Gas prices have gotten bad enough that car manufacturers are offering fuel discounts to sell off their guzzling models and state lotteries are offering petroleum prizes in lieu of cash.
First the car-marketing: Rather than actually producing vehicles that are, you know, efficient, Chrysler is offering buyers a locked-in fuel price of $2.99 for 3 years. The program, dubbed “Let’s Refuel America,” looks like this: You buy a gas-guzzling car, continue to support oil businesses with the help of Chrysler’s subsidies, keep on polluting and then, at the end of three years, are stuck with a piece of crap car that no one can afford to fuel. Brilliant.
And now that Americans everywhere are freaking that we’ve designed our towns around cars and can no longer afford to run them, lotteries are looking to further impoverish citizens by dangling the possibility of free fuel for life. As the NY Times reports, second prize in Florida’s Summer Cash awards “26 prepaid gas cards, each worth $100, every year until death.”
An award of $2600 per year, which you can spend as you please, sounds infinitely more appealing. How about we work to decrease the amount of gas burned rather than encouraging “winners” to pump $200+ worth per month?
Here’s hoping that both of these ideas represent the death throes of an unsustainable mentality and will be seen for the farces that they are.
Photo via flickr by bitzcelt
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