When you pay $3+ per gallon of gas, this is where all the money is going:
 

one hell of a suicide jump

an indoor ski resort in the middle of fucking dubai.

"An extremely efficient insulation system is the key to maintain the temperature of -1 degrees Celsius during the day and -6 degrees during the night when the snow is produced. "

extremely efficient is a highly subjective term. i'd like to see numbers.

id love to go to dubai if it werent located in the middle east.

sound like some cheap gas you guys have there.

Funny, because a high percentage is going to your state government in the form of taxation.

pwned

funny?

One hell of a business opportunity also. You could probably charge people about 10,000 or so to kill themselves that way and make a killing.

MAKE A KILLING?! :rofl:

That's fucking retarded. That's a money grab, you can't discourage people from driving by taxing them into oblivion

I don't know how Dubai is anything but a bubble economy. Towers are sprouting up like crazy but who is taking up residences in these things? Are there really that many wealthy European, Asians and Americans? Dubai seems to be setting itself up for a major hit. And I hope it does. It's a huge, wasteful playground for the rich; a giant disneyland when the fact that most of Dubai's population are worker-slaves and most of the city is ramshackle huts and sheds. I dunno. I really dislike what this city stands for.

Still though America is way more wasteful and way more in debt.

Dubai (as a government) is making many investments in US companies and buying up a lot of US stock in order to facilitate finacial stability

they better start looking elsewhere (and I'm sure they are)

Man, I really hate Thomas Friedman. Why he's so lauded, I really don't know. His argument totally relies on knowing what would happen to gas prices in hindsight, but obviously no one can predict the future. If the tax were imposed after 9/11, consumers would have to pay a higher price immediately because of the tax and it wouldn't guarantee that the price of gasoline wouldn't increase over the next decade. The increased demand from developing countries and industry, and the decreasing supply of gas would push up the prices regardless and consumers would have to pay an even higher amount at the pump than they're paying now. It would take a while before demand for gasoline fell enough (by the all-in-one solution found in innovations in hybrid technology that he alludes to) to compensate for the tax.