Back on this post, Susanna K. reminded me of this letter in Monday’s paper:
Gas is still relatively cheap in U.S.
Wake up, folks. Once again our media friends have created the myth that gas is expensive, fueling an already weakened economy.
In 1963, I spent 4 percent of my income on gas. For me, personally, gas is very cheap. My wife and I drive two large SUVs, and we spend 1 percent of our income on fuel.
Stop this ridiculous pump patrol. We are fortunate to have gas at about $4 a gallon. Our retired friends in the Netherlands pay $9.52 a gallon.R.J. MONROE
West Columbia
Susanna made the point that if Mr. Monroe is really only spending 1 percent of his income on fuel, he’s "definitely in the minority, especially in South Carolina." She also tried to direct us (TypePad messed up the link) to this graphic in the NYT. It shows where in the country gas prices hit the hardest, as a percentage of income. As the caption says, poor, rural areas are hit the hardest. Californians pay more, but they can afford it better.
Anyway, it reminded me that I tried to do the calculation in my head when I was reading that letter on the proof, and I’m pretty sure I spend a lot more than 1 percent (of gross, never mind net), considering gas for my wife’s vehicle and mine as percentage of total income. And I make more money than the average, and don’t drive all that much, beyond going to work and back.
So that made me wonder — are any of y’all as fortunate as Mr. Monroe?
I should say that his point is well taken — we’d be much worse off in many other countries. But if his figures are right, I don’t think he’s very representative.
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The 1% does seem low for someone who makes average money. The state’s per capita income of $29,767 comes out to about $41,807 per person over age 18. Say the driver only goes to work and needed shopping. We can guestimate the average drive to work of 18 minutes works out to be around 10 miles each way (give equal driving on the weekends to account for shopping and the like), for a total of 7,300 miles. At 24 miles/gallon and $4.00 per gallon that should be about $1,217 for the year, weighing in at 2.9% of the income.
It gets more complicated when highway miles and everything are thrown in, but our household (two earners/cars, more income, more miles [vacations in there], slightly better mileage) comes in really close to 3.5%.
I’m fairly new to this blogging thing. I know it doesn’t belong here, but where can I blog about this?
It’s only a matter of time before they hit the football season ticket holders, where they make all of their money. When that happens, I will cancel. $65 million just for the athletics budget. I dare say most universities in the world would like to have an entire budget that big. And it has absolutely nothing to do with getting a college education.
“Athletics budget, baseball seating plan OK’d
A USC intercollegiate activities committee on Wednesday approved a $65.1 million athletics budget the 2008-09 fiscal year.
In addition to presenting the budget, USC Athletics Director Eric Hyman unveiled a seat licensing fee plan for the Gamecocks’ new baseball stadium. Season ticketholders will be asked to pay seat premiums ranging from $25 to $1,500 for the right to purchase their seats in the new 5,700 seat
facility.”
Three cars in my household with three drivers. Only one real gas guzzler (a VW Eurovan). We’re spending WAY more than 1% of our net income on gasoline. We drive probably a combined 750 miles per week between jobs, errands, etc. Add in another 5K miles per year for trips….
Well, I’m blessed by the fact that I don’t have a commute, because we mostly work at home. Nice having Quicken; I could calculate quickly that we spend around 3% on fuel, and that’s with walking to shops whenever we can (crossing 378 on foot, which is an adventure of its own). That’s personal alone, excluding all business travel.
America’s whole economy and infrastructure is built on cheap energy (and lots of credit); turning this baby around will take some doing. Not without some pain, I would expect.
I spend less than 2% of income on personal fuel. I just drove my Suburban to the beach and back for $42.00. Not bad.
I spend about $5,000 a year on vehicle fuel for business, in addition to car rentals and airline tickets, which I have reduced from 300,000 miles a year to less than 30,000.
My fuel costs run about 3-4% using quick calculations. My daughter drives a minivan to school (she is in a magnet program, and school buses do not run from our house to her school), and my wife drives a PT Cruiser as an itinerant therapist in the school district (I’ve subtracted her reimbursement checks from the totals). My vehicle is an electric low-speed vehicle, but I live only 1 mile from the school where I teach. If I drove a real car, the figure would be slightly higher.
Our family is on the heavy side of driving, something I’m a bit ashamed to admit. We live in a house that doesn’t allow much walking to do anything and there’s not public transit. I figure about 4% of our gross income goes toward gasoline. So we’re still not spending a huge amount of our income on fuel. That’s probably why gasoline consumption has declined by so little even though prices have shot up. It’s just not that cost-effective, yet, to find alternatives.
The average car is driven 12,000 miles per year. I drive about 15,000 miles per year, which is just slightly higher than the national average, but probably about average for this part of the world, since we do a lot of commuting and there’s no real public transportation system to get from Columbia to Charlotte or Greenville or Charleston.
I get about 23 miles per gallon in a 2004 model year V6 sedan, since I do most of my driving in the city and suburbs (stop and go, air conditioning on = 18 mpg) and then some long highway trips (28 mpg). That’s about 650 gallons of gas per year.
At today’s gas prices, that’s about $2,500 per year, or 6.25% of an average annual salary of $40,000.
Using 2001 gas prices, that figure would have been about 2% of annual income, so that’s 4.25% less I now have to contribute to other parts the economy.
As the increased cost of petroleum makes its way through the market, the cost of delivering all goods is rising, along with the cost of manufacturing anything made with or containing petroleum products (almost everything).
Those single digit percentages might seem small to the Monroes in West Columbia, but think of the US economy, which is estimated to be about $13.84 trillion.
If average folks like me have 1, 2, 3 or 4% less money to spend on going out to eat at Lizard’s Thicket, buying a few buckets of paint at Lowe’s, or buying a new set of Sunday clothes at Belk’s, that adds up. One percent of the US economy is $140 billion dollars.
We were spending about 4%, but have learned in the past two months to reduce costs by changing habit to conserve fuel, down to 1%. That means carpooling, taking the train or bus now and then on our jaunts out of town, and riding the local bus every now and then. We particularly enjoyed our recent train trip up to Raleigh.
Many people think such measures are TERRIBLY inconvenient. I happen to think that some are unwilling to admit that they are uncomfortable with the variant levels of skin pigmentation observed among the bus ridership. Even my own mother has expressed as much.
“We particularly enjoyed our recent train trip up to Raleigh.”
That would be $65 worth of gas for a reasonable car? ($220 or so total travel expense by car?) What did the tickets go for?
“TERRIBLY inconvenient.”
I’ve priced a few in the past. The having to get up insanely early, or take a few days to get somewhere that would take less than 12 hours driving are what usually turn me off to them.
The gas issue isn’t about my percentge of income or your percentage of income. It is about terrible national energy policy. Our current litter of politicians don’t have the attention span to seriously consider anything beyond “war,war,war, and drill,drill,drill.
The gas issue isn’t about my percentge of income or your percentage of income. It is about terrible national energy policy. Our current litter of politicians don’t have the attention span to seriously consider anything beyond “war,war,war, and drill,drill,drill.
Funny how liberals don’t worry about taxpayers having less money to spend on other parts of the economy (the real part), when Obama threatens more tax increases.
The average oil company income off a gallon of gas is 9 cents.
The average taxes on a gallon of gasoline is 47.9 cents. That’s greed!
I spend 15% of my net income on gas. According to my inflow and outflow charts it is my second highest expenditure from my house payment.
How in gods name does this become a Liberal V Neocon debate?
How utterly petty must someone become before realizing:
1.) Aside from how we feel about acceptance of other cultures and or sexual orientations, we all worship the dollar bill. The very same dollar bill that is growing weaker and weaker.
2.) Aside from how you feel about cowboys and big trucks, we all need to be unified in order to pull out of this horrid financial nose dive.
Anyone who sits across the table pointing fingers about what the other guy is or is not doing is an idiot. Who gives a flying ___. You should be concerned about the stability of your dollar and the future of your family.
All of you are utter dolts. You’ve spent so much time pointing fingers at each other and trying to find nasty things to put on signs that you idiots have let bandits, scoundrels and crooks swindle your children out of a future.
Well, I hope you’re happy America.