My old hometown Newspaper, the “Times Union,” in Albany NY, has a section called “Looking Back” and the they publish articles of interest from 100 and 50 years ago… This appeared in Today’s Newspaper 50-years ago…
By the way, today in Hampton Roads, Virginia, Kroger has Regular Gas for $3.029 and Diesel for $4.119…
In pumped gas in high school. The price per gallon was in the low 30s (31.9, 32,9 cents, etc). A few towns away the prices were around 28.9 cents.
Whenever the price would rise, it was only by 1 cent, and it was announced in the papers a day or two prior. We were always very busy before the price went up with people filling their cars. And they always complained about the price hikes.
That 47 cents a gallon in 1973 is $3.26 in 2023 dollars.
Gas in my area is $3.07.
$3.39 avg near me. I got some for $3 last week. And it wasn’t Costco or sams.
$2.57 for Quick Trip Top Tier regular.
Food for thought:
So $3.20/gallon is the long term average. Prices now are about ‘average’, it would seem…
Remember when gas was 33 cents a gallon. Had to share my grandfathers car with my sister as he got spinal cancer and gave it to us. It was always on E and I don’t think either of us put more than 25 cents worth of gas in.
Gas prices have stayed mostly equal to inflation since WWllGand our cars get twice the mpg. gas prices in the Buffalo average about $3.74. It is not so much that prices keep going up, it is that our money is continually being devalued by our ever increasing debt. It robs our bank accounts, raises our tax brackets and make the kife insurance you paid for for 60 years almost worthless.
Excellent chart @texases !
@Rainflurry Good comparisons! Except you forgot to subtract the standard deduction from the median income to create the adjusted gross income (AGI)
if the median was $12,050, subtracting the standard deduction of $1303 would make the AGI $10,747. 2022 median income would give an AGI of $46,880. Both result in a lower bracket. And so on.
But tax rates are political. Without adjustment by Washington, that 7% cost of living increase negotiated by your union because inflation is high, or $3/hr minimum wage increase will indeed push you into a higher bracket. That’s what @oldtimer-11’s comment was about.
AGI is calculated before taking the standard or itemized deductions, not after. (Total income - adjustments = AGI. AGI - standard/itemized deductions = taxable income) I left it at total income on purpose because many people itemize and many get significant credits for having dependents, etc. I also left it at marginal rates, not effective rates, since this is a car forum after all and that’s a rabbit hole that can keep going and going and going… And, I suck at typing so that’s about all I could type before I started losing interest. 
@oldtimer-11’s comment was about getting pushed into a higher tax bracket as a result of the dollar being devalued by ever-increasing debt. There was no mention of increased wages pushing you into a higher tax bracket. It’s always amusing to me when people complain about getting pushed into a higher tax bracket. You’re in a higher tax bracket because you’re taxable income is higher. That is either a result of increased income (who doesn’t want that?) or a reduction in adjustments or deductions. Since the standard deduction has outpaced inflation by 71% for single filers and 105% for MFJ over the past 25 years, there is no case to be made that our tax system is a burden to taxpayers at a rate higher today than in the past.
+1
Everyone is paying income taxes at a lower rate than they did in The Good Old Days, and nobody is doing better in this regard than millionaires. In the 1950s and 1960s, when the economy was booming, the wealthiest Americans paid a top income tax rate of 91%. Today, the top rate for the most wealthy is 43.4%… before write-offs and deductions are applied.
Except that no one paid that rate.
There is a general misconception when we start taking about Tax Rates. I am active with my local senior center and I often hear a patron say that their professional son/daughter (doctor, executive, architect, accountant, plumber…) pays a 37% Tax Rate and they think that every penny their “progeny” earns is taxed at 37%…
Not true, for tax years 2022 (taxes due by April 15, 2023) there are seven tax rates: 10%, 12%, 22%, 24%, 32%, 35% and 37%.
For example, tax category, Married, Filing Jointly, and for a Hypothetical Married Couple with Taxable Income of $1,000,000 (probably a plumber… L o L . . . )
The first $22,000 is taxed at 10% or $2,200
Then the amount between $22,001 to $89,450 or $67,450 is taxed at 12% or $8,094
Then the amount between $89,451 to $190,750 or $101,299 is taxed at 22% or $22,285.78
Then the amount between $190,751 to $364,200 or $ 173,449 is taxed at 24% or $ 41,627.76
Then the amount between $364,201 to $462,500 or $98,299 is taxed at 32% or $31,455.68
Then the amount between $462,501 to $693,750 or $231,249 is taxed at 35% or $80,937.15
And everything over $693,751 to $1,000,000 or $306,249 is taxed at 37% or $113,312.13
For a grand Total Tax of $277,626.72 and not the $370,000 as suggested by the 37 percent Tax Rate…
Now, all of this is not an approval or the tax system, only the facts…
If you do not want to pay taxes, be like Elon Musk…
https://www.cnn.com/2021/11/09/business/elon-musk-wealth-tesla-stock/index.html
You are spot on and that is a common misconception. It’s what’s known as your effective tax rate vs. your marginal tax rate. Your effective tax rate is the combined effect of all the tax brackets you pass through to get to your marginal tax rate - the amount you pay on your last dollar of taxable income. Why they don’t teach this stuff in high school is beyond me.
According to the article 10,000 households may have. What’s more interesting (to me at least) is that in 1952, if you made $8,000 (equivalent of $92,900 today) you were already in the 38% marginal tax bracket. Higher than the highest marginal rate today. If you made the equivalent of $200K today in 1952 ($17,700) you were already in the 56% marginal bracket. I think the point is that when the highest marginal tax rate was 90+%, very few were in the 90%+ bracket, but many were in the 50%+ bracket. There were more than 20 marginal tax brackets in the early 50’s with the lowest being 22.2%. The next marginal rate kicked in every $2K to $10K of income. Today, there are 7 brackets that include huge swaths of taxable income. For example, the 22% bracket encompasses incomes ranging over $100K and the 24% bracket encompasses incomes ranging over $175K. I have no particular opinion on what’s better, I just think it’s important to look at income tax in context.
Actually, it’s 37% at the federal level.
Well aware of the facts of a progressive system and the effective tax rates. Not the point of the post.
The point is; If the rate is 90% at the highest bracket, people will change their spending to avoid it and those are the facts as well. This LA Time article tells the story of highly paid actors. What is the point of making another movie that year if 90% or the additional income is lost to taxes?
The chart in the Slate article proves the point. Through the high tax rate 1940s to the 50s, the top 1% were paying around 40% average tax rate.
And as far as those tax dodgers go… the 1% still pay 42% (in 2020) of the federal tax bill and the bottom 50%$ pay 2.32%. If we look at the top 10%, that group pays 73.7%.
Low gas price is NOT a good thing.
We need to tax it back to at least $8/gallon.
It is the ONLY way we will ever convert from fossil-fuel burning.
Make it too damn expensive.
And take the $5 and change and invest heavily in ALL the alternatives:
Wind, Solar, Hydro, Tidal, Thermal, electric motors, batteries, etc, etc.
We went to the moon for 3 years, we can do this for the next 10 until we get it right.
$8 gas all of a sudden will wreak havoc on the economy. Lots of people need their cars to get to work and going from today’s national average of $3.405 to $8 will take a lot of people out of the job market. Having all that money will also create inefficient government spending on companies that won’t know how to spend it well. A better idea would be to actually pay for whatever the government spends on today. If there is any left over, it could go towards retiring the national debt. I’m not advocating for $8 gas. I’m not really in favor of it.
I agree with jtsanders…
Also I don’t know about the rest of the country but when gas prices spiked over $4.00 a gallon in 2008 after being in the $1.00 - $2.00 range, most everyone (I didn’t) rushed the gas stations and the stations were running out of gas, people were burning fuel pumps up that normally don’t have issues due to driving around with one or two gallons of gas daily… People were fighting over their place in line and getting out of hand… My brother lives about 40 miles north of Nashville and even in his small town saw empty pumps and people getting crazy over the lines… It ($4 a gallon) didn’t last very long but caused a lot of havoc, I can’t imagine how bad it would get with a constant double that at $8.00 a gallon for gas…
What do you think you will be paying for Milk, Bread, Eggs, food in general (everything basically) if the gas prices hit $8.00 a gallon… Prices are already way over what they were a few years ago but MY pay sure hasn’t gone up to match… It would completely devastate those already living paycheck to paycheck (over 1/2 of the US) and those living only on SSA monthly checks…
So if you are very well off financially and can afford to pay $8.00 a gallon for gas, then good for you, but most of us in the US can’t…
