The title of this post is how much I paid to gas up yesterday.
The vehicle I was driving is a Honda minivan. According to Google, it has a 21 gallon tank. The gas pump indicated the price per gallon was $5.25 for the lowest grade of gasoline. This is a higher price than during the last few weeks: it had been hovering between $4.50-$4.90/gallon.
By comparison, in May of 2019, prior to the Ukraine war and the pandemic, the price per gallon was $2.60. So from then until now, the price of gasoline has more than doubled around here.
The top-selling vehicles in the US - the Ford F-Series, Dodge Ram, Chevy Silverado - have gas tanks which hold 23-26 gallons. Surely there are many drivers now paying $100+ to fill up the tank.
My wife and I both work from home so we don't commute back and forth to/from work each day. Everywhere we need to go from one week to the next is within a five minute drive from our doorstep. Our other vehicle is a hybrid which averages 40 miles/gallon or better. And we both have decent jobs. So we can suck it up and pay more at the pump. But. For the retail workers, childcare workers, customer service workers and other lower-paid jobs with which people earn a living, the price of gas surely is a financial catastrophe.
The price of gasoline is not Joe Biden's fault. But he and his party are perceived to be insensitive to this sort of thing: they'd much rather talk about green energy and electric vehicles, and they are perceived to be hostile to drillers, refiners and pipelines. Republicans are guaranteed to use the price of gas to attack Democrats this fall; not to do so would be to commit political malpractice.
Republicans have been putting "brought to you by Joe Biden" stickers on the gas pumps in my area. I'm sure that Republicans will blame inflation on Biden, Antifa, immigrants, Black Lives Matter, aid to Ukraine, critical race theory, election fraud, covid vaccines, proposed gun reforms, Obamacare, falling church attendance, Starbucks unions, and whatever else they don't like.
ReplyDeleteWhat else is new?
If everything goes well, I should have an EV in the final quarter of the year. I'm also considering solar panels. Since the USA as a whole isn't doing anything, I'll do what I can as an individual in a hyperindividualist society. One reason is the climate. The other reason is I despise the fossil fuel companies. I wish everyone had the means to do this. But I need a car and I didn't want to put another internal combustion engine on the road for ten years.
ReplyDeleteGas here is $4.19 at Casey's where usually fill up. I'm not in love with our Chevy Malibu, but it gets really good mileage on the highway, where we'll be this weekend. The reason I don't enjoy it that much is because it acts like a golf cart and powers down at stop lights etc, then springs(sort of ) into action when you take your foot off the brakes. It's a feature, not a bug, for gas economy. Too many memories of old crappy cars we used to have that actually died when you took your foot off the gas.
ReplyDeleteMy last tank of gas was free as most of my gas usually is. Giant Eagle Supermarket has something called fuel perks. For every $100 in groceries, one earns 100 perks. A thousand perks earn $1.00 off per gallon of gas, or 20% off your grocery order with a maximum of 20% off per grocery order.
ReplyDeletePrescription co-pays earn perks, as do gift cards. Betty and I spend a lot of money on prescriptions. I make all my purchases at Amazon, Lowes, Home Depot, Target, etc. by means of gift cards bought at Giant Eagle. Every so often Giant Eagle doubles the amount on Gift cards, e.g., $100 in a gift card earns 200 perks. That is when I stock up on gift cards.
Besides getting free gas, I usually earn enough to have a 20% grocery purchase every month or two. That is when I buy all the things that they normally don’t put on sale.
Some of us Democrats are pretty savvy about our money. Saw somewhere that the historic evidence is that the economy does better under Democrats. Probably because the post World War II economic and baby booms occurred when Democrats controlled Congress. That is also probably for the average person, not the billionaires.
I never thought of buying gift cards at the grocery store for gas points. Good idea. I’m going to check to see if that will work at the supermarket where I shop. Don’t they have some kind of fee attached though?
DeleteNo fee for regular gift card. I guess Amazon, etc. take care of that to get the business. However, you can purchase Visa, etc. gift cards which do have a fee. If I remember it is collected in a subtle way.
DeleteI live in Northern California, near San Francisco. I filled up last week and paid $6.26 per gallon. We are leaving on a 2 week driving vacation to Palm Springs, CA and Scottsdale, AZ, on June 6th - about 1600 miles round trip, and I shudder to think what it will cost for gasoline. At least Arizona doesn't have the gas taxes that California has (it usually about $1.10 per gallon there) so that will be a small blessing ........... small.
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