Price of Gas - how to make the rich feel the pinch

Geez, I had to fill up my car with gas this morning, first time in a few weeks since we were out of the country. Wow ! $3.10 a gallon, must be an election year !

This is starting to hurt.... and don't forget about the prices of all the other staple items that everyone must buy just to live an ordinary day to day life.

Got me to thinking ..... how can you put this into a perspective that the rich people can understand ? How do you make them see the plight of the common man, the one that makes up the majority of America, the one that creates the tax base and pays the load ?

How about if we extrapolate the relative cost of gas to a rich and an average person. We can use the percentage of income and see what price it would take for the rich to "feel" what it is like for the average to purchase the same amount of gas ?

So first let's define rich. Highly debatable. Let's say that if you fall in the upper 1% income bracket for the US then you are rich. That average income for 2005 was $425,821.

So then let's define "average" from the same data. That would be $51,366 for the entire US population.

So let's compare what it takes it fill up the average car and drive the average number of miles per year. We'll say an average car gets 22 MPG, and drives 12,000 miles per year. So at $3.10 per gallon that equates to $1,690.91 per year. So as a percentage of income that means that the "average" person spends 3.29% of their yearly income on gas. The "rich" person spends 0.397% of their yearly income for the same gas. That's a difference of 8.29X as much.

That means in order for the rich to "feel" like an average joe, they should pay $25.70 for a gallon of gasoline.

So when these candidates tell you they know what it feels like out there, or they know the plight of the average worker .... tell them, "no, I don't think you really do."

Poker still on hold - 6 down 24 to go !