As we move into the final weeks of the election voters are as often happens looking at things pundits don’t rate as the key factors that go into who they will vote for. Immigration is something Harris dove into earlier today and a separate topic. The economy and specifically inflation is another. Both seem to matter a great deal to voters and inflation really hit hard for a while. Americans got pissed and rightly so, yet still haven’t accepted that almost half of the spike was due to business/corporate greed. That’s not likely to change. So pollsters ask which candidate would be better for the economy and incredibly Trump holds the advantage. It makes me wonder what people out there are smoking, but at least Harris has been closing the gap. Still, it’s potent issue and both Trump and Vance talk in what President Biden so effectively did – ‘kitchen table’ terms and grocery store costs (specifically the price of eggs) and the cost of a gallon of gas are front and center.
Team Trump likes to crow about how cheap gas was back in 2020 compared to today. Well DUH! Gas got so cheap (well below $2 per gallon) because of widespread shutdowns of businesses and schools in much of the country. People weren’t driving, and good old laws of supply and demand caused the price of gas to crater. As the country got back to work gas prices went back up again. Simple. For the life of me I don’t understand why Democrats haven’t hammered home the fact that those under two bucks a gallon prices were because the country was in lockdown! Oh well, we are where we are and conservatives are painting a picture of gas prices being way higher than they’ve traditionally been. Except they aren’t!
Let’s go back say fifty years and compare then vs. now. If you’re an old fart like me you remember the 1960s and into the 1970s when gas was seemingly cheap. I suppose it was. The world markets were pretty stable for quite a while before the eventually defunct OPEC (middle east oil producing countries) decided to stick it to everyone with a couple of oil embargos. Things have never been quite the same since, even after OPEC broke up. Oil as a commodity has gone through ups and downs, sometimes with significant spikes. Unrest in the middle east tends to produce spikes which is why it’s good we’ve become capable of producing our own oil. Even exporting some of it. Still, the price of a barrel of oil is determined by world market prices and therefore so is the cost of a single gallon of gasoline. Plus some other stuff I’ll get to.
My point is that you don’t need to be a senior citizen like me to remember when gas was less than forty cents a gallon. In 1973 when I got my driver’s license the average national price was 39 cents a gallon! However I remember pre-teen years and seeing it at twenty cents or less a gallon. Wow you say. Gas sure has gone up. And if you’re say less than your late fifties in age you’re probably jealous! The thing is, inflation has existed all along. And as you can see from the conversion noted on Amortization.org that gallon of gas that cost 39 cents in 1973 when I was a junior in high school would now cost $2.81 per gallon! Kind of puts a different spin on things doesn’t it?
It gets better. I checked with AAA and found an interesting chart which you can see for yourself here. If you scroll down you will find multiple states where right now in 2024 the cost of gas isn’t much more than it was back in 1973 in many states. In some cases it’s only pennies more and in a handful of cases LESS! Again, that puts a pretty different spin on the whole “gas prices are out of control!” mantra Trump/Vance and the GOP are throwing at everyone.
It’s true looking at the chart that prices are in fact overall higher but not ridiculously so. So let’s talk about why that’s the case. First and foremost are federal and state taxes added to the cost of a gallon of gasoline or diesel. It varies from state to state and sometimes by quite a bit. Why? And how did this come about? There are a couple of reasons. Compared to Europe U.S. Highways having been built nearly as robust. Yes, Europe is smaller geographically and there was an urgency for road building in this country after WWII. Still, their roads have a design life much greater than is the case in the U.S. That, along with the fact in the U.S. so many more goods are transported by HEAVY 18-Wheel trucks (which increases wear and tear on highways and roads) means annual maintenance costs are higher.
Still, as I’ve already shown for a time this didn’t matter much. Highways/roads, and many bridges too were still within their design life and it seemed from the fuel taxes that were actually being collected a nice fund was being built up to address all this. Then Reagan got elected and started slashing the budget. This in turn affected money states counted on from the federal government. Something had to give and as more and more maintenance started to be needed taxes on a gallon of fuel crept up. Not enough. Not nearly enough and we’ve heard over and over again since the turn of the century about America’s crumbling bridges and roads.
Well, the Biden administration did what Trump never got around to doing. “Infrastructure Week” became a running joke with Trump but President Biden actually got something BIG done to start dealing with the mess. Without any Republican votes I might add but boy do those GOP politicians love to show up at ground-breaking ceremonies for new projects and claim credit – for something they voted AGAINST!
However the point is that a gallon of gasoline really doesn’t cost much (and in some states nothing at all) more than it did back fifty years ago when I started driving. Inflation accounts for most of the current cost today vs. decades ago, and additional taxes imposed in the NOT adequate attempt to try to keep up with ever increasing maintenance costs for roads and bridges. Over in Europe they’ve paid through the nose in taxes on a liter of gas to maintain their roads and bridges. Which were built better to begin with. To the best of my knowledge nothing like the collapse of that (Interstate) bridge in Minneapolis has happened, nor do they have a disturbingly long list of bridges badly in need of repair or replacement.
For decades we limped along and kept putting things off, making as I said half-hearted attempts to collect enough via taxes on fuel to maintain our roads. And people HOWLED (and keep doing so) with every increase. Again, being an old fart I recall a series of commercials for Fram Oil Filters. A seasoned mechanic would describe a job he was working on with the hood of a car open. He’d talk about what he had to do and the cost and how it could have been avoided by just regularly changing the oil and filter – with a Fram filter of course. He’d note the few bucks the oil filter cost, shake his head and say “You can pay me now (and hold up the filter) or pay me later” while gesturing to the car he was fixing. Well, when it comes to fixing our infrastructure we are in “It’s later” territory.
Talking about taxes on the cost of a gallon of gasoline at election time might be a bad thing for a candidate to do. However, for those of us who talk to people face-to-face, or on social media and in other ways I hope I’ve provided you with some real and usable information. That gas prices are NOT out of control. That in fact they aren’t all that different than they were fifty years ago!
Gas just went up here from $2.99 last week to $3.09 this week, for no apparent reason.
I read tonight that the Saudis are preparing to open the proverbial spigot and flood the market with light, sweet crude. The question becomes, will we see relief at the pump before Election Day???
Well, on one hand, considering Big Oil loves them billions in Republican subsidies courtesy of the taxpayers for their multi billion dollar industries and the Dems are trying to end our dependence on fossil fuels, basically putting them out of business the answer to that question becomes quite apparent. Sadly, no relief before the election, in fact, I expect prices to rise as they have this week, again, for no “apparent” reason.
Good lessons. In addition you wrote: …I don’t understand why Democrats haven’t hammered home the fact that those under two bucks a gallon prices were because the country was in lockdown…”
Let’s do some math: NEW voters are young, say 18 to 20. When Covid hit, it was four years ago. HOW OLD WERE THEY THEN? 18 – 4 = 14; 20 – 4 = 16.
They have NO HISTORY, NO RELATION to what was happening back then. They were essentially still babies as far as elective politics and the price of anything.
That’s why to us old fogies it matters but it simply doesn’t for them.
Now, for them corporate greed is a good sell. For me, too, and I’m 78!
You go, kids. And you can stay on my lawn as long as you like. Here, have a cookie, too! 🙂
I see your point which is all the more reason to hammer this. I spoke about the 39 cent per gallon price of gas when I finally got my driver’s license but I also remember all the years before when gas was less than thirty cents, or even twenty cents a gallon. Surely these younger people who got to driving age and/or turned 18 during the pandemic remember what the price of a gallon of gas was for quite a few years before they got their licenses or turned 18! Like us old farts, they just need to be reminded of it. Over and over until the facts are parked deep in their brain housing group.
Yes, true, but Democrats are terrible at messaging! They cannot hammer any message home! Why? I wish I knew. Kelly ayott is running as magat for governor in New Hampshire. She has slanderous ads running about every five minutes against her opponent. Her Democratic opponent, whose name eludes me right now (if she advertised more I’d remember it!) has about one ad every two hours or fewer. Ayott has signs everywhere! No signs for Any Democrats. Name recognition counts! Ayott is against abortion and has come out and said she will not legalize pot. Those two stances should sink her. But she is hammering home her NAME! So no, Democrats do not do messaging well and it will lose them many opportunities on Election Day
The messaging is quite good in THIS election.
You might want to learn the name of Ayott’s Democratic opponent and post it. 🙂 /s
“The world markets were pretty stable for quite a while before the eventually defunct OPEC (middle east oil producing countries) decided to stick it to everyone with a couple of oil embargos. Things have never been quite the same since, even after OPEC broke up.”
For what it’s worth, OPEC is still around. It’s not “defunct” and it’s no longer “middle east oil producing countries.” There are currently 12 full-fledged members of OPEC: Algeria, Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Libya, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Venezuela. Of those, only Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Libya, Saudi Arabia and the UAE are fully considered “Middle East” (though some people would exclude Libya, depending on the criteria for “Middle East”). Algeria falls within the larger “MENA” (Middle East/North Africa) descriptor due to the country’s membership in the Arab League (though Iran is not a member of that group) and the use of Arabic as an official language and Islam as the country’s primary religion. But Equatorial Guinea, Gabon and the Republic of the Congo are fully within the region of “Equatorial Africa” and Nigeria is solidly part of “Western Africa” (with some cultural ties to Equatorial Africa and MENA) while Venezuela is part of South America. The organization has four former members: Angola (in Southern Africa), Ecuador (in South America), Indonesia (in Southeast Asia) and Qatar (in the Middle East).
There’s even what’s known as OPEC+ which includes the OPEC member states plus a number of non-OPEC countries (including Brazil, Mexico and Russia) and whose non-OPEC countries work with OPEC on a number of policies, mostly concerning oil production levels and the best way to keep prices robust enough so the countries can make money from production (during the Saudi-Russia price war a few years back, pundits were claiming/joking that the Saudis could sell oil for $3 a barrel and still make money while the Russians couldn’t afford anything less than $30 a barrel).
a huge drop in gas prices would bankrupt most us oil companies. we export oil. I suspect there has been a long history of oil price manipulation. beyond open. oil prices were kept low to handicap Russia and Iran, recently.
open is opec