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Subject:Re: Price of gasoline - an older perspective ;)
From:Donald Baxter
Date:Wed, 12 Feb 2003 23:58:05 -0600

But really now, hundreds of thousands of people are willing to pay more
for bottled "gormet" water than they are for gasoline.  At constant
dollars, and as a percentage of income, gasoline has hardly been cheaper
than most of us pay in the United States and Canada right now.

Sure I remember 29 cent a gallon gasoline when I was 9 years old in
Huntsville, Alabama (1967).  I remember gas wars at the service stations
on the Huntsville-Decatur Highway where it would go down to 7 cents a
gallon.  People were a bit more prone to pick up pennies if dropped back
then.

The price of gasoline isn't much worth complaining about.  We don't come
close to paying what inexpensive gasoline truly costs us, and we
probably won't for quite some time.  There's the expense of the meddling
the West has done over the last century in other lands to keep it
flowing, the meddling we will do in the near and far future, the cost of
dumping tons of pollutants into our air.  Most of these costs have been
put on our cosmic credit card.  Your children will pay them.  As for me,
I'm not breeding.

Donald Baxter
'85 Vanagon GL
Iowa City, IA