Lately everybody's bitching about gas prices. "Oh no $3.45 per gallon! The world's gonna end!" People look at me funny when I tell them we have the cheapest gas prices in the world (outside of the Middle East of course), but its true. Want proof? Look at England, widely considered the world's strongest economy because the pound is so strong. Let's look at gas prices there.
This would normally be difficult as those quirky Brits buy gas by the litre instead of the gallon, so there's usually so math to be done. But the website This Is London has an article, dated today, with the headline "Gas exceeds 6 pounds per gallon". OK, that was easy, all we need to do is convert pounds to dollars. One pound is $1.62 cents. So if we say that gas is six pounds a gallon (remember its actually more, I rounded down) gas is $9.72 a gallon! In my car with its 18-gallon tank it would cost $174.96 to fill it! Again, remember I rounded down! Still think gas is too expensive here?
Add to that the idea of congestion charges. This is a way for the Brits to cut traffic down. Every time you enter a city, a camera takes a picture of your plate and you get billed for 8 pounds! So if you didn't live in Wilkes-Barre, but you work there (like me), everyday when you cross the market street bridge, it would cost you $12.96 (8 pounds x 1.62)! Still think it costs too much to drive? It costs one third less than in the supposed strongest economy in the world. So the next time you hear someone bitching about gas tell'em Wallio say to STFU. And then explain why.
Sources: http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23930433-petrol-prices-surpass-pound-6-per-gallon.do
http://coinmill.com/GBP_USD.html#GBP=1.00
You are absolutely right!
ReplyDeleteBut we’ll still complain about the price of gas--even as we pay an average of $21.00 per gallon for bottled water that we could get out of the tap for $.07 without ever thinking twice about that….