Modern Vespa

It's fallin a bit because of the olympics that is to be held in China. China has demanded that people ride their cars every other day or something like that to help with the smog for the olympics, thus the demand for gas isn't as high as normal.

I can guarantee that once the olympics are over, gas will sky rocket to a record high.

I saw a funny commericial on TV. IT was advertising new cars, and it opened by talking about how people care so much about fuel economy, carbon footprints, etc. I was very surprised to see that the answer in the commercial were all large vehicles. 20 MPG in big letters across the screen, like that's the best you can get. It was a ridiculous commercial. Save gas by buying a huge truck, it's better than the rest at 20 mpg!

I don't think if you are young it is a problem because you have the opportunity to avoid debt. Those people who are in the most trouble are those who are some way into a career and have incurred debts. These people are in serious trouble, not the young.

I have worked in finance and have never taken out loans. I see people who do. They have SUVs which are financed, their home mortgages are outrageously expensive. They draw money out of their homes by remortgaging, and they get a new car on HP every two years. Financially they are about two paychecks away from being out on the street. No savings, nothing except obligations to banks to meet. They inevitably have several credit cards too.

In that context, gas/petrol prices are pretty small, but if you have to drive every day to a job so that you can pay off your debt in a car that is costing you more and more, then that is very tough. I might be able to tolerate that if it was just me - but if you had a family the pressure would be significant.

Youth with no credit cards or a mortgage sounds pretty good to me!

[quote="cdscoot"] I was simply asking whether there was anyone who might be regretting investing in a Vespa in order to save money when gas prices are falling.

Oh, and if it makes any difference I live in Maryland, and Pennsylvania.
I can give you my exact address if you're interested in visiting me.

and I'm ecstatic prices are falling.

I can't wait till they go back to $.59.9

Happy as hell about falling prices. For myself I could care less as I have any price covered at the moment. The happiness is for those who are really in sad shape with the high prices. One may scoff at the newer pickup and SUV owners for wasting fuel, but I believe that a lot of those owners are pretty well off and are able to buy something more efficient if need be, not to mention that many NEED a larger vehicle. Some of those owners don't care as they are writing off gas as a business expense (this includes farmers whose family vehicles often use 'farm fuel' - gas not diesel which may be tinted). I'm happy for all those really poor workers and their family members (farm and otherwise) who inherit as very used the oldest vehicles that were popular before the present. One may include the elderly who have an old irreplaceable vehicle and the very young on a tight budget. You might think of others, too, who can not possibly do anything to escape the fuel prices, not with a bus, bicycle, feet, or moped. Those people are more important than all the hype about peak oil, the environment, or whatever in the shorter term. Last, in case anyone forgot, we supposedly live in a free country.

I have to admitt I have mixed feelings. I saw people in my world making some pretty healthy lifestyle changes due to high gas prices. I like seeing them go down, but I do hope that people don't just jump back into driving their big cars around. In my office people started riding bikes, scooters, the bus, etc. All good choices.

The price of fuel always fluctuates in the summer (US summer).
I'm always amazed at how nobody ever seems to remember the patterns that it followed just the summer before.

And I really hate the stupid conspiracy theorists that say the fix is in for election time. No matter which side of the political divide one is on, this trope always seems to get trotted out to explain market forces they don't (or won't attempt to) understand.

The price per gallon will be up next summer for sure.
And the people who just bought new SUVs in January (got a great year-end deal!) will be bitching as usual by Memorial day, and calmly doing 90 tugging their boats and what not by Labor day.

Couldn't have said this better.