Finally Relief From High Gas Prices
- Thread starter Mobilone
- Start date
Kirk
Senior Member
Finally Relief From High Gas Prices
First of all, this guy is selling the prepaid gas cards for a commission. He is attempting to rip you off by leading you to believe that he is a customer. After visiting the website that he promotes, I find that he is a sales person and he is attempting to hide that fact. Second, I have yet to find anyone who has used one of those prepaid gas cards to travel accross state lines and was happy with it. You get to pay the price they sell for, even if the pump says less! And last of all, I would like you to consider the answer that my son, the financila anylist wrote to someone who asked him to join the latest gasoline boycott. The response that he wrote follows:
I must be missing something. From an economic point of view we pay less for gas today than when I started driving in 1979. Let's compare minimum wage and the price of gas. In 1979, the minimum wage was increased from $3.10 to $3.35 (the first pay raise I ever got). Gas cost $0.79 a gallon. So a gallon of gas cost 23.6 % of an hour's pay. Today, Minimum wage is $6.50 per hour and gas here is $1.35 (I filled up this morning). So today, gas is 20.8% of an hour's wage. To be comparable to 1979, gas would have to cost $1.53.
But let's face facts; minimum wage has not kept up with inflation. So let's compare gas to the average car price. In 1979, the average car cost a little less than $5,000 and today it is nearly $20,000. That is a four fold change in price but gas has not increased that much.
If you like consumer price indexes, the CPI from the President's Report of Economic Statistics (published in January through 2000) shows a market basket change of 3.85 from 1979. So, if gas had kept up with inflation, today that $0.79 gallon of gas would cost $3.04.
But wait, we really should look at what it costs to produce that gas. After you back off taxes, my gallon of this morning costs $0.85 compared to $0.55 in 1979. Manufacturing costs in 1979 averaged $0.25 per gallon. Today that is more like $0.65 per gallon. The oil company's profit margin has declined about a third. Yet, I am sure that if you look closely, your retirement holds at least one oil company stock. So should we cut oil company profits more?
Truth be told, if you really want put a lid on increasing gas prices, you and everyone who participates in the gas boycotts should really trade in their SUV's for the various high fuel mileage hybrid cars like the Honda Insight and Toyota Prius. Enough people do that and gas prices will fall and stay down until there are even more cars on the road. And with smaller cars, we could cram even more cars into our local traffic jams.
Think about it!
Good travelin !....................Kirk
URL: www.1tree.net/adventure/
Good travelin! ......Kirk
www.1tree.net/adventure
First of all, this guy is selling the prepaid gas cards for a commission. He is attempting to rip you off by leading you to believe that he is a customer. After visiting the website that he promotes, I find that he is a sales person and he is attempting to hide that fact. Second, I have yet to find anyone who has used one of those prepaid gas cards to travel accross state lines and was happy with it. You get to pay the price they sell for, even if the pump says less! And last of all, I would like you to consider the answer that my son, the financila anylist wrote to someone who asked him to join the latest gasoline boycott. The response that he wrote follows:
I must be missing something. From an economic point of view we pay less for gas today than when I started driving in 1979. Let's compare minimum wage and the price of gas. In 1979, the minimum wage was increased from $3.10 to $3.35 (the first pay raise I ever got). Gas cost $0.79 a gallon. So a gallon of gas cost 23.6 % of an hour's pay. Today, Minimum wage is $6.50 per hour and gas here is $1.35 (I filled up this morning). So today, gas is 20.8% of an hour's wage. To be comparable to 1979, gas would have to cost $1.53.
But let's face facts; minimum wage has not kept up with inflation. So let's compare gas to the average car price. In 1979, the average car cost a little less than $5,000 and today it is nearly $20,000. That is a four fold change in price but gas has not increased that much.
If you like consumer price indexes, the CPI from the President's Report of Economic Statistics (published in January through 2000) shows a market basket change of 3.85 from 1979. So, if gas had kept up with inflation, today that $0.79 gallon of gas would cost $3.04.
But wait, we really should look at what it costs to produce that gas. After you back off taxes, my gallon of this morning costs $0.85 compared to $0.55 in 1979. Manufacturing costs in 1979 averaged $0.25 per gallon. Today that is more like $0.65 per gallon. The oil company's profit margin has declined about a third. Yet, I am sure that if you look closely, your retirement holds at least one oil company stock. So should we cut oil company profits more?
Truth be told, if you really want put a lid on increasing gas prices, you and everyone who participates in the gas boycotts should really trade in their SUV's for the various high fuel mileage hybrid cars like the Honda Insight and Toyota Prius. Enough people do that and gas prices will fall and stay down until there are even more cars on the road. And with smaller cars, we could cram even more cars into our local traffic jams.
Think about it!
Good travelin !....................Kirk
URL: www.1tree.net/adventure/
Good travelin! ......Kirk
www.1tree.net/adventure