10 Things to Like about $4/gallon Gas

Wow. I am so impressed with Amanda Ripley, who wrote this story for Time magazine. She offers sympathy about the suffering and expands on this list:

1. Globalized jobs return home
2. Sprawl stalls
3. Four day workweeks
4. Less pollution
5. More frugality
6. Fewer traffic deaths
"If gas remains at $4 per gal. for a year or more, expect as many as 1,000 fewer fatalities a month, according to professor Michael Morrisey at the University of Alabama at Birmingham and associate professor David Grabowski at Harvard Medical School, who calculated that estimate for TIME. That means annual deaths could be cut by almost one-third — a public-health triumph."

7. Cheaper Insurance
8. Less Traffic
9. More Cops on the Beat
10.Less obesity
"A permanent $1 hike in prices may cut obesity 10%, saving thousands of lives and billions of dollars a year, estimates Charles Courtemanche, an assistant professor of economics at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro."

To read it yourself, see the full article.