this post was submitted on 26 Jun 2026
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“What radicalized you?”
“The Nakatomi Plaza disaster.”
Pearl Harbor radicalized me
So true, king.
I remember paying about $1.25 USD per gallon when I first started driving. I remember my parents and grandparents talking about how expensive it had gotten. I asked very naively "how much was it before it 'got expensive'?" and I think they said it had been about 75 cents for a long time. I might be misremembering that, but whatever the response was, it seemed far cheaper. Evidence that capitalism is doomed to failure is that it took less than 3 decades for the lifeblood of society to increase in price basically 500%.
or that's bullshit.
in 1980 gas was 75 cents, yes. but guess what, the minimum wage was like 3 dollars an hour. today it's more like 15 and gas is 3-4.
or we could go by median income, which was 17K in 1980 and is 80K today.
gas has always been cheap and still is cheap in america. esp if you compare it to say the cost in Canada. our entire national and international policy is all about supporting cheap gasoline for almost three generations now.
you have never once in your life seen actually expensive gas. for it to be legit expensive, it would have to be closer to 10 dollars a gallon, and maybe then you'd see people stop driving monster trucks that get 15-20mpg and shift back to small sedans that get 30-40+. i drive a car car that gets 45mpg, so gas prices going from 3-5 bucks a gallon has basically zero affect on me, because I'm not blowing through 25 gallons of it per week, more like 3 gallons, so my gas costs went from about $10 a week to $15.
the reason toyota/honda etc got popular in the 70s was gas prices went up and people started buying smaller cheaper cars to compensate, instead of polluting landboats they drove most of the 60s and 70s that got like 12mpg and had 20+ gallon gas tanks.
15? 20 states still have a minimum wage of 7.25 and another 12 are under 15 still.
32 states pay under 15 and hour.
There's no minimum wage in my state (other than federal minimum wage) but even semi-rural Taco Bell advertises $15/hr starting wage.
I'm not really sure why you're being so abrasive and presumptive. First of all, it's not bullshit that gas prices have gone up a lot even considering inflation. Secondly, I'm not aware of only American things. I understand that gas prices have been the equivalent of $8+ and similar in other countries for a long time. Which doesn't mean that my experience of watching the prices rise so much here is invalid... Relative price increases don't disappear just because the price started so low relative to other markets. And if you're blaming me for trump, not sure what you are hoping to accomplish with that. I cannot wait to hear that the son of bitch died. Everything he does hurts countless people, reaching far into the future. I've literally always despised him and have tried countless times to speak the truth about him to his cult.
i'm not. you just are offended because i disputed your simplistic narrative with some facts that dispute the 'wah gas is so expensive' nonsense, because objectively speaking, it's really not.
other things are. housing prices are legitimately up way over wages and inflation, but gas is not.
your narrative is objectively false information. even if you 'feel' like gas is 'so expensive'.
You're an asshole and a moron, honestly. All you did was make up a viewpoint to be mad about.
right, ok please keep it up with the boomer takes on the economy that are utterly devoid of context because you want to bitch about high prices, despite the fact relative to wages they are not higher, at all..
like the dweebs who whine about video game/console prices being 'so expensive' when they are objectively cheaper.
economics doesn't care about your feelings about the costs of things. call it stupid all you want, the numbers don't lie. your feelings do.
You're a moron because you have no fucking clue what the point is and no one would ever be motivated to explain themselves to such a dickhead. Go away.
When I started, it was also $1.25 (1996), but what was weird was this brief moment when it was $0.89. Trying to remember why, but I think it was following 9/11 and was after the price gouging started and the govt started going after gas stations.
This was about the lowest I ever paid for gas, around that time. Soon thereafter, the signs had to be changed to include a third digit.
There also used to be a guy at the pumps you paid, they came to your pump and read the amount you owed, then you handed them cash, and they reset the pump with a key. Unless you lived in a state that only allowed full service, which was probably better if only to keep more people employed. Taking a credit card involved the swipe machine and a paper receipt. It was a better world, but we wouldn't know it till many years later.
The idea that somebody would come out and fuel you up for you it's just so weird to me. Like, it's not that hard, was there a real theft problem it's hard to believe when the price was so low.
I think there used to be more spills unless you were used to doing it. Also women used to be really treated with kid gloves, same for the upper middle class folks
It was nice to have someone pump your gas, check the oil, and air the tires.
This kind of service at a gas station was gone before my time, but there was a service station near me that tried bringing it back, so for several years you got the 1950s era treatment for a few cents per gallon more. It was pretty nice. I think everybody likes posh service when you can get it.
Afaik it's still the law in Oregon. I could be out of date (old) but their state law forbids you from filling your own tank, you have to let the attendant do it.
edit; and yeah it's always been weird to me too. Like you can trust someone to drive a car but not fill it with gas? Bizarre priorities.
I watched a whole documentary about the full service requirement in NJ and the lobbies for and against it today.
As a kid, my dad would drive across state lines to get gas there bc even while employing people, it was cheaper than NY. Still a good deal even after tipping the guy.
I can't wait until we need to add a fourth digit
I saw the real prices in 1999 (under a dollar/gallon, in California).
What are these freedom units?
Or just the fact how we are still in the same place as 30 yeas ago, buying gas just to burn it up, no progress at all (actually the opposite of that).
And also that the capital gains are just ridiculous, our true rulers.
Regular gas contained lead, so not quite the same.
My gen z brain was wondering why the prices were so high
Millennial here who should know better, and same.
A bit disingenuous considering that's about $2 today with inflation. Not too much higher than the norm before the current..."extenuating circumstances".
The regular would be $2.17 a gallon specifically.
But the gas station has cut its staff to 1 worker, and they make the same non-adjusted wage as the workers in 1988.
That much is true, though outside the scope of the meme. Someone getting radicalized by watching Die Hard has already overlooked that for decades.
I mean I think the inflation part is what radicalized them
Not a driver and not American.
What does that 9/10 mean?
9/10th of a cent. It's incredibly stupid.
It started out because of tacked on government tax and has persisted because it visually looks a cent cheaper at a glance.
9 pents or 9/10 of a cent.
the pent was retired when inflation made them worthless.
that's odd, same thing happened to the penny this year....
Regular and Unleaded. Was leaded gas still a thing in 1988? I thought it was long gone by then, but I was a first grader, so wasn’t paying that much attention at the gas station.
I just googled and it was still a thing. 1973 was the start of the phaseout, 1975 it became illegal for new cars, and it was fully banned for road use in 1996.
You can still get a lead substitute add in for gas if your car really needs it.
You can still get leaded gas if you want to run on a racetrack too.
The lowest I ever paid for gas was in 1996 at a Casey's in Nebraska. .84 cents.
Jeez. I recall prices like $1.47 and $1.65 in the same year (or close to it). That's cheap.
I think I was paying about 1.25 in ~1999, but that was in a po-dunk town.
In the 90s you still had sub $1.00 gas.