breakingupthedisco replied to your photo: The average price for one gallon of unleaded…

Yes, the prices have gone up while he was in office, however, he doesn’t control gas prices. We need to preserve oil as a country (i.e. carpool more) and it’s the countries we import oil from that determine the prices.

THINKSQUAD: Why do people think that if we weren’t dependent on foreign oil that oil prices would go down?

If America produced 100% of all the oil in America, the price for oil would still be exactly the same.

Now why is that Thinksquad?

The price of oil is determined in international markets. Oil is a commodity, so the price of a barrel produced in the United States is basically the same as the price of a barrel of oil produced in any other country, but the costs of labor, land, and regulatory compliance are usually higher in the United States than in third-world countries.

Importing a product does not mean you “depend” on it. This is like saying that when we “import” food from our local supermarket we “depend” on that supermarket. The opposite is usually true; exporters depend on us, since we are the customers. Also, importing a product usually means buying at lower prices, whereas producing in the United States often means consuming at higher prices. This point is proven when we see the cheap imports we can purchase from China and the higher prices of many of these same products manufactured in the United States. The amazing thing is that the protectionists claim, on the one hand, that America should be “protected” from cheap imports, but when it comes to oil, they say we should be “protected” from “expensive imported” oil.

The lowest gas prices ever got was in 1931 when gas prices got to 17 cents per gallon as a national average. Now for most of the 50 years from 1920-1970′s gas has remained around 20-30 cents a gallon nationwide. It wasn’t until the 1970′s when we actual left the gold standard, that gas prices really started to rise. But today right now, you can by a gallon of gas for less than 2 dimes.

The thing is you need a real dime, a dime that was minted before 1965. ($2.03 is the total melt value for the 1946-1964 silver dime on August 17, 2012.) So in terms of real constitutional money, silver that was coined by the U.S. Mint, gasoline is still very cheap, it’s only when you have fiat money, the paper money that the fed is running off the printing presses, that’s the only reason why prices are rising, because your money is losing value. The problem being that those dimes go for anywhere from $2.00-$2.50 a piece. The value of gas is not getting more expensive, it’s just your money is become worth a lot less. The government is not raising taxes they are creating inflation.