Pro And Con

[Jeff Porter]

Then again, $5 was almost like money then. Now it won't even buy lunch at MacD's. I'd love to have a '72 Opel Gt though, Unique little car.

LOL, good points. But you can buy lunch for $5 today at Dairy Queen, Spangles, and Popeye's! :-)

 

[carzes]

Cost, not price, hasn't changed much. The prices mentioned here would be very close to todays median household income. .36 cents a gallon sounds cheep today bu in 1975 I was making $2.65 an hour.

I get what you're sayin', but in 1975 the minimum wage was $2.10/hr. At .36/gal, that is 5.83 gallons of gas per minimum wage hour. In the year 2014 with a minimum wage of $7.25, and an average gas price today of $3.34, that is 2.17 gallons per minimum wage hour. That puts gas at nearly 2.7 times what it cost then for those who can least afford it. "But cars get better mileage today," you say....?
In 1975, average vehicle mpg on the road, (no, not NEW cars, we are talking minimum wage here,) was about 13 mpg. Today's average is 24 mpg, (again, not the new $50k hybrid - minimum wage.), which gives us an increase in fuel efficiency of an actually impressive 92%. So.... shortcutting the math a bit, that means that compared to 1975, gas today costs the workin' Shmo about 1/3 more than the same Shmo of 1975.

 

[Jayne Shelby]

I'm still made that a gallon of gasoline went over 50 cents!

 

[Catia]

I have 2005 Suzuki S50, and I get about 45 miles per gallons.

 

[Jim H]

LOL, good points. But you can buy lunch for $5 today at Dairy Queen, Spangles, and Popeye's!

Love Popeyes with a bisquit, red beans & rice

 

[tommy]

Hey, I owned a service station back in 1966 and regular was .26 and ethyl .30 per gal. Oh to be like that again. Oh well!!! My problem was I was only making about .05 cents a gal. Where we made any money were flats & other labor. Weird.

 

[CheeseheadEarl]

Modern gas stations dont make much more than that per gallon today. Where they get ya is inside.

I started paying at the pump whenever possible a few years ago, saves me a few $ every stop.

 

[Lil4X]

The latest trick for gas station's "revenue enhancement" is to advertise a price of $3.14 on the sign, only to find that's the "gift card or cash price". If you use a credit (or even a debit) card, you'll quickly find the price is $3.28. You have to read the price ON THE PUMP to avoid throwing money away. What the gas retailers say they are doing is passing along the percentage premium the bank card company charges them for accepting the card (plus a bit more if they can get away with it). But it seems that grocery stores, hardware stores, and even big-box stores "absorb" that cost (actually, they build it into their price structure).

But gas stations don't do that. They advertise unrealistically cheap prices to draw in customers from the street, but then soak them at the pump. It's called "bait and switch", and I'm really tired of it.

 

[Jambe]

That happened to me in Sandy, Oregon. Fortunately, I had enough cash to thwart their plan.

 

[CheeseheadEarl]

One more Elio benefit. A $20 bill will get you the "cash price" for about 500 miles worth of fuel.

Sad but true: the vending machines where I work take CCs now. Yes, you can charge a gut bomb sandwich, for 10 cents extra...