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Here is the interesting thing. If you convert Euros to dollars and liters to US gallons, Californians are paying more for diesel and gas (petrol) than the French are, and the citizens of the state are asking for still higher fuel taxes.

It's less interesting if you post the actual facts instead of making "facts" up, Mr Trump:

Gas price in San Francisco: $3.39

At 3.78 liters in a gallon, that's $0.89/liter.

At today's exchange rate, a Euro is worth $1.13, so $0.89 is 0.78 EUR

In France, the December price is 1.42 EUR. There are only a few counties where gas is cheaper than what californian's pay: . Russia, Belarus, and Azerbaijan.

Or, to convert in the other direction the French are paying $6.06/gallon for gas.

Assuming 36 mpg of "decent car mileage" (kind of standard around here), you'd pay $32000 for those 200k miles. Gasoline price is US$5.8/US gal. right now. Electricity rate for electric vehicles is $0.1/kWh.

According to GasBuddy, there are no states with an average gas price like that. Mine is $3/gal
https://www.gasbuddy.com/USA

Moreover if you live in a high-tax state your electricity rates would also reflect high taxes. $0.10/kwh is at the low end.

.

https://www.gasbuddy.com/App

You need to get out less and spend more time on the Internet.

Well, at least half of what you're suggesting is here: https://www.gasbuddy.com/

So there are limits to the kind of house I can buy today, you cannot ignore it.

This is true. You also can't get a car built out of a big block engine tied to an axle with no management systems or safety systems. Besides regulation, you generally can't buy things which aren't in sufficient demand to warrant their production.

That means the houses which are available are available because they serve a sufficiently-large market--the same proportion of the population as back in 1950, in fact, in terms of affordability and demand.

The average cost of a car has doubled from $16.5k to $31k and I dare say a vehicle is more expensive to maintain today

Ha.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.

"A vehicle is more expensive to maintain today." That's rich. God, you people. You could work on cars in the 70s--we know this because you were always working on the car in the 70s; the fucking things never stopped breaking!

You seem to have completely missed the part about the price of things not increasing as fast as the income per person. You're, again, looking at something that cost $10 when you had $100, complaining it costs $15 now that you have $200, and ignoring the fact that you could buy 10 back then but can buy 13 now. You're also making shit up about the cars being supposedly more-expensive to maintain, unless you're trying to count just dollars and not look at the cost in proportion to income.

Let's put this into simple terms: Ignore money and compare all changing costs in terms of hours the median-income worker has to work to pay for a thing.

The article also correctly brings up the fact that the price of a barrel of oil seems to rise and fall but the cost at the pump only rises.

Oil vs gasoline. Looks like gasoline prices fall across America as oil prices fall. Don't let facts get in the way of your Trumpshit, though.

By what measure have the last 8 years sucked? Just curious, but please be objective and stick to the facts.

Stock market did well: http://www.macrotrends.net/135...
GDP slowly rising: http://www.tradingeconomics.co...
Unemployment steadily decreasing http://data.bls.gov/timeseries...
Steadily decreasing gas prices: https://blog.gasbuddy.com/Reta...
Believe it or not, decreasing crime rate: http://www.nationalreview.com/...
No major new gun control laws or other major trampling of the constitution
Many additional safeguards on disadvantaged segments of the population
And finally a reasonable record of kept campaign promises: http://www.politifact.com/trut...

To be sure not a perfect record; for example:
Middle East and Syria in particular - probably would have happened regardless
Relations with Russia and China - hard to say what could have been done differently
"Affordable" Health Care Act - although we couldn't live with what we had we should have done better. At least children are covered now...
Education - we owe our children and future more
Care for the environment - oils spills and global warming
Race relations and policing - Black Lives Matter

If you want to pin a failure on Barack Obama, blame him for not finding a way to reach out to congress - let's face it that situation is f'd up. Barack can't get an A on his report card because he failed that test. While maybe the most powerful person around, the president of the US certainly is not omnipotent. I challenge anybody to say they could have really done better.

http://www.gasbuddy.com/Privacy

The effective date is August 31, 2015. The app probably won't be asking for any new permissions until then.

I paid an extra $15 to fill my gas tank yesterday compared to last week, every gas station had raised its price by exactly the same amount while the price of the raw product dropped slightly.

That's a pretty big gas tank since even a totally exaggerated 50 cent increase in the price of gas would make that 30 gallons.

http://blog.gasbuddy.com/posts...

As to gasoline, that's statistically unsupportable... here you go:
http://www.gasbuddy.com/gb_gas...

You can see the pattern pretty clearly there. Look at the top 6 major cities in the country and look at their gas prices.

As to various service providers and food providers... you've apparently never lived in New York City or Los Angeles or Chicago. I don't know where you live but it isn't one of America's major cities or you'd know better.

As to taxes and corruption... it doesn't matter what your excuses for it is... its inefficiency.

As to what mode of living is more efficient. You really quite stubborn. Lets look at poorer countries to give you another example. These are societies that do not have resources to waste. How do they mostly live... in big cities where you say they'll save money and resources through centralization... or mostly in rural communities which you say is wasteful?

Obviously in rural communities. Why? Its more efficient and always has been.

Good day.

9 years.. no, but 8 years...

Gasoline price isn't a great reference unless you smooth it out. It's highly variable because both consumption and production are fairly inelastic over short periods - it takes months to bring a new well online, , and it also takes more than a few weeks of high prices before you are willing or able to change your commute (which could involve changing your job in extreme cases..) or decide to purchase a more efficient vehicle.

Obama tax? I didn't vote for him, but fact check.

http://www.gasbuddy.com/gb_retail_price_chart.aspx?city1=USA Average&city2=&city3=&crude=n&tme=96&units=us

There's graph of gasoline prices in the last 8-years; roughly half under Bush, half under Obama. I can't say that the average price is particularly different.

Ok. Let's try it a different way.

First go here: http://www.gasbuddy.com/gb_gastemperaturemap.aspx

Note the following states which have plentiful electoral votes: CA, WA, NY, MA, IL, MI, IN, all states that if flopping over to the Red side of this map: http://www.270towin.com/ helps demonstrate the effect.

Red states that aren't in question (mostly the US South and central Midwest from TX to ND), are enjoying inexpensive fuel today. It will continue to be the case for the next four weeks. Inflicted pain will hopefully make voters in the expensive states "throw the bums out".

Go ahead and track the gas prices for the past three months, and note the same expense distribution, generally (there is some flux, but there has to be some). Monopolies want friendlies in office. Drill, baby, drill, is their motto (among others).

here's a gas map:
http://gasbuddy.com/gb_gastemperaturemap.aspx

no relation to red and blue states.

ok.. i'll play your stupid little game..

here's a temperature map of gas prices:
http://gasbuddy.com/gb_gastemperaturemap.aspx

I see no relation between red and blue states and the prices.

looks more like any state near the gulf coast is cheaper.. but that's it.

Well, crude futures dipped the past week due to the economy, so it wouldn't be accurate to conclude that pump price increase is indicative of an "improving economy". Remember there's a lag of a month or so between the two, and if you look at this year's historical data, you'd see that crude was trading at its lowest in June, which translated to July having the lowest pump price this year. Likewise, we saw the trading price increase in August followed by a jump up to $100 in September, which is likely why we're seeing the pump price go up this month.

6-month charts here
http://gasbuddy.com/gb_retail_price_chart.aspx
http://www.marketwatch.com/investing/future/crude%20oil%20-%20electronic

George W. Bush got the price of gas down to $1.80/gallon when he left office. In fact, it came down quite fast; just four months before that, it was well over $4/gallon. A few months later, the Obama administration took over and got its stimulus bill passed as a first order of business, and the economy started growing again, albeit slowly. Through the second half of 2009 and most of 2010 the price of gas in the US averaged about $2.60/gallon. Near the start of 2011 the recovery finally started gaining momentum, and gasoline prices rose steadily to $3.90/gallon before falling back somewhat.

What does this tell us?

1. In today's world, the minimum nationwide price of gasoline in the US is $1.80/gallon. But we only should expect that when the world economy (not just the US) is pretty much dead in its tracks, and nobody is hiring (besides bankruptcy law firms, collection agencies and similar), firms are going out of business left and right, and nobody is speculating either.

2. When we're just starting to come out of a deep recession, and businessmen and consumers are still cautious and pessimistic, and there is rather little hiring except to replace departed workers, the nationwide price of gasoline in the US should be about $2.60/gallon.

3. When the economy is strong and businesses are hiring and consumers are spending on things like vacations, electronic gadgets and service plans, and nice clothes, the price of gasoline will be well above $3/gallon.

If President Gingrich could keep his promise for $2.50/gallon gasoline nationwide, that would put us in scenario #2. Be careful what you wish (or vote) for.

Have you ever actually checked the retail price per gallon of diesel as compared to regular unleaded gasoline? Diesel is NOT cheaper.

My comment below, Price increases are far more than interest rates, had some errors. I'm posting a corrected version again here. I don't have the time to do more research.

Inflation is around 2% only if the reduction in house prices is considered, I'm guessing. The fact is that prices for everything are being raised rapidly.

U.S. dollar inflation, some examples:

Food, +4.8% -- Food Price Outlook, 2012
Quote: "The food-at-home Consumer Price Index (CPI), in turn, increased more than expected '4.8 percent in 2011' which means that food price inflation was not as strong as in 2008 when it increased 6.4 percent over 2007."

Medical treatment, +8.5% -- Medical cost trends for 2012
"This year's report from PwC's Health Research Institute finds that the medical cost trend is expected to increase from 8% in 2011 to 8.5% in 2012."

University tuition, +8.3% -- College costs climb, yet again.
"Tuition at the average public university jumped 8.3% to $8,244."

Gas, +108% in 8 years -- Historical Price Charts

U.S. dollar inflation, some examples:

Food, +4.8% -- Food Price Outlook, 2012
Quote: "The food-at-home Consumer Price Index (CPI), in turn, increased more than expectedâ"4.8 percent in 2011â"which means that food price inflation was not as strong as in 2008 when it increased 6.4 percent over 2007."

Medical treatment, +8.5% -- Medical cost trends for 2012
"This year's report from PwC's Health Research Institute finds that the medical cost trend is expected to increase from 8% in 2011 to 8.5% in 2012."

University tuition, +8.3% -- College costs climb, yet again.
"Tuition at the average public university jumped 8.3% to $8,244."

Gas, +208% -- Historical Price Charts

http://www.westegg.com/inflation/infl.cgi

Today's $5 gallon gasoline is 2000's $4 gallon gasoline.

http://gasbuddy.com/gb_retail_price_chart.aspx

Gasoline still cheaper than 2008.

---

Gasoline cost about 31 cents in 1960.
What cost $.31 in 1960 would cost $2.26 in 2010.

$5 is expensive. But for most people, it's only $1,000 per year they lose.

My thunderstorm predictor also works fine - it always predicts that storm is coming. And about once a month it's right!

Paul's predictions are totally bunkum. He was predicting that the currency would implode because of the Ponzi scheme of the Fed. That hasn't happened, not even close.

This year he was predicting that commodities would skyrocket because the Fed was 'debasing the dollar' by QE1/2. And right now commodities have fallen almost back to 2008 levels and dollar is stable against other currencies.

"Outside of CPI, inflation has been going up significantly."

No it hasn't. Since 2008 commodity prices are basically flat: http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/10/07/way-off-base-2/ (don't believe Krugman? See http://www.gasbuddy.com/gb_retail_price_chart.aspx?time=24 for another example).

So Paul's economic theories were in essence tested by experiment. And proven to be false.

"They are now. If they had been implemented earlier we might have had a chance. As it stands, the middle class in America will be all but completely wiped out in the next generation. "

And Paul's recipe is: "Wipe out that suckers. We don't need no stinking meedle class". Because he's basically advocating not just continuing the policy of deregulation and concentration of power in corporations' hands, but dialing it to 11. What exactly could have been done in Paul's universe to prevent the bubble?

Let's see:
1) Deregulation - that's what allowed banks to create CDO bubble.
2) Invisible hand of the market - like the rating agencies grading junk as AAA?
3) Gold standard and hard currency - the bubble has happened in the shadow banking system that over-leveraged the debt. Nothing in gold standard could have prevented it by itself.
4) What else?

Now, I agree that Ron Paul is _mostly_ sincere which seems to be rare these days. But that doesn't help in itself if his position is insane. A sincere madman is still a madman.

Assuming you're indeed an American, quit whining about gas prices and it "killing the economy". Apparently one dollar per liter is currently considered "zomg expensive" (ref: http://gasbuddy.com/gb_gastemperaturemap.aspx). In Europe, ten years ago, one liter costed anything between 99 and 109 EUROcents (that's $1.32-$1.45). You don't even want to know what they're paying there now.

Agreed. The real counterfeiting occurred in 1964 when silver was no longer used in quarters and dimes, and in 1971 when we went off the gold standard. Here is the proof: the value of a gallon of gasoline in 1964 was 27 cents. Today the average price of gas is $2.86. The melt value of a 90% silver quarter from 1964 is worth $3.27 in today's dollars. If we kept using 90% silver quarters today, we would be able to purchase more than gallon of gasoline with it. Our coins and paper money have become extremely devalued.

    Nope, you're right on the gas prices. People have selective memory.

    You can see the last 6 years of gas price history here.

    Also, set it to show the Canadian prices. They mirror the American trends. In early 2004, the price was around $1.44/gal. By July of 2008, the retail price was through the roof at about $4.12/gal. Election season and campaign influences brought it from approx $3.80 to $1.50 in a span of about two months.

    As for Bush "standing up" to Cheney, that quote is a bit out of context. That was Bush trying to throw Cheney under the bus, in case he was to be charged for crimes after he left office.

    Don't endow Bush with sainthood quite yet, until you realize he did exactly what you think he's good for not doing.

    Bush, not Cheney, urged Congress in 2006 to sign the John Warner National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2007 (H.R. 5122), Section 1076 titled "Use of the Armed Forces in major public emergencies". Bush signed it into law after he got Congress to approve it.

    That gave the President (not the VP, not a General, not the Joint Chiefs, only the POTUS himself.) power to put American troops on the street at his will. "...natural disaster, epidemic, or other serious public health emergency, terrorist attack or incident, or other condition...". It didn't matter that he spelled out the first few, even though they're obvious. "other condition" means he could say "well, this is one of the other conditions."

    It continues to list conditions. "any insurrection, domestic violence, unlawful combination, or conspiracy ". Ahhh, we're not the only conspiracy nuts. It was spelled out in law. It's a conspiracy, and we have to put troops on the streets. I know, it wouldn't be (and wasn't) done for just anything, but the very dangerous option was there.

    Some countries use their military in police actions around their nations. They are trained for it, and have long term experience in it. Our troops unfortunately don't. I won't say all would treat American streets as a war zone if so ordered, but a number greater than 0 could.

    I'm sure "other conditions" was worded for alien invasion, not for any other nefarious reasons. :) insurrection or conspiracy, well, that's just bad. It ensures that if the people should try to stand up against their elected government, or even if they *think* that they were going to, the military could legally be deployed to deal with it. We're not talking about simple arrest and detain either.

    Just because in 2008, Bush said "no I didn't, I'm the good guy" doesn't mean anything. He did sign another law repealing the previous in 2008, but you know that's one serious CYA move. If it was good enough to make into a law, why would he repeal it 2 years later?

I have no problem with people not wanting to use computers. Its a choice and this is a free society. I do think pretty much Adult living in the United States could extract some value from owning one and knowing how to use it.

My neighbor next door, my "real" neighbor actually, has never used email. And yet, he has a number of computers that he uses on a daily basis to do his bidding. He's a trucker by trade. He has a fancy portable gps unit that talks to him, and that can also play DVD movies. His work truck and his personal truck both have inboard computers for their engine, which no doubt, his mechanic(s) will plug in a device to extract the error codes from and print out the possible solutions (listed from top to bottom -- to be tried in a sequential order -- from most likely to solve the problem to least likely to solve the problem). And since he's a truck driver himself, he may have or his work place may already have purchased a stripped down version of that device from the local Kragen auto parts store or Walmart. In his apartment, he has digital cable, with on-demand movies, an electronic TV guide, and who knows what else... (with what looks like some box with a small computer on top of his TV). Most likely, he also has an atm card, which allows him to retrieve cash, get his balance, do wire transfers (and do a lot more considering that's he's probably with bank of america and that bank just revamped/added many awesome new features (scanning capabilities, handwriting recognition, etc) to all their atms in our area).

That being said, and it may even sound like I am contradicting myself, but he even has a one year old Apple computer (that he purchased brand-new). He just never has used email and he's not really interested in learning how to use email. His top priority actually has been to find out how he could record streaming/embedded videos from youtube (at least, that's what he told me, but I suspect he just wants to learn that for porn). Email, I offered to teach him as well, but he was not really interested in that. Google, he uses, but I don't think he's aware of its full potential, or if he's aware, he does have his own informal network of family, friends, neighbors, work colleagues, professionals that he hires, who do have "personal" computers themselves, so he's not anywhere as disconnected to the internet as you make it sound that he is. For instance, when I showed him a report I had printed out from GasBuddy, he told me he didn't want that, every day, truck drivers share Diesel price information over their cb radio and their cell phone, that sharing of information is a social activity for him, and he had no intention to replace that social activity with a daily print out or a scheduled sms notification going to his cell phone. And I find it's no accident that my mechanic has a desktop computer connected to the internet, in a corner of his garage, these days most mechanics use the internet as well. The same for my medical doctor as well, some medical doctor may resent the fact that their patients have too much information at their fingertips, but when I ask him detail about something -- my own doctor will give me some print out he found from the internet (which suits me just fine actually, he probably knows how to look for and judge the relevancy of the information he finds on the web much better than I can).

In Texas, perhaps. But not in the rest of the country. I drove from NYC to Detroit and back a week ago. Gas prices ranged from $3.25 a gallon in Michigan to as high as $4.50/gallon in rural Ohio and Pennsylvania. I think the lowest I saw was about $2.75, and that was near Detroit.

Many such buyers have had to take on a 35 to 40 year mortgage.

That's not really the case. Higher education is far too expensive for most Americans. Coming out of a 4-year college program with $160,000 in debt, even after scholarships and bursaries, tends to put people in a pretty terrible position. Compare that to places like Canada, Australia, the UK, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden, and even Russia. Students coming out of universities in those countries are just as capable as American graduates, but face nowhere near the financial burden (both before attending and after).

Historically there isn't a lot of downtrend in U.S. oil consumption.

OK, but your graph does show a slowing since 1983 compared to before 1972. Granted, that is probably the result of the jump in prices from the formation of the cartel. Anyway, there's no numbers there for post-2000. The Prius entered the US market in 2001. The fact that hybrids now exist and continue to be made is an indication that people do want them.

Prius's no longer have a waiting list now that gas prices are normal.

Because they've increased supply in response to demand, and because it's no longer the only hybrid choice. And gas prices aren't at all "normal", not compared to this time two years ago and barely approximate to one year ago. They reached an all-time high just two summers ago, and are only down right now because of the normal decreased demand in the colder seasons.

So, Product X, where X is a car, xbox360, etc., costs the same in both locations. In Job A, you have to work longer to be able to buy X, despite things like rent.

Also, despite rent, you net 60K a year from Job B vs 40K a year from Job A.

Not true. First, salaries are not twice as much in the bay area as other places. You might make 80K in the bay area, for the same job that pays 70K in Portland, or 60K in Boise. Second, prices are cheaper outside of California. Sales tax in California is 8% and it is 0% in Oregon. Or compare Gas Prices in San Jose and Portland. It's cheaper in Oregon, plus we have attendants that pump the gas for us.

http://gasbuddy.com/
M$N also has a gas site.

...is that U.S. politicians bow too easily and too readily to lobbyist' pressure. Sugar ethanol is certainly a reasonable way to go. The technology is there, the science is sound.
I would like to hope that the spread of cost for a gallon of "fuel" would radically shift. Right now we see the breakdown of cost for a gallon of gas [fuel] here. This shows that

19% taxes
4% dist & marketing
22% refining & profit
55% crude oil

Federal tax is 18.4 cents a gallon. Let's say the average state tax is 20 cents. Assume the average gas price(avg) is $2.97 a gallon:

2.97 =
19% = .56
4% = .12
22% = .65
55% = 1.63
= 2.96

what I think is truly the case for our average state:

13% = .384
4% = .12
28% = .84
55% = 1.63

Although I can't find from brief searching for specific refinery/profit breakdowns, I am sure they are out there. I bet realistically profit per gallon has increased by 75% and refinery cost is held at unreasonably high levels because oil companies are not maintaining their resources. I am *so sure* that any investigation will smoke that out.

Now, will the new "Energy" companies be more realistic with this? I highly doubt it.

Maybe Congress and the White Hosue can exercise some accountability for their totally failed energy policies (including sending us to war) by stopping the price gouging the oil corporations are abusing us with.

The US national average retail price of gasoline has been dropping quite steadily for the last 3 weeks. The price as of 2005-10-27 is $2.50, whereas on 2005-10-06, it was $2.79. That's almost 10 cents a week. I can't provide a link for the data other this, but you can go there, select your state and locality, then select "Pump Price Graphs" from the left column, select "USA Average" to show on your graph, and look at gas prices from the last 6 months.

And the good news is, the two big events that drove increased gas prices at the pump were hurricane Katrina and then hurricane Rita after that, and we have already dropped below the level it was just before the Katrina-related panic at the end of August.

And, there was an uptick in prices during the month of August and before Katrina, but we are already down almost 10 cents/gallon below the levels we were pre-Katrina. And if you look at the graphs, the derivative seems pretty close to constant, which might serve as an indicator that the drop in prices isn't going to stop right away.

The bottom line is, we may be below $2.50/gallon again fairly soon. In fact, the gas station nearest my house is already at $2.49 as of tonight. We could even drop below $2.00/gallon if we keep this up for another few weeks. Only time will tell, of course.

Bottom line is, yes, the gas companies have been making tons of money, but now prices seem to be dropping on their own. I don't think we're headed back to the days when gas was $1.00/gallon or even back to the days when it was $1.50/gallon, but we're moving in that direction steadily, at least as of right now.

First, if you're paying 4.50/gallon for gas in the US, you're getting raped. $2.50 is a more reasonable maximum, especially in the regions where electricity costs 6 cents / kwh.

Second, your comparison would be quite a lot more useful if you actually used similar units. A kwh is 3.6 MegaJoules, a gallon of gasoline corresponds to about 130 MegaJoules of energy, assume a moderate conversion efficiency of 20% and call it 26 megajoules. So $.06/kwh is $16/GJ, while $2.50 per gallon is $96/GJ.