Why are you paying an exorbitant amount of money for fuels?

Yeah, I understand inflation but what's going on now is ridiculous. I don't expect to be able to feed a family of 4 for 20 bucks in 2021, however, I do expect to be able to feed my damn self for 20 bucks in 2021. Before I was able to make a decent meal to last me for multiple days on a 20 dollar bill. Baked pasta was my go to. Ground beef, cheese, eggs, pasta, sauce, etc, about 5 meals. Now with the price of meat and dairy it really is almost cheaper for me to just order a family dinner special at the local pizza joint and eat on that for the week instead.

Luckily for me I'm able to get a lot food on my own without the need of a grocery store if I so desire. I get fresh eggs at will from neighbors with chickens and I can pull out an infinite number of fish from the local lakes and rivers. My local hunting buddies are always willing to drop of pounds of whatever the latest kill was to fill my freezer. Thats fortunate for me though, not everyone lives like this and most folks are stuck relying on the grocery store and having to pay whatever price is on the shelf.

 

Gas is going up but now that you mentioned it I wonder if it's actually going up above what it "should" be or if we've just gotten used to gas being lower than it should be in the first place due to the various economic factors. Even with the current gas prices it's just not financially sensible for me to purchase an electric vehicle. I need a truck with 4wd, my options are pretty much that Tesla truck and supposedly Ford and Chevy are coming out with an electric truck in the coming years. All of these things will cost at a minimum $60,000+. I spend about $200 per month on fuel for my trucks and they are both paid off. For the price of a new electric truck I could pay for gas in my current trucks for the next 25 years. Even if gas jumps up to 6 bucks a gallon I can still buy over 16 years worth of gas for the price of a new electric truck. So in realty I wouldn't break even and start "saving" anything until at least the year 2037 at the earliest even with increasing gas prices.

Not to mention the other costs associated with owning these things. I'm reading the average electric car battery needs to be replaced after about 10 years costing anywhere from $5,000-$15,000 bucks let alone the other mechanical issues I'm sure they have as all vehicles have. Plus based on the way even newer gas vehicles are made I'm pretty sure DIY maintenance for something like a Tesla is out of the question for the home garage mechanic. Meanwhile I can take my old beater Ranger apart with little more than standard hand tools meaning I can do the repairs myself. I don't like crap that I have to take to a specialized dealership for basic routine maintenance that they can charge ridiculous prices over.

Just not worth it right now. Too expensive and no real benefit to me and the incentives aren't good enough. As you said these things need to come way down in price and be as widely available as an old beater truck before I even look their direction. Plus that tax credit thing is a joke. I don't like "up to" type tax credits, write me a check for $7,500 regardless of how much my tax bill is. Then do that every year I own the thing and not just a one and done and then maybe we'll talk lol.

 

Yup, same with wanting to pay for other nations to import their natural resources to you instead of using your own because you don't want to piss off the local Caribou by drilling for oil and gas in their "home".

There is no having your cake and eating it too. If folks are serious about climate change and/or run away inflation then they need to be willing to make some personal sacrifices on a large scale. You aren't getting cheap fossil fuels unless you are willing to screw up some natural habitats. You aren't getting cheap goods unless you're willing to outsource manufacturing to cheap slave labor countries. American businesses are just that, businesses, and American workers just cost too much to employ compared to the third world. If folks are expecting to be able to bring all manufacturing and production back to US soil and still pay the same price for consumer goods then they're crazy.

 

Yeah but unfortunately that's the world we live in. Whether any of us like it or not the government runs the country and governments run the world. And in modern 21st century society we are especially beholden to government and other large corporations for every day life. Gone are the days of our American ancestors centuries ago to where they could carve out a nearly self sufficient life in the rural parts of America with little to no government involvement. Nowadays everything is so intertwined we've inadvertently given big corporations and government near monarchial power of individual citizens.

If the government says they are implementing a 500% tax on gas staring next year then what exactly are you going to do about it except complain? You can't refine your own gasoline and most of us NEED gasoline to power our vehicles to get to work or school or the grocery store. There is no riding your horse to work anymore, some can walk or ride bikes but millions live too far to do that or in too extreme of climates. The government could come out and claim they are combating climate change by implementing a 500% tax on meat and dairy starting next year and there is nothing most people can do about it except go vegan and complain. I could still get meat but not everybody has the ability to take their truck a few miles away and bag an animal and bring it home to process. And even with that the government could just flat out ban hunting of certain game animals then what am I supposed to do?

The only real thing people could do in situations like that is ban together and revolt and hope to win. The thing is that the government isn't stupid by any means they know how to control the people. They make changes slowly and gradually to where the majority of people always say "well it's not THAT big of a deal, at least not big enough to where I'll do anything about it". Then one day you wake up and realize you're paying 20 bucks a pound for ground beef and 8 bucks a gallon for gas and longing for the "good old days" where you only had to pay 5 bucks a gallon for gas.

All in a world to where Google could choose to shut down their servers tomorrow and cripple the entire nations economy and hold it hostage at will because they have become that integral in our society and they have that much power now.

I've always said for every single government law or mandate or regulation that they pass giving themselves more authority it should automatically revoke 5 previous ones reducing their authority further down until we get back to the actual amount of power and authority the government is supposed to have. But folks keep voting for the same thing so they must be ok with it so who am I to judge.