I’d Love to See Gasoline at $2.00 a Gallon Again

Gasoline prices are out of this world. The little store near my house had the price set this morning at $4.29 a gallon, and – for the first time in my life – I had to spend $50 to fill the tank of my vehicle.

I know many of you spend a lot more than that filling your tanks, but that was a first for me.

Not too long ago, a very dear friend of mine – the actress Spice Williams-Crosby – posted this on her social media page. She said she copied it from another source and that it was widely available; I found it fascinating and something that I most definitely agree with.

With Spice’s permission, then, I share it here with you.

I keep hearing people complain that gasoline is over $4.00 a gallon.

And yes, I’d love to see it at $2.00 again. But before we declare gasoline the most outrageously expensive liquid on Earth, let’s put things in perspective.

For $4.00, I get a gallon of gasoline. I pour it into a 4,000-pound machine, turn a key, and that gallon will haul me, the groceries, the golf clubs and half the junk in my trunk almost 30 miles down the highway.

That’s actually a pretty impressive day’s work for $4.00.

Now let’s compare:

A restaurant sells me a 5-ounce glass of wine for $9. That’s about $230 a gallon. And how far does it transport me?

Usually from the dinner table to the men’s room.

A fancy coffee shop can charge $6 for a 16-ounce latte. That’s $48 a gallon. It doesn’t transport me 30 miles. It transports me from “Leave me alone” to “Okay, now you may speak.”

Bottled water at a convenience store might be $2.50 for 20 ounces. That’s $16 a gallon, for something that occasionally falls out of the sky for free.

A 12-ounce energy drink at $3.50 works out to more than $37 a gallon. Apparently caffeine becomes a precious mineral once you put lightning bolts on the can.

Buy one of those little 2-ounce bottles of “energy shot” for $3. That’s $192 a gallon. At that price, it shouldn’t give me energy. It should mow my lawn.

Maple syrup at $8 for a 12-ounce bottle? About $85 a gallon. And its principal technological achievement is making pancakes sticky.

Vanilla extract at $6 for two ounces? That’s $384 a gallon. For $384, I expect the vanilla bean to come to my house and bake the cookies.

Printer ink can cost thousands of dollars per gallon. And unlike gasoline, it sometimes refuses to come out because the printer has decided cyan is low.

Even that $9 glass of wine deserves another look. At roughly $230 a gallon, filling a typical 15-gallon gas tank with restaurant wine would cost about $3,450.

Of course, after drinking 15 gallons of wine, transportation would no longer be your biggest concern.

So yes, $4.00 gasoline is expensive.But it’s also a remarkable bargain when you think about what you’re buying. You’re purchasing enough concentrated energy to push several thousand pounds of steel, glass, groceries and humanity nearly 30 miles.

Meanwhile, we’ll cheerfully pay $6 for coffee, $9 for wine and $3 for water, then stand at the gas pump staring at the numbers like we’re watching the national debt clock.

Maybe gasoline doesn’t need better pricing.

Maybe it just needs a fancier name.

“Handcrafted Premium Petroleum, locally pumped, small-batch refined, with subtle notes of octane and dinosaur.”

Put it in a 12-ounce artisan bottle and charge $14.

We’ll line up around the block.

The writer of the above, whoever he or she is, hits the nail on the head in many ways.

Gas prices are high, true, but as you’ve noted if you read through the list, it could be much, much worse.

To be totally honest with you, I am not even sure exactly why prices are so high.  I know that the Iran war is a major reason, even though the amount of oil we get from Iran is negligible. I am guessing that what we do get from the region comes through the Strait of Hormuz and if Iran is having a bellyache about what we do, they close it down.

And, if I recall correctly, a refinery in California was taken off line recently with no plans for an immediate return.

So that’s why they’re so high, I guess.

Oh – and profits.  I forgot about those.