Posted on 08/15/2006 9:32:24 AM PDT by LouAvul
Rising fuel costs are being blamed for everything from soaring utility costs to lower retail sales and higher airline tickets. And now, experts say high gas prices could reshape U.S. cities.
"Most analysts believe that crude oil prices in the $50s and $60s will be with us for some time," says Stuart Gabriel, director of the Lusk Center, a think tank at the University of Southern California devoted to studying real estate forces and trends. There's even talk of crude hitting $100 per barrel -- or 10 times what it sold for in the summer of 2005.
Once the realization soaks into the American consciousness that high-cost gas is here to stay, Gabriel predicts, those high commute prices will pull more homeowners -- even young families -- to live in central cities and create a push for more public transportation.
(Excerpt) Read more at realestate.msn.com ...
So ole Alex Stewart was right about Garden City!
I'm in flyover country as well, but high in the Colorado Rockies.
My specialty is COBOL - DB2.
Another green-screen dinosaur! Mine is AS/400 Cobol.
I've been working over modems since 1986. My office is in my house, so my commute is nonexistent. I'll retire in place in the next couple of years (I'm 64), and finally take out my last business phone line (I once had 5).
My wife and I moved out of SoCal in 1995, and it's been great. A couple of my kids still live there, and I really hate going back to visit. I wouldn't move back. It's a quality of life thing...
"Who can honestly call $3/gal gas expensive in todays economy? It's equivalent to the $0.22/gal of the sixties."
How do you figure that? If you say gasoline was $.022 a gallon all the way back in 1960 and then adjust that price for inflation using the Consumer Price Index, it would be $1.51 today. Gas prices peaked at an annual average of $1.35 in 1980, which adjusted for inflation would come to $3.32 today, so gasoline was actually more expensive in 1980 then it is today, but not by much. And back then people were complaining about it like crazy, buying mopeds and teeny Japanese cars. They certainly thought it was expensive back then. Personally, I think it's expensive today. If you can convince yourself it's cheap, more power to you. All I know is that it wasn't too long ago that we were paying half what we pay for gas today and we had gotten used to that. Now high gas prices are having a serious impact on folks who have to drive a lot but don't make a lot of money.
Here's a link to to a CPI inflation calculator: http://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl
It will increase at least till it hits 10 billion.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.