I think that's a bargain mainly coz I paid $3.45/gallon when I filled up last week, but that was for mid-range, not regular. I can remember when gas was about 28 CENTS a gallon everywhere and 17 cents a gallon on base. And that was long after the time I had to walk to school barefoot in the snow. Uphill both ways, like everyone else in my cohort.
We're over 4 bucks here.
ReplyDeleteYow!
ReplyDeleteThat is a bargain.
ReplyDeletev-word = "joygooba" Heh!
I rememeber a commercial for Gulf where the driver scrounges for $0.25 to put gas in the car, he got the full treatment, oil check, windows cleaned, and the guy finds another quarter to double his purchase.
ReplyDeleteImagine that today. He wouldn't get down the block with just $0.50 of gas in his car.
Mid-grade here is about $4.25/gallon. And my car is supposed to use premium only; haven't done that in about 6 years. At $4.25/gallon it's almost unaffordable.
ReplyDeleteBack at the start of summer the mid-grade got up to $4.85/gallon. We stopped driving my car long distances for a while.
I remember the start of college weekends when we'd all just scrounge for pocket change and the accumulated coins would be sufficient to gas up someone's car enough to get around town for the weekend...it was a small midwestern town, though.
ReplyDeleteGad, just talking about "I remember when the price was..." makes me feel old. :-(
Skip: Yup.
ReplyDeleteAnon: You're as old as me!
Kris: TGH demands premium, as well. But I've found she does well on mid-grade (she HATES regular: ping city); the Vette, OTOH, didn't. I see our gas is cheaper than the Right and Left coasts and I'm thankful for that.
Red: Join the club, LOL!
ReplyDeleteYep,I remember when too. But the economy in Duncan is a bit better these days.
ReplyDeleteYeah, Buck, gas was in the 26-28 cents range when I was a teenager with gas @17 cents/gal during "gas wars" (themselves a thing of the past now under oil co mkting schemes) I remember our trip "out west" in 1960 when the price in the middle of the desert in Ariz/N. Mex was the unheard of 42 cents/gal. LOL.
ReplyDeleteThe latter part of last week it was 3.15 in pville at Allsups and Valero. I was sitting on half but filled up anyway.
ReplyDeleteBack in the late 90's farm diesel was about .50/gallon. We bought an 8000 gallon tank and bought a semi load to last us a year. Now it's $3.50/gallon at least, we finally sold the tank. No way we can ever fill it up again.
3.77 here in WA for regular.
ReplyDelete4.19 for diesel o_O
Sigh...
You're right - that's one heck of a bargain compared to what we pay in England. I'm paying $10.15 a gallon for diesel at the local supermarket.
ReplyDeleteI filled up for $3.15 per at Valero a few days ago.
ReplyDeleteI remember gas at about 30 cents, but it was in the 80 to 90 cent range when I started driving in 1975.
Heck, a couple of years ago we were down to about a buck and a half. I posted a picture from our local Exxon station at my place.
I won't go in to the long deal about how the price of gasoline is not really that much out of line historically, because it still sucks.
Heh! WV: breast
I recall the day, sometime in the seventies, when the price of gasoline passed the octane rating (say, 93 or 95) and thinking to myself that it was outrageous. Also, I promised myself I would quit smoking if cigs ever reached a buck a pack.
ReplyDeleteYeah, right.
Lou: I'm bettin' Duncan's economy would have gotten a LOT better if Obama hadn't shelved Keystone.
ReplyDeleteVirgil: I hear ya. I drove from Kingsley Field, Oregon to Keesler at the height of the first gas crisis and had to sleep in my car in a gas station somewhere in Arizona because I ran out o' gas and NOTHING was open. And I was amazed and not-amused at how expensive gas became, virtually overnight.
Jenny: I musta missed that! And I hear you, too, about that tank.
Dave: You'll feel better if you read BP's comment.
BP: Your prices have REALLY gone up since I was in England last (around '96). I feel for ya.
Andy: I think the price o' gas has exceeded the inflation rate, but I might could be wrong.
Jim: Yeah, I said the exact same thing about ciggies. I was paying about $4.00 a pack when I quit.
Buck, I'm not an economist (by any stretch), so I base junk on my personal observations/memories/etc.
ReplyDeleteWhen I was in high school, seems like minimum wage was $2-something. Now it's $7-something. Looking at that, an hour of work would buy you a couple of gallons plus back then, and now.
Also, petroleum is an odd commodity. When I look at the other commodities, the price of it seems to be driven by factors that others are not. We've had artificially LOW food prices in the US for decades due to farm subsidies. Some would argue that tax breaks to "big oil" are just about the same thing...but I don't think so.
Then, you've got to figure "inflation" a couple of ways. Hell, we were selling 19" color TVs in 1978 for $500 (with remote). Now you can get one for about $150 I think. We were selling washer/dryer pairs for as much as $700...with the low end models at $550 or so in the mid-70s. Now, you can still pick up a pair in that range. So, consumer "wants," vs. consumer "needs" all pour in to the stated "inflation rate."
In short, some junk hasn't gone up at all (due, of course, to manufacturing advances, technology, etc.). And, one could argue that technological advances in agriculture have also lead to high productivity, and affordable groceries (even though they are hit and miss on the rise).
That's a long way of saying that the price of some products must just naturally get higher as the cost of bringing it to the market does. And, some get lower...or stay the same due to technology, or gubmit interest in keeping them stable.
Of course, I'd like to see the handcuffs come off for drilling, extracting shale oil, etc. I guaran-damn-tee ya' that if the US announced that we were gonna start extracting every drop of petroleum available to us, oil futures would plummet, and we'd be paying a buck fifty within a couple of weeks.
The Saudis would shit their pants, and open the tap in hopes that we'd forget about it when gas got back around $1.50.
Oil is an odd commodity.
BTW, I passed by Valero this afternoon on the way home from work. $3.07...down since a few days ago.
Gas prices seem to have little correlation to oil prices due to the futures thing. That always irritates me. Prices never really adjusted appropriately after the refinery shutdowns after Katrina and Rita in 2005.
ReplyDeleteI paid $3.15 yesterday at Exxon, but long for the days of $.45, clean windshields, and properly inflated tires.
Oil is an odd commodity.
ReplyDeleteYeah. An emotional one, too.
I paid $3.15 yesterday at Exxon, but long for the days of $.45, clean windshields, and properly inflated tires.
Yeah... and that would include air you don't have to pay a freakin' quarter for, too.