Gas Prices

[Mr 5 0]

I pay about $1.80 for Sunoco Ultra.

Gas prices are up for a lot of reasons. The demand is very high due to a bad winter almost everywhere (using much more heating oil) while supplies are down because the gas/oil companies didn't foresee the demand being what it turned out to be. They also had a break in some major pipeline which took out a lot of the supply for a time, adding to the shortage. This is not untypical and eventually the prices will go back down some. In fact we're paying about the same percentage of our income for gas that our parents did 40 years ago.

In 1963, the minimum wage was $1.15 and gas cost about 30 cents per gallon. It took one hour of minimum-wage work to buy about 4 gallons of gas back then. Now, the federal minimum wage is $5.15 per hour but it's actually $6.90 in my state (CT) and gas is about $1.75 per gallon. It takes one hour of minimum wage work in my state to buy 4 gallons of gas, about the same as it took 40 years ago. It's all relative. 20 years ago, in 1983, gas cost $1.25 per gallon. Now, although our incomes have risen, the price of gas has not kept pace and although it appears as if gas prices have gone way up, in reality, they haven't.