SALON

Friday, Apr 13, 2012 2:55 PM UTC

America’s gas entitlement problem

Even at $4 a gallon, Americans are paying far, far less at the pump than the rest of the world

By

Topics: GlobalPost, Gas Prices, ,

America's gas entitlement problemGasoline prices of more than $4 are seen at a gas station on the south end of The Strip, Tuesday, March 20, 2012, in Las Vegas (Credit: AP Photo/Julie Jacobson)
This article originally appeared on GlobalPost.

ORONO, Maine — If you follow the news in the United States, you’re in for a long spring and summer. The rising price of gasoline at the pump will be the focus of extensive coverage, analyzing causes, parsing political arguments over blame and solutions, and telling stories of how Americans are dealing with it.

Global PostIt is hard to avoid gas price lamentations in Time magazine, The Wall Street Journal, and my local daily paper. American complaints about gas prices are as natural as the return of the robin’s song. The truth is that even as gas approaches $4 a gallon, Americans have little to whine about. To be sure, $4 a gallon is more painful than $3, but in a global sense, what Americans’ pay at the pump is a bargain.

In middle-income Turkey, for example, a gallon of gas costs upwards of $10. Impoverished Eritreans pay about the same. A friend of mine in Tel Aviv tells me a gallon there fetches about $8. A gallon of petrol in the United Kingdom was up around $8.40 a gallon in March, an all-time high.

High gas prices have persisted for years in other countries. Americans have been accustomed to much lower prices, which makes the current spike a rarity and the cause for coverage and complaints.

Several years ago, my wife and I paid about $4 a gallon to fill our rental car in Cyprus. The high price at the pump, the prevalence of narrow roads and a modest national income level have persuaded Cypriot drivers to shun SUVs; our rental car was barely large enough for both of us and the stick shift.

Americans can look longingly to Qatar, a country awash in energy wealth where a gallon of gas costs about a buck. Or consider Venezuela, where oil is produced by a government-owned company and President Hugo Chavez keeps local gasoline prices around 12 cents a gallon as a benefit to the nation’s citizens.

Another way to think about gas prices is as a comparison to income. On that scale, Americans are getting a real bargain. In Cairo, where gas is $1.20, millions of Egyptians live on a few dollars a day.

Another factor in understanding gasoline costs is the choices Americans make about their personal transportation. SUVs, multi-family cars, the long commute from suburb to city, the lack of greater investment in public transportation are all factors that make getting around expensive, whether gas is $3 or $4 a gallon. The choices our public officials make to invest more in highways than subways reinforce the American sense of entitlement that the open road belongs to them. Budapest and Cairo, but not Miami or Houston, have functioning subway networks.

The American car culture limits my own choices. In rural Maine, where my wife and I live, public transportation is not widely available. We share a car. She drives a few miles to her job and I walk to mine. Like other Americans, many of our neighbors carpool, bike, walk or, if there is a bus route nearby, they go that way.

The rising price of gas is a seductive subject for journalists. It’s an economic story, a political story, a global story, a war story, a foreign policy story, a point-the-finger story, a human story.

Some perspective is in order. Journalists should reinforce the reality that our driving habits influence high prices, that our global neighbors pay a lot more than we do and that as a country we have to stop perpetuating the myth that we are entitled to low gas prices.

More GlobalPost

More Justin D. Martin.

Next Article

Related Stories

More Related Stories

Featured Slide Shows

The week in 10 pics

close X
  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11
  • Lisa Montgomery embraces her nephew Thursday after a tornado tore apart her home in Cleburne, Texas. The twister killed six people and destroyed entire swaths of the North Texas town.
    Credit: AP/LM Otero

  • Jack McMahon, the defense attorney for abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell, speaks outside the Criminal Justice Center in Philadelphia Tuesday. His client was convicted of killing three babies in his clinic, and will serve multiple life sentences.
    Credit: AP/Matt Rourke

  • A photo taken Monday captures Vice President Joe Biden's response to a Milwaukee second-grader's innovative proposal to end America's epidemic of gun violence. This guy!
    Credit: AP/Jenny Aicher

  • Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., flanked by a grouper-eyed Michele Bachmann, addresses the IRS' admission that it targeted Tea Party groups in advance of the 2012 election. In an op-ed for CNN Thursday, the Kentucky senator slammed the president for his faux outrage.
    Credit: AP/Molly Riley

  • Ousted IRS chief Steven Miller is sworn in on Capitol Hill Friday. Miller testified before the House Ways and Means Committee on the extra scrutiny the agency gave conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status.
    Credit: AP/J. Scott Applewhite

  • Attorney General Eric Holder pauses as he testifies on Capitol Hill before the House Judiciary Committee Wednesday. Holder is under fire, among other things, for the Justice Department's gathering of phone records at the Associated Press.
    Credit: AP/Carolyn Kaster

  • O.J. Simpson sits during an evidentiary hearing at Clark County District Court in Las Vegas, Nev., Thursday. Simpson, who is currently serving a nine-to-33-year sentence in state prison for armed robbery and kidnapping, is using a writ of habeas corpus to seek a new trial.
    Credit: AP/Las Vegas Review-Journal/Jeff Scheid

  • Major Tom to ground control: On Sunday astronaut Chris Hadfield recorded the first music video from space, a cover of David Bowie's "Space Oddity."
    Credit: AP/NASA/Chris Hadfield

  • When it rains it pours. President Barack Obama speaks during a news conference Thursday with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, inexplicably inspiring an #umbrellagate Twitter meme.
    Credit: AP/Jacquelyn Martin

  • A smoke plume rises high above a road block at the intersection of County A and Ross Road east of Solon Springs, Wis., Tuesday. No injuries were reported, but the the wildfire caused evacuations across northwestern Wisconsin.
    Credit: AP/The Duluth News-Tribune/Clint Austin

  • Recent Slide Shows

  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11

Related Videos

Comments

 73 Comments

Comment Preview

Your name will appear as username

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href=""> <b> <em> <strong> <i> <blockquote>

Salon is proud to feature content from GlobalPost, an awarding-winning international news site that focuses on original reporting from journalists stationed around the world. GlobalPost combines traditional journalistic values with the power of new media to offer a fresh perspective on global developments.

follow salon

Most Read

Popular on Reddit

links from salon.com

vote
Journalists file suit against Manning's trial secrecy: Plaintiffs including Glenn Greenwald and Julian Assange demand press, public access to trial and documents
142 points143 points | comment
vote
Report: Nearly a quarter of Americans struggle to afford food
128 points129 points | 12 comments
vote
Kaitlyn Hunt refuses plea offer, will go to court over high school relationship - The 18-year-old rejected a deal that would have labeled her a sex offender and placed her under house arrest
120 points121 points | 86 comments
vote
Kaitlyn Hunt refuses plea offer, will go to court over high school relationship - The 18-year-old rejected a deal that would have labeled her a sex offender and placed her under house arrest
110 points111 points | 29 comments
vote
Ted Cruz against the world - How the Junior Senator is igniting the GOP civil war
76 points77 points | 19 comments

From Around the Web

Presented by Scribol
listener_new_rect The Listener: Chekhov's story mirrors Russia's own

Recommendations