$3.30/gallon is nothing!

In Seattle the average price for a gallon of gas is hovering around $3.30. Now my Jeep gets 15mpg (on a good week) and I fill up once a week. So I figure I’m paying around $2,574 a year for gas, which seemed like a lot to me so I decided to do a comparison. It turns out that $3.30/gallon really isn’t too bad. It’s when you factor in the total price of that gallon of gas that things get depressing.

Last year $4,364 of my federal income tax went to fund military spending and $2,863 went to pay interest on the national debt. To put all of that in terms we can all relate to, that’s like paying $3.67/gallon on national debt interest and $5.60/gallon on the military. The thing about the national debt interest is that my tax money is immediately spent on nothing. No school is built or road is fixed. The money just goes straight into the hands of the US Bonds holders (mainly foreign investors). I really could’ve used that extra $2,863 right about now to help pay for gas. And to add insult to injury a large portion of the military spending is going pay for the war in Iraq, a war fought to keep our domestic gas prices low, you could say that I’m actually paying $3.30/gallon plus an additional $5.60/gallon tax.

So compared to the $8.90/gallon I’m actually paying for gas the $3.30 portion of it that I see at the pump doesn’t seem so bad.

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