Hi Jay,

>It sounds like you have outdated infrastructure and public transportation!

Have you ever been in holland or even europe ?? Infrastructure like public transportation, communication, electricity definately stands on a higher level here. Trains and busses, short distance taxirides will take you anywhere in holland (boats for the islands) and they run way more frequently.

However I'm the first one to admit that we suffer a lot from trafic jams because we really need to some work on our roads to increase the capicity.

The powerloss of a few years ago in the north of the US and south of canada was directly caused by a US electricity network that was heavily outdated causing a cascading effect of power plants going offline.

The disaster of New orleans also shows that there was no emergency plan or whatsoever in case of tornados or heavy storms. Something we have lived with for centuries. Even a few years ago we evacuated 1.5 million people because of the chance the dikes were going to break. In new orleans a lot of people simply were no able to leave the city because they did not own a car. Are there not running trains from and to new orleans? Are there no bus services? Where was the help after Katrine ??

Sure, you can't do much to prevent damage caused by natural disasters, but you can do a lot to prevent people getting killed and help quickly when possible. Surely something that did not happen.

>Why is gas over there so high? Have to import everything from Crazy Eddie's Gas Emporium or something?

Taxes. The fuel consumption is a real cash cow to our government. The fuel prices exists for about 70% or taxes. BTW, the prices of gas are determined by one of the biggest oil companies in the world: SHELL.

Walter,