Fuel Prices

[mryaris]

OK.....I crunched the numbers using minimum wage instead of median income. As expected the percentages are higher and the fluctuations greater, but again, aside from the spike in 1980 & again in 2005 the numbers are pretty consistant.

Here's the breakdown for my chart:

Year/hourly minimum wage/price of gal of gas/ratio of gal per hour

1960/$1.00/$0.31/31.0%
1965/$1.25/$0.31/24.8%
1970/$1.60/$0.36/22.5%
1975/$2.10/$0.57/27.1%
1980/$3.10/$1.25/40.3%
1985/$3.35/$1.20/35.8%
1990/$3.80/$1.16/30.5%
1995/$4.25/$1.15/27.0%
2000/$5.15/$1.52/29.5%
2005/$5.15/$2.48/48.1%
2010/$7.25/$2.72/37.5%


It's harder to quantify, but it looks like generally speaking, we have always paid about 35% of our hourly minimum wage on a gallon of gas. I should probably do each and every year to get a clearer picture.....this one has too many fluctuations to do every 5-years (but I wanted an apples to apples comparo).