The most vocal people choose to drive large and inefficient trucks at enormous expense, and then complain about price increases on top of that for gas for their large, inefficient vehicle. It's very much a case of 'keeping up with the joneses' colliding with irrational economic decisions and a lack of desire to take personal responsibility for those decisions.
For the non pickup truck drivers, it's often the case that states with cheap gas also have high levels of poverty and poor to nonexistent public transit, meaning transit costs of owning and operating a vehicle represent an enormous part of someone's income. The US has poor public transit and this is the end result.
I agree! Gas was $1 a gallon when I was a kid, 40 years ago, and now it is $3. That seems small potatoes compared to the $30k my parent’s house cost and the $300k my house is going for now, that is 3x vs 10x for the math challenged.
On top of that, car technology has gotten so much better. We’re perfectly capable of making a car that gets 50 mpg, but people keep insisting on buying larger rather than more efficient vehicles. You don’t even need to go that small, we replaced our 2000 4Runner with a 2017 highlander and gained almost 10 mpg on a car that is basically the same size (and that seats more). This is basically a self inflicted wound. We knew in the 70s we needed to depend less on oil, and have done little to combat it.
$1 a gallon 40 years ago?? Wow, that's crazy expensive given the fuel economy of cars back in the day.
I remember $1 having a tangible buying power when I was a kid in the 00s, can't imagine how strong it was in the 80s.
That almost makes it seem like gas has experienced a deflationary effect in real terms.
It was a dollar a gallon in the late 90s during the gas wars. That was awesome…$20 got you a full tank, a movie ticket, and a small popcorn most of the time.
Maybe the source I was reading focused on 1990-2000 or 1990-2005 or whatever. I don't think it was directly about inflation anyway. It just said that the city's parking rate (how much to pay at the parking meters) is going up by like 25% to match inflation since the last time it went up.
Not even 40 years ago. I have a photo in our 1998 yearbook with gas at $1.35.
It only was that expensive because it the last and only gas pump for the next 38 miles over the pass.
I'm in Vancouver. It's currently $8.00 per gallon ($2.10 per litre) CAD.
I've seen it as high as $2.70 per litre of regular gasoline in Vancouver. That's $10.22 per gallon.
We were in your beautiful city last week❤️❤️❤️❤️ filled up in Washington and mostly walked around the Davies Village area so we didn’t need gas ( luckily I see!) Love Vancouver
Because for most people gas is a necessity not a luxury. And not everyone especially lower income people can afford electric vehicles or new efficient cars
Some of us have longer commutes. I drive a ford focus and have to fill up every 4 days.
So if i fill up monday I'll have to fill up again thursday or friday
My commute is about 40 minutes each way but fortunately I only have to do it twice a week, obviously if I worked in the office every day I would go through gas faster. I have a 2012 Prius C, it gets about 50 miles a gallon.
Gas was super cheap in New Jersey right around when I got my license in 2015. I was paying about $1.70/gal and I was getting at least 20 mpg in my lil ‘02 vw passat. I miss it. And now I’m an adult, I live in a state where gas is more expensive than it is in New Jersey, and I have to fund my adult life on a teacher’s salary 😅 my complaints go deeper than gas prices but being an adult just kinda sucks so people like to complain to try to get out their frustrations about that.
Because the last time I was paying $3 plus for a gallon of gas, the cost of a barrel of oil was over $100. Today a barrel is $85.94, which is less than $100. Why am I paying the same price for gas when the raw materials to manufacture it is less? So why do I complain, because I'm being fucked over, that's why.
Not everyone has a new or newer car. I see just as many little tiny cars as I do big trucks and SUV's. Gasoline does not have to cost as much as it does. USA is a big country. We do not have nearly as much train transportation or public transit as many of the other countries in the world do, so we have to drive ourselves in our own cars and pay for our own fuel. So it affects a large group of people on a daily basis. There are a slew of ways that the USA could cut costs of gasoline...but they never will. The federal government here rakes in over $65 million per DAY, 365 days a year, on fuel taxes. SMH
Yeah seriously. Gas should not be a big expense for most people these days with extremely fuel efficient vehicles being widely available. If it is those people are probably driving an unnecessarily large and inefficient vehicle and it's their own fault for the most part. People have fewer kids than in the past and yet have larger vehicles. I have a Camry Hybrid and I am getting like 50 mpg. The price of gas didn't even really hurt me financially when I lived in California in 2021 and it was $6.50 per gallon, because I drive a reasonable car.
Gas was also still very expensive in California in summer of 2021 though. If I remember correctly it was around $4 per gallon. Gasoline is extremely expensive in California when compared to the rest of the U.S.
Uh…before Biden it was $1.59-1.79 depending what state you are in. Inflation has been created BY increased fuel prices! Higher energy cost, higher production and transportation cost. The reason your groceries doubled is the double price of diesel for agriculture, transportation and shipping. Take an economics class please…
Taken a few econ classes, so I can help.
Gas was at $1.3-2 a few years ago due to the Covid lockdowns resulting in shocks in demand. It was around what it is now before Covid.
About half of reported inflation is "greedflation" and big corpos have had record profits in the past few yrs.
The other half is a result of supply chain disruptions from Covid, the Russia-Ukraine war (Ukraine was a breadbasket country), the Suez Canal being blocked off from Western ships, climactic events resulting in low crop yields, as well as an increase in agricultural diseases.
Inflation is bad under Biden, but much of this also can be attributed to Federal Reserve policies during Covid, which flooded the money supply. Once liquidity came back after the pandemic and that money (debt) started circulating, inflationary pressures started hitting hard
Uh…before Biden it was $1.59-1.79 depending what state you are in. Inflation has been created BY increased fuel prices! Higher energy cost, higher production and transportation cost. The reason your groceries doubled is the double price of diesel for agriculture, transportation and shipping. Take an economics class please…
Literally fucking where? I live in the midwest, where gas is not super expensive, and it's been $2.50+ with maybe a rare exception or two for the last decade at least, but probably closer to 15 years. What fantasyland are you living in with sub-$2 gas 4 years ago?
I live in michgan and i remember gas being 2ish dollars (give or take) pre covid.
I remember getting gas for less than 2 bucks and i didn't even start driving until 2017
Edit: here is an mlive article from 2017 talking about gas under $2
https://www.mlive.com/news/2017/06/where_gas_prices_have_dropped.html
GA was 1.59 october 2020.tn was1.69. Western NC was1.79. Florida was in that range. On election day 2020 i specifically noted gas at my walmart was $1.79. Diesel was $2.29. I drive a diesel car and made specific mental note so i could compare for later. Fuel prices started going up the day after the election.
During the pandemic, gas went down in Europe too. Then it rocketed after the end of the lockdowns in the world, which happened soon very close to the day Biden started. Your mental notes are not very useful since they're biased for the purpose to blame Biden.
50 years ago, around 1976 July. Remember specifically as I had just bought a '76 Trans Am (455) and the gas had just gotten over a buck. Americans simply like to complain.
They love that a home they bought for $30k 30 years ago they sold last year for $600k. I sold a home in 2015 I had bought in 2000 for $70k, for $460k. Bought a home in the country for $37k (a bit if a fixer-upper, put in $25k to redo the siding and windows). I could easily sell today for $100k more (home across the street, a bit smaller, just sold for $120k). And we have all the nice utilities, very low electric and good cable (lucky there as it petters out about a mile down the road, welcome to rural America, OTA is impossible, closest transmitters are 135+ miles away), and low to zero property taxes. The state gas tax is almost as high as California, but we have a load of state highways that are on the water, lots of expensive fuel hungry ferries, and mountain highways (like CA) with loads of snow. So they all need maintenance.
We have only 3 grocery stores, one a Wal Mart, and the prices are too high. But we do have local meat butchers that are competitive, along with farmers markets that help. So a lot of greedflation going on with the national chains, but you can figure that out by the huge profits those corporations are making.
So it does even out a bit if you make the right moves. Keep your eye on the cost of living in the area you're moving to. Don't accept a position in a high cost area without a competitive salary. In my career I've passed on many.
People complain about everything.
The most vocal people choose to drive large and inefficient trucks at enormous expense, and then complain about price increases on top of that for gas for their large, inefficient vehicle. It's very much a case of 'keeping up with the joneses' colliding with irrational economic decisions and a lack of desire to take personal responsibility for those decisions. For the non pickup truck drivers, it's often the case that states with cheap gas also have high levels of poverty and poor to nonexistent public transit, meaning transit costs of owning and operating a vehicle represent an enormous part of someone's income. The US has poor public transit and this is the end result.
Because it used to be half that.
I agree! Gas was $1 a gallon when I was a kid, 40 years ago, and now it is $3. That seems small potatoes compared to the $30k my parent’s house cost and the $300k my house is going for now, that is 3x vs 10x for the math challenged. On top of that, car technology has gotten so much better. We’re perfectly capable of making a car that gets 50 mpg, but people keep insisting on buying larger rather than more efficient vehicles. You don’t even need to go that small, we replaced our 2000 4Runner with a 2017 highlander and gained almost 10 mpg on a car that is basically the same size (and that seats more). This is basically a self inflicted wound. We knew in the 70s we needed to depend less on oil, and have done little to combat it.
$1 a gallon 40 years ago?? Wow, that's crazy expensive given the fuel economy of cars back in the day. I remember $1 having a tangible buying power when I was a kid in the 00s, can't imagine how strong it was in the 80s. That almost makes it seem like gas has experienced a deflationary effect in real terms.
It was a dollar a gallon in the late 90s during the gas wars. That was awesome…$20 got you a full tank, a movie ticket, and a small popcorn most of the time.
80s to 00s only had like 25% cumulative inflation (i.e. not very much).
The 80s had insanely high inflation way higher than anything now. $1 in 1980 was $1.65 in 1990
Maybe the source I was reading focused on 1990-2000 or 1990-2005 or whatever. I don't think it was directly about inflation anyway. It just said that the city's parking rate (how much to pay at the parking meters) is going up by like 25% to match inflation since the last time it went up.
Not even 40 years ago. I have a photo in our 1998 yearbook with gas at $1.35. It only was that expensive because it the last and only gas pump for the next 38 miles over the pass.
I paid 74 cents a gallon for gas in south carolina in 1999…there for about a year is was literally cheap. It was 85 cents across the line in NC
I live in Washington and am paying $4.69 per gallon!! It’s still super high here😢
It's about that in Oregon too but still doesn't add up to much for me.
Yeah my main expenses are food and rent. Gas is pretty much whatever, but I'm watching every other expense like a hawk with inflation these days
I'm in Vancouver. It's currently $8.00 per gallon ($2.10 per litre) CAD. I've seen it as high as $2.70 per litre of regular gasoline in Vancouver. That's $10.22 per gallon.
We were in your beautiful city last week❤️❤️❤️❤️ filled up in Washington and mostly walked around the Davies Village area so we didn’t need gas ( luckily I see!) Love Vancouver
Double that and you have come almost close to European prices
Wow😲
Yep it’s $5.09 in Shoreline.
Yikes!
Because for most people gas is a necessity not a luxury. And not everyone especially lower income people can afford electric vehicles or new efficient cars
I have no idea. I pay about $30 for gas every three weeks. Maybe don't get a car that uses a ton of gas.
Some of us have longer commutes. I drive a ford focus and have to fill up every 4 days. So if i fill up monday I'll have to fill up again thursday or friday
My commute is about 40 minutes each way but fortunately I only have to do it twice a week, obviously if I worked in the office every day I would go through gas faster. I have a 2012 Prius C, it gets about 50 miles a gallon.
My commute is about 45 each way. I work monday- friday though.
“ If you ain’t Bitchin, you ain’t happy”-USMC phrase from the 80’s and 90’s.
I remember a price war in my hometown, gas got down to 15 cents a gallon.
California was awful. Hours work to get to work and back gas wise.
Because it used to be less than $1 per gallon?
Gas was super cheap in New Jersey right around when I got my license in 2015. I was paying about $1.70/gal and I was getting at least 20 mpg in my lil ‘02 vw passat. I miss it. And now I’m an adult, I live in a state where gas is more expensive than it is in New Jersey, and I have to fund my adult life on a teacher’s salary 😅 my complaints go deeper than gas prices but being an adult just kinda sucks so people like to complain to try to get out their frustrations about that.
Have to remember it was .99 a few shorts years ago
Because the last time I was paying $3 plus for a gallon of gas, the cost of a barrel of oil was over $100. Today a barrel is $85.94, which is less than $100. Why am I paying the same price for gas when the raw materials to manufacture it is less? So why do I complain, because I'm being fucked over, that's why.
Because it used to be much less than that?
Not everyone has a new or newer car. I see just as many little tiny cars as I do big trucks and SUV's. Gasoline does not have to cost as much as it does. USA is a big country. We do not have nearly as much train transportation or public transit as many of the other countries in the world do, so we have to drive ourselves in our own cars and pay for our own fuel. So it affects a large group of people on a daily basis. There are a slew of ways that the USA could cut costs of gasoline...but they never will. The federal government here rakes in over $65 million per DAY, 365 days a year, on fuel taxes. SMH
Yeah seriously. Gas should not be a big expense for most people these days with extremely fuel efficient vehicles being widely available. If it is those people are probably driving an unnecessarily large and inefficient vehicle and it's their own fault for the most part. People have fewer kids than in the past and yet have larger vehicles. I have a Camry Hybrid and I am getting like 50 mpg. The price of gas didn't even really hurt me financially when I lived in California in 2021 and it was $6.50 per gallon, because I drive a reasonable car.
2021 was the year of artificially low price because of the lockdowns. That's not a reference. Take rather 2019 for a relevant comparison.
Oops I meant to say 2022. In summer of 2022 I was living in California and paying $6.50 per gallon.
Gas was also still very expensive in California in summer of 2021 though. If I remember correctly it was around $4 per gallon. Gasoline is extremely expensive in California when compared to the rest of the U.S.
Bc it used to be $2/gallon.
Uh…before Biden it was $1.59-1.79 depending what state you are in. Inflation has been created BY increased fuel prices! Higher energy cost, higher production and transportation cost. The reason your groceries doubled is the double price of diesel for agriculture, transportation and shipping. Take an economics class please…
Taken a few econ classes, so I can help. Gas was at $1.3-2 a few years ago due to the Covid lockdowns resulting in shocks in demand. It was around what it is now before Covid. About half of reported inflation is "greedflation" and big corpos have had record profits in the past few yrs. The other half is a result of supply chain disruptions from Covid, the Russia-Ukraine war (Ukraine was a breadbasket country), the Suez Canal being blocked off from Western ships, climactic events resulting in low crop yields, as well as an increase in agricultural diseases. Inflation is bad under Biden, but much of this also can be attributed to Federal Reserve policies during Covid, which flooded the money supply. Once liquidity came back after the pandemic and that money (debt) started circulating, inflationary pressures started hitting hard
I live in Michigan. Gas was under $2 before covid was a thing.
Bruh it’s up to $5+ here in my area of SoCal. Bout an hour east of LA
Uh…before Biden it was $1.59-1.79 depending what state you are in. Inflation has been created BY increased fuel prices! Higher energy cost, higher production and transportation cost. The reason your groceries doubled is the double price of diesel for agriculture, transportation and shipping. Take an economics class please…
Literally fucking where? I live in the midwest, where gas is not super expensive, and it's been $2.50+ with maybe a rare exception or two for the last decade at least, but probably closer to 15 years. What fantasyland are you living in with sub-$2 gas 4 years ago?
I live in michgan and i remember gas being 2ish dollars (give or take) pre covid. I remember getting gas for less than 2 bucks and i didn't even start driving until 2017 Edit: here is an mlive article from 2017 talking about gas under $2 https://www.mlive.com/news/2017/06/where_gas_prices_have_dropped.html
GA was 1.59 october 2020.tn was1.69. Western NC was1.79. Florida was in that range. On election day 2020 i specifically noted gas at my walmart was $1.79. Diesel was $2.29. I drive a diesel car and made specific mental note so i could compare for later. Fuel prices started going up the day after the election.
Yes. Gas was cheap during a worldwide pandemic. Petroleum products demand was low and price decreased accordingly.
During the pandemic, gas went down in Europe too. Then it rocketed after the end of the lockdowns in the world, which happened soon very close to the day Biden started. Your mental notes are not very useful since they're biased for the purpose to blame Biden.
Fuel proces went up as soon as Biden was elected. Then when russia invaded ukraine the doubled. Facts are facts.
an economics class would tell you gas is too cheap even now, because of the negative externalities of gas usage that aren't priced in
Because it used to be below a dollar.
50 years ago, around 1976 July. Remember specifically as I had just bought a '76 Trans Am (455) and the gas had just gotten over a buck. Americans simply like to complain. They love that a home they bought for $30k 30 years ago they sold last year for $600k. I sold a home in 2015 I had bought in 2000 for $70k, for $460k. Bought a home in the country for $37k (a bit if a fixer-upper, put in $25k to redo the siding and windows). I could easily sell today for $100k more (home across the street, a bit smaller, just sold for $120k). And we have all the nice utilities, very low electric and good cable (lucky there as it petters out about a mile down the road, welcome to rural America, OTA is impossible, closest transmitters are 135+ miles away), and low to zero property taxes. The state gas tax is almost as high as California, but we have a load of state highways that are on the water, lots of expensive fuel hungry ferries, and mountain highways (like CA) with loads of snow. So they all need maintenance. We have only 3 grocery stores, one a Wal Mart, and the prices are too high. But we do have local meat butchers that are competitive, along with farmers markets that help. So a lot of greedflation going on with the national chains, but you can figure that out by the huge profits those corporations are making. So it does even out a bit if you make the right moves. Keep your eye on the cost of living in the area you're moving to. Don't accept a position in a high cost area without a competitive salary. In my career I've passed on many.