Date: Sat, 19 Apr 2008 16:12:33 -0700
Reply-To: levi hawkins <b1levi@YAHOO.COM>
Sender: Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From: levi hawkins <b1levi@YAHOO.COM>
Subject: Re: Why gas prices change so quickly,
etc etc. No real van content..
In-Reply-To: <000c01c8a178$3b115c00$4001a8c0@gateway.2wire.net>
Content-Type: text/html; charset=us-ascii
<table cellspacing='0' cellpadding='0' border='0' ><tr><td style='font: inherit;'>Not to be a nitpicker, but I remember gas prices very well in 88, since that's when it hit 1.00 per gallon, and my business at the time used quite a bit of gas. <br>In 1975, texas oil patch, I remember .44 cents, and we had good gas prices there. <br><br>--- On <b>Fri, 4/18/08, Don Hanson <i><dhanson@GORGE.NET></i></b> wrote:<br><blockquote style="border-left: 2px solid rgb(16, 16, 255); margin-left: 5px; padding-left: 5px;">From: Don Hanson <dhanson@GORGE.NET><br>Subject: Why gas prices change so quickly, etc etc. No real van content..<br>To: vanagon@GERRY.VANAGON.COM<br>Date: Friday, April 18, 2008, 10:18 AM<br><br><pre>"Used to be, an out of work hippy could buy a van and travel to his hearts<br>content"?<br><br> Well yah, maybe. Not now, though. In fact, even a working hippy has a<br>very difficult time buying or traveling in a van now, when gas is about
13<br>times as expensive as 20 years ago...(very late "Hippy-era") <br>Let's look a<br>it: Gas will soon hit $4.00 yet a journeyman carpenter still makes what he<br>did 20 years ago. Don't ask me how I know this for sure, but according to<br>an average wage search on Google, it IS true, and according to the money I<br>make, again, true. I am still one of them working hippies, I guess.. $16<br>an hr back in the 80s and about $18 now, if you can find a house to work<br>on...<br> Yet 20 years ago a gallon of gas was around $.30 Thirty...cents! So you<br>could fill your van for about $4.80...or about the cost we'll soon be<br>paying<br>for ONE gallon of fuel.. So now a days, they want about $3-4 hundred bucks<br>a month for health care. That was my single guy rate with Blue Cross<br>recently....that is ~ one week's wage. Fill the van to drag your tools to<br>the job once a week..another weeks wage each month..Forget a car or a house<br>payment,
because tools wear out, and of course, you gotta plan for when the<br>current job is done and you have to find another somewhere. Now, if sumpin<br>goes wrong on the van, or you drop your skilsaw off the roof and it<br>breaks.....you better go get a night job..flipping burgers at Mickey D's or<br>something..Funny, the van I drive now is over 30 years old, but back in the<br>real "hippy days," I could afford one that was only 15 years old on a<br> very<br>very part time carpenters wage...Hmmm...And if I wanted a Go Westy van, at<br>my current wage it would take me about........8 years to earn enough to pay<br>for it...Shoot, If only I'd a known...I could have started saving back in<br>the 80s to buy an....80-sumpthin Westy 35 years later...<br> You suppose, if there were still such a thing as journeyman tradesmen,<br>that some of the "new" middle class, like the Dot-com workers, or<br>some<br>saving and loan officers, or...what other jobs have been
'created in the US<br>lately?.....would be willing to pay an equivalent wage to what we got back<br>when gas was cheaper and going to the doc cost about $50 a visit?...Let's<br>see, if I wanted to 'stay even' with the increase in costs for stuff<br>like<br>gas, insurance, health care, etc I would need to up my rates about 13 times,<br>or charge a fair wage of ....oh, about $325 per hour. I just read on the<br>web news where the two guys who started Google just made around 2 Billion<br>per hour a few days back..so I guess that would be reasonable...$325 per<br>hour for a carpenter who's been in the trade for 30 years...<br> Hee hee, fat f---ing chance..We now have 'guest workers' who'll<br>'assemble'<br>a house for $7.20 an hour..<br> Fryeday.. so excuse the joking post..<br> Don Hanson</pre></blockquote></td></tr></table><br>
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