Quote:
Originally Posted by rrskylar
More BS, with higher gasoline prices in Europe people have adjusted to spending more on fuel with their disposable income, gasoline, home heating, food are all essentials where the laws of supply and demand argument doesn’t fly.
And I already have mentioned there are lot more public transportation alternatives in Europe that don’t exist here, how about increasing the amount of public transportation instead of penalizing people from getting from one place to another!
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Stop with the nonsense -- supply and demand does apply to essential goods. They just have a more inelastic demand curve, and because they are not substitute-able, price movements tend to result in greater changes to personal behavior than for easily substitute goods. When the price of gas goes up, because there is no substitute, you conserve gas. You do this by either driving less, or driving a more fuel efficient vehicle. Both of which Europeans do to a comparatively much greater degree than North Americans.
And you are kind of shooting yourself in the foot with the public transit argument. In Europe, gas taxes fund a very large portion of the public transit systems in many countries -- how do you think they pay for those kind of things. Basically high gas prices and car ownership costs, provide an incentive for people to change their behaviors and and use public transit which is in part funded by the high gas taxes.
You are basically arguing yourself in a circle.