How much is your local "Trump at the Pump Tax?"

If goods are priced at the percentage of the basic wage, not the average because the mega high income earners make the sort of money that distorts those figures, then a comparison of cost to earnings gives a better perspective of how the economy is really travelling now compared to back when ever

I'm wondering if any of the fuel costs will really matter soon, unless you own a vehicle in that magic yr range where you can still buy parts and the average garage or back yarder can do the repairs.
Because manufacturers won't pay proper rates for warranty repairs, most skilled auto techs have walk away from the trade they loved and into more industrial level fitter positions, because those positions pay for ever hr you work.
It's worth taking a look at how many vehicles are sitting in the dealers workshop storage area because they have no mechanics to fix them, or no techs with the required skill level to fix them .....

T1 Terry

 

We don't seem to mind licensing SECOND Amendment rights -eh?

 

Except when it does. As I close in on 70 I have several times run into the situation where I last purchased an item (or type of item) 15 or 20 years before, and have not paid any attention to it since. It can be quite disconcerting when shopping for the item now to find the price adjusted by all the intervening inflation.

Much like when you have two friends from college, one of whom you still see frequently, and one of whom you only see again after 40 years. They will both have accumulated the same amount of aging (more or less) but the amount of change for the second one will seem extreme, as the old face is being compared to a much younger version, whereas for the first friend the comparison is to an only slightly younger face.

 

Turned 71 today, it's not even the price of things these days as the total lack of them or anything that has filled the gap in the space that's left. Some things are returning on places like Temu or Aliexpress, but others are gone for ever it seems.
I guess 3D metal printing will eventually make parts as required, once you can get the drawing sorted in the correct format, at 71, I'm thinking those days might be well and truly in the past.

There was an electronics store over here in Australia that made kits in progressive stages to help with learning about components and eventually designing your own circuits and making proto type circuit boards .... all gone due to wealth management funds buying them and stripping then in a way that boarders on criminal, illegal in Australia but once it's an overseas based fund .... just too expensive to nail someone responsible to the wall to face what they had done ....

Most struggling businesses will end up going the same way, even successful ones it seems, those with too much money simply asset stripping small businesses to turn them into cash, then using the whole thing as a tax write off .... just wrong

T1 Terry

 

It looks like fuel prices are going up again. Just 20 cents away from $5 a gallon.

The problem isn't buying fuel. I stopped driving and am now just riding my bike to work and the store. The problem is the cost of groceries. Since when was a pound of ground beef $10? No wonder the dollar menu went away at McDonald's. A quarter-pounder has over $2 of meat in it.

 

Free speech is a double-edged sword - Unfortunately, once that BS catches fire, it's difficult to contain. That' why FOX had to pay Dominion $700+ million to settle the lawsuit, where they knowingly broadcasted falsehoods.... Unfortunately the damage has already been done and the company was sold and rebranded to Liberty Vote in 2025.

 

I admire your optimism.

 

In High School a Quarter Pounder with Cheese was $0.65, a gallon of gas was $0.35, and all you drink coffee at Sambo's was $0.10.
What did you pay 2 years ago? I guess that's Trump's fault too.

 

I think there's only one Sambo's left somewhere in the calif-Santa Barbara area.

 

Yep...the rest of them became Denny's and such. Think someone got their feelings hurt a long time ago.

Someone in here will probably say that was Trump's fault too.

 

Up? Not around here. Might you be getting hit by a local "Speedway"-cycle effect?

You in or near Colorado? Gasbuddy is showing a Colorado average of $3.89, AAA is showing $3.979. AAA also showing national average down 2.5 cents from yesterday, down 13 cents from a week ago.

 

Our area always Trails behind the increases & decreases. Costco is the only place in the valley under $4 at $3.99 (w/diesel @ $4.69)

 

I'm in Colorado. I'll double check, but I believe it was $4.79 here yesterday. Then again I believe, because I haven't been to a gasoline station for a while personally.

 

For the first time in a few months, filled up the Prius for less than $30.....$26. Happy about that!!!

Hoping Iran behaves itself.....I think keeping our military folks ready around them will go a long way in preventing them from doing something stupid.

We have 2 trips out to Tennessee coming up this month and next so cheaper gas prices will really help. (Driving my daughter's V-6 Palisade so MPGs aren't all that great.)

 

IIRC, you are in a somewhat remote and isolated place, which does push prices up. GasBuddy isn't showing me any recently updated prices there.

 

OK, let's play.

Three items are listed, only one of which (the price of gas) has recently and directly varied because of Trump's war on Iran and its effect on the world's oil supply. You set the price comparison point to before the war. That inflation would have increased the price of gas from "high school" to "two years ago" has nothing whatsoever to do with subsequent price increases that resulted from the war. It isn't an argument that the war didn't cause those recent changes, or that Trump didn't cause them, it just sounds like such an argument. Some portion of the inflation during your chosen span took place during Trump's first term, or resulted later from decisions he made then, but teasing that component out of the many other things which drive inflation would be very difficult. So while he probably is at fault for some fraction of the inflation in the stated span, nobody could say for sure how much of it. There is even a slight chance that his actions reduced the inflation somehow. As distinct from the Fed's actions raising the interest rate, which eventually did push down inflation. As I recall, Trump was never in favor of raising interest rates to address inflation during his first term, and still isn't now. I think we can say pretty definitively that had Trump had the control over the Fed that he always craved the overall inflation rate during that span would have been significantly higher than it was.

As for Sambo's, what a stupid name for a restaurant in 1957. Supposedly it was from Sam Battistone and Newell Bohnett, the founders of the restaurant. But how tone deaf would one have to be to give a company a name which was a common racist slur? I suppose we should be thankful that the founders weren't Nigel Smith and Gerald Jones! In any case, while I recall seeing those restaurants, I wasn't eating in them during High School (or ever).

 

The British children's book little black Sambo (originally written in the end of the 1800s when Britain still had India as a colony) was about a little boy in southern India iirc, & he was somewhat the hero, & how (I believe) he handled tigers. I was 7yrs old in 1962 & haven't read it since. I double checked my memory by reading the wiki article about the book

The Story of Little Black Sambo - Wikipedia



But yeah, virtue signalers wanted to show how self-righteous they were by forcing the restaurant owners out of business based (in part) on racism against africans.

In the 1970s we'd race desert District motorcycle circuits & would stop at the Green River Sambo's on the Orange County /Corona border top of the hill. It was the minorities washing dishes & busing tables that lost their jobs. Good work virtue signalers. You showed them.

 

The last remaining Sambo’s finally erases its name
Jun. 08, 2020

The vast majority of locations rebranded or closed in the early 1980s.

 

From your wikipedia article:

"The book's original illustrations were created by the author and were simple in style, and depicted Sambo as a Southern Indian or Tamil child. Little Black Sambo's success led to many counterfeit, inexpensive, easily available versions that incorporated popular stereotypes of "black" peoples. One example was a 1908 edition illustrated by John R. Neill, best known for his illustration of the Oz books by L. Frank Baum.In 1932, Langston Hughes criticised Little Black Sambo as a typical "pickaninny" storybook which was hurtful to black children, and gradually the book disappeared from lists of recommended stories for children."

 

I went by a gas station and midgrade was $4.67. It was the station that was known to be the cheapest gas station in town. So I'm not sure what the actual price was or why that person told me it was $4.79. Maybe it is $4.79 at another station, maybe that person doesn't use regular.

I did a lot of miles today, over 120 miles, but none by my own car. It was all on bike or bus and a little in someone else's car.