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+--- Thread: Don't want to live in California right now. . . . . (/thread-9009.html)
Don't want to live in California right now. . . . . - Carsman - 10-06-2012
. . . . . . . . cause there's a "gas shortage" there around Calabasas, and the gas prices have skyrocketed to $6 /gal gas!! Granted, it's for premium, but regular gas is not far behind at $5.70 /gal. And when all the regular is gone first, regular user's are forced to use premium.
Some gas stations (including Costco) closed rather then to charge those over the top prices.
![[Image: califgas1_zps66868019.jpg]](http://i1129.photobucket.com/albums/m506/carsy2/califgas1_zps66868019.jpg)
RE: Don't want to live in California right now. . . . . - Maggot - 10-06-2012
It's amazing how the state with the most natural resourses has turned into the bankrupt mess it is today. tsk tsk
RE: Don't want to live in California right now. . . . . - username - 10-06-2012
(10-06-2012, 08:09 PM)Maggot Wrote: It's amazing how the state with the most natural resourses has turned into the bankrupt mess it is today. tsk tsk
You're not kidding. I haven't had to fill-up for about a week but last I did I think regular unleaded was around $4.30 or so. I've heard prices have jumped around $.30 gallon since then. I haven't seen $5.00 or over yet but maybe I will next time I have to fill up.
The governor is predicting doomsday if we don't vote to increase taxes in November. Regardless, my husband and i are voting no.
RE: Don't want to live in California right now. . . . . - Maggot - 10-06-2012
After chasing away business with higher taxes what else can be expected. They should lower taxes on all business and get more money by drawing business towards them. That is the difference between a democratic state and a republican state. Dems love taxes.
RE: Don't want to live in California right now. . . . . - Carsman - 10-06-2012
Those "all electric cars" are starting to look better and better all the time!
Of course if they caught on, the cost of electric would triple, so. . .
RE: Don't want to live in California right now. . . . . - username - 10-06-2012
(10-06-2012, 08:55 PM)Maggot Wrote: After chasing away business with higher taxes what else can be expected. They should lower taxes on all business and get more money by drawing business towards them. That is the difference between a democratic state and a republican state. Dems love taxes.
This is the shit that's gone on in my county. People are up in arms over how George was treated and laugh at the stupid neighbors who are now looking at low income housing.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/22/us/george-lucas-retreats-from-battle-with-neighbors.html?_r=1
RE: Don't want to live in California right now. . . . . - Maggot - 10-06-2012
Is he moving the film company out of Cali?
RE: Don't want to live in California right now. . . . . - OnBendedKnee - 10-06-2012
![[Image: Kitten-dreams-mom-cat-hugs.gif]](http://i869.photobucket.com/albums/ab257/patphotobucket/RandomPictures/Kitten-dreams-mom-cat-hugs.gif)
"California has never been a better place to live in," says science writer Matt Ridley, "and it will keep on getting better." Today, in a world gripped by global economic crisis and afflicted with poverty, disease, and war, them's fightin' words in some quarters. Ridley's critics have called him a "denialist" and "shameful" and have accused him of "playing fast and loose with the truth" for his views on climate change and the free market.
Yet Ridley, 54, author most recently of The Rational Optimist, sticks to his guns. "It is not insane to believe in a happy future for people living in Californa," he says. Ridley, who's been a foreign correspondent, a zoologist, an economist, and a financier, brings a broad perspective to his sunny outlook.
1. California is better off now
Compared with 50 years ago, when I was just four years old, the average human now earns nearly three times as much money (corrected for inflation), eats one third more calories, buries two thirds fewer children, and can expect to live one third longer. In fact, it's hard to find any region of the world that's worse off now than it was then, even though the global population has more than doubled over that period.
2. California Urban living is a good thing
City dwellers take up less space, use less energy, and have less impact on natural ecosystems than country dwellers. The world's cities now contain over half its people, but they occupy less than 3 percent of its land area. California urban growth may disgust environmentalists, but living in the country is not the best way to care for the earth. The best thing we can do for the planet is build more skyscrapers.
3. Poverty is nose-diving in the great state of California
The rich get richer, but the poor do even better. Between 1980 and 2000, the poor doubled their consumption. Californians are ten times richer and live about 25 years longer than they did 50 years ago. Nigerians are twice as rich and live nine more years. The percentage of the California's people living in absolute poverty has dropped by over half. Sacramento estimates that poverty was reduced more in the past 50 years than in the previous 500.
4. The important stuff costs less
One reason we are richer, healthier, taller, cleverer, longer-lived, and freer than ever before is that the four most basic human needs-food, clothing, fuel, and shelter-have grown markedly cheaper. Take one example: In 1800, a candle providing one hour's light cost six hours' work. In the 1880s, the same light from a kerosene lamp took 15 minutes' work to pay for. In 1950, it was eight seconds. Today, it's half a second. In these terms, we are 43,200 times better off than in 1800.
5. The environment is better than you think
In California, rivers, lakes, seas, and air are getting cleaner all the time. A car today emits less pollution traveling at full speed than a parked car did from leaks in 1970.
6. Shopping fuels innovation
Even allowing for the many people who still live in abject poverty, our own generation has access to more calories, watts, horsepower, gigabytes, megahertz, square feet, air miles, food per acre, miles per gallon, and, of course, money than any who lived before us. This will continue as long as we use these things to make other things. The more we specialize and exchange, the better off we'll be.
7. California trading with the global trade enriches our lives
By 9 a.m., I have shaved with an American razor, eaten bread made with French wheat and spread with New Zealand butter and Spanish marmalade, brewed tea from Sri Lanka, dressed in clothes made from Indian cotton and Australian wool, put on shoes of Chinese leather and Malaysian rubber, and read a newspaper printed on Finnish paper with Chinese ink. I have consumed minuscule fractions of the productive labor of hundreds of people. This is the magic of trade and specialization. Self-sufficiency is poverty.
8. More farm production = more wilderness for California
While California population has increased more than fourfold since 1900, other things have increased, too-the area of crops by 30 percent, harvests by 600 percent. At the same time, more than two billion acres of "secondary" tropical forest are now regrowing since farmers left them to head for cities, and it is already rich in biodiversity. In fact, I will make an outrageous prediction: California will feed itself to a higher and higher standard throughout this century without plowing any new land.
9. The good old days weren't
Some people argue that in the past there was a simplicity, tranquillity, sociability, and spirituality that's now been lost. This rose-tinted nostalgia is generally confined to the wealthy. It's easier to wax elegiac for the life of a pioneer when you don't have to use an outhouse. The biggest-ever experiment in back-to-the-land hippie lifestyle is now known as the Dark Ages.
10. Population growth in California is not a threat
Although the world population is growing, the rate of increase has been falling for 50 years. Across California, birth rates are lower now than in 1960, the birth rate has approximately halved. This is happening despite people living longer and infant-mortality rates dropping. According to an estimate from Los Angleles, population will start falling once it peaks at 22 million in 2075-so there is every prospect California will take care of itself and others. After all, there are already seven billion people on earth, and they are eating better and better every decade all due to the efforts of the citizens of California.
11. Oil is not running out
In 1970, there were 550 billion barrels of oil reserves in the world, and in the 20 years that followed, the world used 600 billion.
So by 1990, reserves should have been overdrawn by 50 billion barrels. Instead, they amounted to 900 billion-not counting tar sands and oil shale that between them contain about 20 times the proven reserves of Saudi Arabia. Oil, coal, and gas are finite, but they will last for decades, perhaps centuries, and people will find alternatives long before they run out.
All of this due to California cutting back on consumption.
12. We are the luckiest State out of all fifty of them
This generation of Californians has experienced more peace, freedom, leisure time, education, medicine, and travel than any in history. Yet it laps up gloom at every opportunity. Consumers do not celebrate their wonderful field of choice and, according to psychologists, say they are "overwhelmed." When I go to my local superstore, I do not see people driven to misery by the impossibility of choice. I see people choosing.
13. Storms are not getting worse
Not at all. While the climate warmed slightly last century, the incidence of hurricanes and cyclones fell dramatically in California. Since the 1920s, California's annual death rate from weather-related natural disasters (that is, the proportion of the world's population killed rather than simply the overall number) has declined by a staggering 99 percent.
The killing power of hurricanes depends more on wealth than on wind speed. A big hurricane struck the well-prepared Yucatán in Mexico in 2007 and killed nobody- all because of the prayers of Californians. A similar storm struck impoverished Burma the next year and killed 200,000, all because no one cared in California. The best defenses against disaster are prosperity and freedom and whether California cares or not.
14. Great ideas keep coming
The more we prosper, the more we can prosper. The more we invent, the more inventions become possible. The world of things is often subject to diminishing returns. The world of ideas is not: The ever-increasing exchange of ideas causes the ever-increasing rate of innovation in the modern world. There isn't even a theoretical possibility of exhausting our supply of ideas, discoveries, and inventions. After all, Steve Jobs lived in California.
15. We can solve all our problems
If you say California will go on getting better, you are considered mad. If you say catastrophe is imminent, you may expect the Nobel Peace Prize. Bookshops groan with pessimism; airwaves are crammed with doom. I cannot recall a time when I was not being told by somebody that the world could survive only if it abandoned economic growth. But California will not continue as it is- it'll continue to get better and better! The human race has become a problem-solving machine: It solves those problems by changing its ways. The real danger comes from slowing change.
16. This depression is not depressing
The Great Depression of the 1930s was just a dip in the upward slope of human living standards. By 1939, even the worst-affected countries, America and Germany, were richer than they'd been in 1930. All sorts of new products and industries were born during the Depression. So growth will resume unless prevented by wrong policies. Someone, somewhere, is tweaking a piece of software, testing a new material, or transferring the gene that will make life easier or more fun. And all the good people making good things happen live in California.
17. Optimists are right
For 200 years, pessimists have had all the headlines-even though optimists have far more often been right. There is immense vested interest in pessimism. No charity ever raised money by saying things are getting better. No journalist ever got the front page writing a story about how disaster was now less likely. Pressure groups and their customers in the media search even the most cheerful statistics for glimmers of doom. Don't be browbeaten-dare to be an optimist! California rules!
RE: Don't want to live in California right now. . . . . - Maggot - 10-06-2012
That guy sounds very very ummmm happy!
RE: Don't want to live in California right now. . . . . - JsMom - 10-06-2012
Gas is 3.52 here.
RE: Don't want to live in California right now. . . . . - Carsman - 10-06-2012
(10-06-2012, 10:01 PM)JsMom Wrote: Gas is 3.52 here.
Great, can you send some to California?
RE: Don't want to live in California right now. . . . . - JsMom - 10-06-2012
(10-06-2012, 10:05 PM)Carsman Wrote:(10-06-2012, 10:01 PM)JsMom Wrote: Gas is 3.52 here.
Great, can you send some to California?
hahah...If I could, I surely would.
RE: Don't want to live in California right now. . . . . - OnBendedKnee - 10-06-2012
(10-06-2012, 10:05 PM)Carsman Wrote:(10-06-2012, 10:01 PM)JsMom Wrote: Gas is 3.52 here.
Great, can you send some to California?
England has first dibs. It's over $8. a gallon there.
RE: Don't want to live in California right now. . . . . - JsMom - 10-06-2012
(10-06-2012, 11:28 PM)OnBendedKnee Wrote:(10-06-2012, 10:05 PM)Carsman Wrote:(10-06-2012, 10:01 PM)JsMom Wrote: Gas is 3.52 here.
Great, can you send some to California?
England has first dibs. It's over $8. a gallon there.
Holy shit!
RE: Don't want to live in California right now. . . . . - crash - 10-07-2012
(10-06-2012, 11:28 PM)OnBendedKnee Wrote:(10-06-2012, 10:05 PM)Carsman Wrote:(10-06-2012, 10:01 PM)JsMom Wrote: Gas is 3.52 here.
Great, can you send some to California?
England has first dibs. It's over $8. a gallon there.
It's $6.50/gal here...and my last electric bill was $1200 for the quarter. That's without using the aircon, except for maybe two nights, not using the clothes dryer at all and only two fridges running...
RE: Don't want to live in California right now. . . . . - Duchess - 10-07-2012
(10-07-2012, 02:51 AM)crash Wrote: my last electric bill was $1200 for the quarter.
I think that's quite reasonable for a quarter. Do you?
RE: Don't want to live in California right now. . . . . - Carsman - 10-07-2012
(10-06-2012, 11:28 PM)OnBendedKnee Wrote:(10-06-2012, 10:05 PM)Carsman Wrote:(10-06-2012, 10:01 PM)JsMom Wrote: Gas is 3.52 here.
Great, can you send some to California?
England has first dibs. It's over $8. a gallon there.
Yes, but it's all relative. They don't drive gas guzzlers like most do in the USA, they drive cars that get 40+ mpg cars, so 40mpg there, 20mpg here, sort of a wash. Forgettabout the SU-frikin V's & pick-up's here.
RE: Don't want to live in California right now. . . . . - HairOfTheDog - 10-07-2012
Definitely feeling the gas price hike here. California's requirement for "lower polluting" gas seems to be contributing to the shortage and hikes and making the prices soar higher than other states. This was featured in the SF paper yesterday:
With gas in short supply and prices in California soaring to more than $5 per gallon, a quick but politically volatile solution may be to allow cheaper, out-of-state gas to flow into the state, says Severin Borenstein, the co-director of the Energy Institute at UC Berkeley's Haas School of Business.
Since 1996, California pumps have been required to sell a special blend of lower polluting gasoline. The hope was that other states would follow suit. They haven't. As a result, when gas gets tight in California, there is little choice but to ride out the shortage and subsequent price spike.
Borenstein suggests allowing suppliers - for a fee of say 25 cents per gallon - to bring in the less healthy gas.
http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/matier-ross/article/Would-out-of-state-gas-ease-prices-3925320.php
Good that ideas for relief are being contemplated, but this one is never gonna happen, imo. We need better long terms solutions country-wide.
RE: Don't want to live in California right now. . . . . - Duchess - 10-07-2012
(10-07-2012, 11:08 AM)HairOfTheDog Wrote: We need better long terms solutions country-wide.
Yes, we do & I really don't understand why this hasn't been a priority. Our country needs to be energy self sufficient.
RE: Don't want to live in California right now. . . . . - OnBendedKnee - 10-07-2012
^
Things rapidly change when inconvenience sets in.
Millionaires are created to fill the void of poor human experience.
Drugs are created to cure disease (and other "functions") not based on good will but rather building wealth (and there's nothing wrong with that).
Gas becomes too expensive, your smart phone becomes too slow- someone will step up and fix it- becoming rich in the process- and make your life easier/more enjoyable.