Taizy and Taizy8 - having problems with the cookies.
Joined: Oct 18, 2004 Posts: 1715 Location: kiwibush
Posted: Tue Jul 01, 2008 4:02 pm Post subject: Re: Howcome gas is $5.44/gal in India, and people lined up??
India and China are old mercantile nations (like Japan) (going back thousands of years). It is only a matter of time before they adapt the Anglo Saxon corporate model to their mercantile instincts, as the Japanese have, and the crap, will then, hit, the fan. BIG TIME!
We are at the start of that transition. Any of those dopes on here who aren't aware of these historic trends might as well quit playing at intellectualism and go join the herd at the check out desk. _________________ Bugger me, I hear oil's runnin out mate!
Posted: Tue Jul 01, 2008 4:03 pm Post subject: Re: Howcome gas is $5.44/gal in India, and people lined up??
Firstly a car is or atleast used to be a luxury for almost everyone in India, something you could hope to buy by the time you were 40, if you lived moderately and saved a lot of money in your early years. A car might easily cost your entire wages for 3-5 years. Even then the cost of gas relative to your income limited your usage of the car to just weekly trips to the grocery store, perhaps eating out twice a month and maybe a visit to a friend or relative across town. Taking a road trip in a car was totally out of the question!!
I remember my dad getting a new job about 15 years ago; it came with a car and a driver and a fuel allowance. Suddenly we seemed privelegded, being able to drive 200 miles to visit my grandparents.
Though that scenario has changed for a significant portion of the Indian middle class with the economic growth of the past 15 years, whose car usuage seems to mirror the west. I am in my 20s now and every one of my friends has a car.
But I would venture to say that for most Indians who have access to motorized transport (there are probably perhaps half who dont at all), the scenario is still as I describe above. _________________ I play the cards I'm dealt, though I sometimes bluff.
Posted: Tue Jul 01, 2008 4:30 pm Post subject: Re: Howcome gas is $5.44/gal in India, and people lined up??
$5.44 is the new $0.50
Indians don't have to commute up & down 680 every day to Silicon Valley. They're all telecommuters. _________________ People first, then things, then dollars.
There will be enslavement & cannibalism.
Joined: Dec 18, 2004 Posts: 4053 Location: One Mile From the Columbia River
Posted: Tue Jul 01, 2008 5:16 pm Post subject: Re: Howcome gas is $5.44/gal in India, and people lined up??
mrobert wrote:
I filled up today at almost $7/gallon or so.
Yeah, and Romania isn't falling apart (yet). This is perfect anecdotal evidence that people can withstand much higher gas prices without chaos ensuing.
So, those of you in North America should be getting ready for $10.00 gas fairly soon and then a bit later, $15.00 gas. That 'might' start creating some significant demand destruction in wealthier nations. But obviously $5.00 and $10.00 gas isn't significantly stifling demand. _________________ Everything is Impermanent. Shakyamuni Buddha
Posted: Tue Jul 01, 2008 5:41 pm Post subject: Re: Howcome gas is $5.44/gal in India, and people lined up??
Around here, people drive little 1.4L sh*tcans
And people will just stop paying their centralized heating bills and other due taxes since nobody enforces them, and driving can go ahead. The government will then find methods of further taxing those that actually pay and have money (like cigarette prices went up today due to new taxes) and the show can continue.
We don't yet have a real estate bubble fueled economy. Do you consider house prices that exceed those in the US and Europe, in a country where the average wage is $300, overinflated? Nah! The economy is healthy and booming, propelled by the real-estate.
Experts still see room for prices to go up, 20-30% percent each year, for the next 10 years.
There is a demand for at least 500.000 new houses, in country inhabited by 19 million people, out of which 80% are homeowners.
This is absolutely correct. Right?
The fact that the stock market is down 50%, liquidity is very small, and foreign investors left the market, is nothing unusual.
When this one hits the wall ... it's gonna be hard.
Imagine a country where people blame the foreign exchange rate ... on the government!
We won't have a subprime crisis at all. Do you think a bunch of people who took out loans far exceeding their possibilities, in foreign currencies, to buy real estate, hoping that the price will go up, and the foreign currency down ... make it a risky business? Neah!
You get around $1500 to buy a new car, if you have a car that is 30 years old, and take it to the scrapyard.
There is ABSOLUTELY no problem if you don't pay your parking ticket, car taxes, fines, etc! There are a lot of people like me, who will pay them, and who can be further taxed. They just point the finger at us, blaming us for everything, and then taxing us. The masses are happy.
We sold $10 billion worth of oil reserves + a 50% stake in the national oil company, for $500 million.
All the above are not anecdotal. I justed quoted some of today's news _________________ capitalism *is* fun blog
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