A Quick Euro Poll

[aristide1]

1. How much does gas cost in your country?

2. Are you or do you even know anyone that is happy with the Euro?
(Everyone I have talked to says it's a disaster.)

3. Is there talk in your country of getting off the Euro?

Coming home this weekend diesel fuel prices ranged from $5.00 to $5.20 per US gallon. [~$1.32-1.37/liter] I suspected it would reach $5 by Memorial Day, it's here like 10 days early.

[spookmineer]

1. 1.55 euro per liter for regular, expected increase to 2 euro (Netherlands).
2. The complaints have stopped. The euro is stronger than the dollar whereas the guilder wasn't, but people fear the recession will transfer to Europe.
3.In the beginning there was, but people have adjusted.

[Aris]

National average in the states is $3.70 which is 2.35 euro

1.55 euro is $2.44. Man i remember back when gas was that cheep. That was like 2 or 3 years ago though. It was around $3 a gallon this time last year.

[spookmineer]

National average in the states is $3.70 which is 2.35 euro

1.55 euro is $2.44. Man i remember back when gas was that cheep. That was like 2 or 3 years ago though. It was around $3 a gallon this time last year.

A gallon is not a liter... I'm not 100% sure, but I think gas is still much cheaper in the US than in Europe...
I can drive about 600 km (375 ml) for about 65 euro... That's about 100 dollars for a full tank of gas, 375 miles.
A gallon here would cost 5.80 dollars.

[Vicotnik]

Regular gas is around 13.29 SEK per liter in Sweden right now. That's 2.26 USD.

Google says 1 US gallon = 3.78541178 liters so 8.54 USD per gallon in Sweden.

Diesel is around 14.19 SEK per liter (2.40 USD per liter, 9.11 USD per gallon)

[Plissken]

A gallon is not a liter

Yeah that's like $8/gallon.

[aristide1]

Here regular gas is at $4/gallon.

There are fewer speedboats on the river here. Just as well. There are better ways to spend an afternoon that making 50 gallons of gas disappear and ending up exactly where you started.

[mr. poopyhead]

1. 1.55 euro per liter for regular, expected increase to 2 euro (Netherlands).

holy crap... i thought $1.35 CAD per litre was a lot for diesel... man. i dunno why people here complain about gas prices. that's insane... i miss the days when diesel was cheaper than premium gas... heck. i miss the days when diesel was cheaper than REGULAR gas.

but of course, in most good european cities, there are tons of other GOOD options. bike, bus, subway, train... where i live, you HAVE to drive everywhere, unless you're unemployed and have all kinds of time to spare waiting for the bus that comes once every 30 mins... if you're lucky.

[dukla2000]

1) (Domestic house) Gas has just gone up to 2.69p/m3 (approx €0.034)
2) n/a
3) n/a

Diesel - national average £1.26/l (€1.59, US$2.49/l, US$9.42/US gallon)
Petrol - £1.14/l = €1.43 = US$2.26/l

[Matija]

(Domestic house) Gas has just gone up to 2.69p/m3 (approx €0.034)

That's stupidly cheap. 1m^3 is about 0.26€ here. Are you sure you weren't off by an order of magnitude?

[lor77]

Its around 1.3 euro per litter in Greece for the regular.
And prices are increasing day by day.

[FartingBob]

I work in a petrol station in England and prices here are 129.9 per litre for Diesel and 115.9 for unleaded. Works out at £4.91 per US gallon. Thats a ludicrous $9.73. I hate it when people in the US complain about paying 4 or 5 dollars a gallon.
Prices in the US are still cheap, they are just catching up to what europeans have been paying for years.

[dukla2000]

(Domestic house) Gas has just gone up to 2.69p/m3 (approx €0.034)

That's stupidly cheap. 1m^3 is about 0.26€ here. Are you sure you weren't off by an order of magnitude?

Well spotted - it is actually charged at 2.69p/kWh. My calorific value means I get about 10.8 kWh/m^3, so yes, should have said 29p/m^3. At €0.36/m^3 it reminds me of the phrase "rip-off Britain".

[aristide1]

But the US is 5000 kilometers wide.

The position that we're catching up to Europe is valid, but why does it have to be all at once? It had just reached $3/gallon a couple of years ago. In some country like Venezuela its still like 19 cents a gallon, can't recall which one. So the question is world wide as to what's going on.

Where's all the oil from Canadian shale?

Does anybody like the Euro? Not one positive word about it. Is Germany considering returning to the mark?

(Domestic house) Gas has just gone up to 2.69p/m3 (approx €0.034)

That's stupidly cheap. 1m^3 is about 0.26€ here. Are you sure you weren't off by an order of magnitude?

I thought it was a typo. So much for balance.

[jaganath]

Where's all the oil from Canadian shale?

extracting oil from oil shale is a long, tortuous and energy intensive process. all the oil sands production in Canada only adds up to just over 1m barrels per day, whereas a single field in Saudi (Ghawar) produces over 5mbpd and world demand is around 85mbpd. so it's a drop in the ocean, relatively speaking.

Does anybody like the Euro? Not one positive word about it. Is Germany considering returning to the mark?

The only countries considering abandoning the euro are the ones with weak economies and lots of public debt (ie Italy, Greece, etc). Strong economies are fine with the euro. Not that I think it is appropriate for the UK, of course.

[walle]

Does anybody like the Euro?.

It’s not a good thing to have the same currency (for obvious reasons) its very unwise, so no, I’m no fan of the Euro. Luckily for us we’re still using our own currency though.

[walle]

.....but to answer your question, yes, they do exist, most of them are called politicians.

[snark_be]

I don't have anything against the Euro. I'm not sure prices increased that much because of it. Maybe a little because sellers rounded to the next euro. But prices would have increased anyway, whatever the currency.

Euro makes it easy to travel across Europe, without having to remember to change currencies (that costs money too). Too bad I still have to take pounds when I go to the UK.

For the moment, it's quite interesting to buy in the US, with the current xrate with the dollar. Only if the package is not blocked by the customs, of course.

[floffe]

But the US is 5000 kilometers wide.

The position that we're catching up to Europe is valid, but why does it have to be all at once? It had just reached $3/gallon a couple of years ago. In some country like Venezuela its still like 19 cents a gallon, can't recall which one. So the question is world wide as to what's going on.

Yeah, and keeping the price so low costs their government at least $9 billion a year*, which is equivalent to 4% of their total GDP or 25% of public finances.

* if it requires a login, try randomnames with password randomname.


To get back on topic:

Does anybody like the Euro?.

Does anyone like any given currency? I hear the Euro is pretty popular among drug dealers, rappers and American actors

We're not in the Euro area, and I was one of those who voted against it in our referendum back in 2003, but if that was held today I'd vote for. Both currencies are stable enough, and the convenience of having a common currency would outweigh the negatives IMO.

[Mescalero]

1. I don't own a car so I'm not that informed about gas prices they tend to go up and down a lot. But here in Germany it's above 1.40€/l so thats about $8.35 per gallon. I think the big problem for Americans is that their whole infrastructure and the cars they own are still based on the assumption of cheap oil. I hear that many people buy compact cars now, like in Europe, but not everybody can afford to buy a new car right away.

2. I love the Euro and the EU. It's made trading and travelling a lot easier. Imagine you had to change currencies when you travel from New York to New Jersey or something. I hope the other EU countries join the Euro in the near future.

3. No one in Germany talks about getting out of the Euro.

[Paulus1]

1. approx. 1,57 EUR / 2,47 USD pr. liter regular (Denmark).
And it seems to be constantly going up.

2. n/a

3. No, but we are talking about joining the Euro. We will probably hold a referendum about it this fall.

[lm]

Did you know you can write this on google search:

1.5 euros per litre in dollars per gallon

And google will spew out an answer like this:

1.5 (Euros per litre) = 8.95041689 U.S. dollars per US gallon

That's around the price we pay in finland for gasoline.

1) I don't care if the price of gas increased further. There's so much useless driving. Around where I live, it's a fact that you can do 7km (4.4 miles) trips fastest on a bike, only second fastest on a car, and I don't need to go much further than that since my job and pretty much everything is near.

So what if your country is 5 thousand kilometers wide. How often you actually need to make that trip anyway and why?

2) Euro is way better than our old currency was. Our goverment used to decrease our currency's value against the other currencies when ever our forest industries couldn't keep up on the international competition anymore. Nowadays I can get more and more electronics for my money. And our forest industry actually has to work and increase their efficiency, if they fail to compete with other international companies.

3) Well of course the 70+ folk just can't figure out why such a change of currency had to be done during their lifetime. They can't figure out that at any point in time there will be old people who will have harder time to understand the new currency and converted prices.

The old system with a bazillion different currencies was crap. Would you really want to have different currencies for every United State of America?

[Greg F.]

I have seen demographic projections that would suggest that due to a low birth rate, the average age in Western Europe could be around 65 by the year 2045. You can't logically expect to run an economy with 65 year old people, so younger people will have to be brought in from somewhere and that somewhere will undoubtably be the Middle East or North Africa. Those people are predominately Muslim so the basic culture of Western Europe is bound to change over time. That would have not just economic, but far reaching political implications. Of course, that is just a projection.
A similar projection expects the Euro to be worth three US dollars in just three or four years, and that would be twice what it is right now. Another projection expects the Euro to be worth four US dollars in that same time frame.
That is actually not a good thing as it will virtually eliminate European manufactured goods from being exported to the USA. It will eliminate tourism from Americans.
So there are changes taking place and these are very interesting times in which we live.

[frostedflakes]

1. I don't own a car so I'm not that informed about gas prices they tend to go up and down a lot. But here in Germany it's above 1.40€/l so thats about $8.35 per gallon. I think the big problem for Americans is that their whole infrastructure and the cars they own are still based on the assumption of cheap oil. I hear that many people buy compact cars now, like in Europe, but not everybody can afford to buy a new car right away.

2. I love the Euro and the EU. It's made trading and travelling a lot easier. Imagine you had to change currencies when you travel from New York to New Jersey or something. I hope the other EU countries join the Euro in the near future.

3. No one in Germany talks about getting out of the Euro.

Yup, that's the big thing, our entire economy is based on this assumption. Even if you don't drive, you can't escape the consequences of more expensive oil. Food prices are going up, I'm sure shipping/postage rates will continue to increase, etc. I wonder if we'll start to see more people growing gardens and regions trying to become more self-sufficient agriculturally in an attempt to cut down on transportation costs.

Government needs to step in and do something IMO, maybe add a huge tax to oil futures to discourage speculators from investing in crude and artificially inflating the price. US cannot handle $8/gal gas, at least not this suddenly. Unlike in Europe, our public transportation is a joke, and for people who are barely living above the poverty level as it is, there's no way they can handle higher cost of living associated with rising gas prices.

[lm]

Even if you don't drive

I'm under the influence, that this isn't really an option in most of the US. Some friend of mine visited there (who don't have a car here in Finland) and they told me that it was impossible to get to the mall without a car, because there was no way to cross the street as a pedestrian, the only safe way was to drive.

[Cistron]

At €0.36/m^3 it reminds me of the phrase "rip-off Britain".

Wasn't there a lot of stir-up about this on the papers recently; remember flying across an article on the tube - "heating costs on average to increase to £1000 p.a."?

[frostedflakes]

Even if you don't drive

I'm under the influence, that this isn't really an option in most of the US. Some friend of mine visited there (who don't have a car here in Finland) and they told me that it was impossible to get to the mall without a car, because there was no way to cross the street as a pedestrian, the only safe way was to drive.

Was it across from a highway or something? Generally I think there are crosswalks and stuff even at pretty major roads, or an overpass of some sort that you can use to cross. The bigger problem is how spread out everything is. A person living in a large city (assuming they don't commute from the suburbs) can probably get by without a car, but for a lot of people it's a necessity.

[kickaha]

1. It's 1.5€/l, finally reached by diesel.

2. I am happy with it.
Cons: prices grew a lot, we have the feeling that everything doubled in price. We use to say that the official change 1€ = (about) 2000£ applies to salaries, while 1€ = 1000£ applies to prices. Easier to convert, isn't it?
Pros: definitely more stable currency, helps keep lower loan rates, and our public debt.

3. Yes, euro it's one of the common (and round-robin used) scapegoats to justify our (bad) economy. It's used referring to prices (obviously), suggested by politicians and repeated by people. No serious action taken, though.

[klankymen]

1. I don't own a car so I'm not that informed about gas prices they tend to go up and down a lot. But here in Germany it's above 1.40€/l so thats about $8.35 per gallon. I think the big problem for Americans is that their whole infrastructure and the cars they own are still based on the assumption of cheap oil. I hear that many people buy compact cars now, like in Europe, but not everybody can afford to buy a new car right away.

2. I love the Euro and the EU. It's made trading and travelling a lot easier. Imagine you had to change currencies when you travel from New York to New Jersey or something. I hope the other EU countries join the Euro in the near future.

3. No one in Germany talks about getting out of the Euro.

1. Over 1,50€ in fact.... which is currently $8.95USD per american gallon.

2. I too love the euro. So many people here always say.... "Oh my god, this beer costs 2,50€.... imagine paying 5 marks for a beer? What a rip-off!" and always convert prices to marks, and then say "oooh, that's so expensive" - I guess not everyone understands inflation and market forces.
But I think it's great. In fact I wish the damn britons would finally switch to the euro also, it would make things easier, considering britain is pretty much my second most visited european country.

3. Yep, no talks here.

[nick705]

But I think it's great. In fact I wish the damn britons would finally switch to the euro also, it would make things easier, considering britain is pretty much my second most visited european country.

I wouldn't bet on it happening any time soon.

If the UK were to join the Eurozone, it would mean UK interest rates being set by the ECB in Frankfurt - believe me, that idea just won't fly any time in the forseeable future. And then there's the perceived loss of sovereignty issue - the outcome of a referendum is hardly in doubt, and no political party is going to commit electoral suicide by saying they'll adopt the Euro without one...