Gas prices, a warped way of looking at them

I was playing around with some numbers now that gas prices are hovering around $3.50 a gallon. I just wanted to see what that really meant.

For this example, my car has a 13 gallon tank, gets 22 MPG, I work 28 miles away and I make $8.00/hour.

At the above, my car can get me to work if I do nothing else, to work every day for a week. Not bad. I got to work, yeeee haaaaa. Now what did it cost me?

At $8.00 wages, it will take 5.7 hours of the 40 total hours to just pay for gas. But wait, that is before taxes, OK, lets say I get to take home 78% of every dollar made thanks to fica, fed, state, etc. Seems fair. It is going to take 7.3 hours to just put gas in the tank to get to work.

What up with that????? This is above minimum wage. One whole day out of 5 is dedicated to just getting to work.

Now you have to live. Gee thanks.

OK, so Parmea, what was it like in the good ole days you might ask..... When gas prices were $2.50 (still to dang high) it took 4.1 hours gross or 5.2 hours.

And the real good ole days, 5 years ago? gas came in at $1.50. It took 2.4 hours at gross pay or 3.1 hours at 78% take home.

What I see is many poor people are working 1 day a week for the gas company. Talk about "the company store" of the early 1900s. Geeeze, its the same thing.

I rationalized these numbers as most people who have an $8.00hr job are not going to have them high MPG cars. They are driving what ever they can find.

28 miles includes getting the youngens to and from daycare, school etc. You cant just let them get to those places on there own.

Based on this, how the heck is a poor person suppose to live? Exist maybe, but live?

When your making $400,000 a year (senators and congressman) you really will not feel this problem. When your making $16,640.00/year, your hating it.