Got this off the John Stossel website(goggle John Stossel) ..ABC News. I
was on TV last week...a very interesting program.
The concept was Americans are living better than ever....FYI for those who
apply polital BS to everything..Stossel is not a Republican. I have
attached
No. 7 - MYTH - Gas Prices Are Higher Than Ever
"Record high gas prices," has been the refrain of many in the media this
past year while talking about the price at the pump. Jay Leno even said,
"They don't even put the price on the sign anymore - it just says, 'If you
have to ask, you can't afford it.'"
Drivers I talked to at a New York gas station agreed. "Too high, it's
scary," said one man. "It's going up and up and up and it's the most
expensive it's ever been," said another woman.
But the reality is that the "record high gas prices" are a myth. The U.S.
Department of Energy records show that when you adjust for inflation the
price of gas is now lower than it's been for most of the twentieth century.
Prices are lower now than they were 25 years ago. Yes, they price is up
from
the 1998 all time low of $1.19, but they are a dollar lower than they were
in the early 1980s.
When I told this to people at the gas station they didn't believe me. And
why should they? The media keep telling us about the record high prices -
they're just not adjusting for inflation!
I asked people to compare the price of gas to bottled water or ice cream
you
can buy inside the gas station. Most people were sure the gas was more
expensive. But they're wrong.
If you took the average price of a bottle of water, a gallon would cost
nearly $7. A gallon of Haagen Dazs ice cream would set you back nearly
$30 -
15 times the price of gas.
And think about how much harder it is to produce gasoline.
First, oil has to be sucked out of the ground . sometimes from deep beneath
an ocean or underneath ice or from the Middle East where workers risk their
lives. And just to get to the oil often means the drill may have to bend
and
dig sideways through as many five miles of earth. What oil companies find
then has to be delivered through long pipelines or shipped in monstrously
expensive ships, then converted into three different formulas of gasoline,
trucked in trucks that cost more than $100,000 and then your local gas
station has to spend a fortune on safety devices to make sure you don't
blow
yourself up.
Gas is actually a bargain, not that you'll hear that from most of the
media.
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