I keep hearing people complain that gasoline is over $4.00 a gallon and I am too a bit.
And yes, I'd love to see it at $2.00 again. But before we declare gasoline the most outrageously expensive liquid on Earth, let's put things in perspective.
For $4.00, I get a GALLON of gasoline. I pour it into a 4,000-pound machine, turn a key, and that gallon will haul me, my wife, the groceries, the golf clubs and half the junk in my trunk almost 30 miles down the highway.
That's actually a pretty impressive day's work for $4.00.
Now let's compare.
A restaurant sells me a 5-ounce glass of wine for $9. That's about $230 a gallon. And how far does it transport me?
Usually from the dinner table to the men's room.
A fancy coffee shop can charge $6 for a 16-ounce latte. That's $48 a gallon. It doesn't transport me 30 miles. It transports me from "Leave me alone" to "Okay, now you may speak."
Bottled water at a convenience store might be $2.50 for 20 ounces. That's $16 a gallon, for something that occasionally falls out of the sky FOR FREE.
A 12-ounce energy drink at $3.50 works out to more than $37 a gallon. Apparently caffeine becomes a precious mineral once you put lightning bolts on the can.
Buy one of those little 2-ounce bottles of "energy shot" for $3. That's $192 a gallon. At that price, it shouldn't give me energy. It should mow my lawn.
Maple syrup at $8 for a 12-ounce bottle? About $85 a gallon. And its principal technological achievement is making pancakes sticky.
Vanilla extract at $6 for two ounces? That's $384 a gallon. For $384, I expect the vanilla bean to come to my house and bake the cookies.
Printer ink can cost thousands of dollars per gallon. And unlike gasoline, it sometimes refuses to come out because the printer has decided cyan is low.
Even that $9 glass of wine deserves another look. At roughly $230 a gallon, filling a typical 15-gallon gas tank with restaurant wine would cost about $3,450.
Of course, after drinking 15 gallons of wine, transportation would no longer be your biggest concern.
So yes, $4.00 gasoline is expensive.
But it's also a remarkable bargain when you think about what you're buying. You're purchasing enough concentrated energy to push several thousand pounds of steel, glass, groceries and humanity nearly 30 miles.
Meanwhile, we'll cheerfully pay $6 for coffee, $9 for wine and $3 for water, then stand at the gas pump staring at the numbers like we're watching the national debt clock.
Maybe gasoline doesn't need better pricing.
Maybe it just needs a fancier name.
"Handcrafted Premium Petroleum, locally pumped, small-batch refined, with subtle notes of octane and dinosaur."
Put it in a 12-ounce artisan bottle and charge $14.
We'll line up around the block.
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