Actually, quite a few people on here make more than I do. If you take the median U.S. salary (50K), and median commute distance (10 miles), that is still paying for the trip to work within the first 10 - 15 minutes (depending on car gas mileage). So the effort of accelerating from a stop sign is still way less than a minutes worth of work. And that is the energy that the original (bicycle) post was referring to -- the effort that you feel, not the externalized cost.