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this post was submitted on 20 Aug 2023
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The extra .9 cent we pay for every gallon of gas in the USA.
You have about the cheapest gas in the western world and you complain about a few extra cents?
It’s 0.9 cents! Per gallon!
In Canada the decimal after the cents is part of the screen and changes rather than being fixed at .9
Let's say they outlawed it
Do you think:
A:They round up
B:They round down
In reality, it might save us .1 cent
It's not the figure that's the problem, but the fact that Americans have been forced to accept this sort of casual deception in how the price of a standard good is advertised. Why is it okay that getting gas for "$3.50" per gallon (to quote the most visible price, which everyone will mention in conversation and mentally reference for comparison) is actually very slightly less than $3.51 per gallon? Just post the correct bloody price, in a clear and unambiguous manner, without faffing around with extra decimals that everyone mentally filters out anyway. It's stupid.
Same deal with American businesses consistently citing pre-tax (and where relevant, pre-tup) prices. Just tell people what the fuck they are actually going to pay, instead of agreeing that literally everyone has to make their pricing an exercise in consumer deception or be beaten out by everyone else's smaller-looking-but-actually-identical prices.
This whole thing is just another tiny window into why unregulated markets suck.
It's scummy but not a scam
Personally, I like the pre-tax amounts displayed. I should know that I am paying 10 dollars for a shirt and that the government is taking an extra dollar. Rather than just being told, the shirt costs 11 dollars. Price tag saying 10+1 would be fine, but tax should always be displayed. Taxes shouldn't be hidden.
It should be much more. A dollar a gallon tax.
"fuck working class people"
Making cars mandatory fucks over working class people.
The government should stop subsidizing driving and put that money into a form of transportation that doesn't require 10k a year for citizens to participate.
"bro, just spend trillions of dollars on new infrastructure that will take decades to complete, while financially crippling poor people"
you wonder why no one likes you
Ebike subsidies take no time. Increaseing bus frequencies is a bit faster (depending on local job markets). Painting bike gutters is pretty fast. Putting some traffic cones for modal filters is pretty fast.
It's true that this change will be tough for poor people who bought cars in the short term. But it's good for poor people who didn't buy cars in the short term (which is a lot of people with the most need). And good for all poor people in the long term.
If you want to help poor people, subsidizing an antisocial form of transportation that some poor people use is not a good choice.
Don't worry I like you.
Not at Donny's Discount Gas!
https://comb.io/IncVxR
But how would we have roads??
They're not referring to the federal road tax , but the $0.009 in the price.
The US actually has a legal denomination that is 1/10 of a cent, called a mill. It's 1/1000 of a dollar. It's very rarely used, and was never actually minted. The closest we had were 1/2 cent coins (5 mills), but those were short lived coin denominations in the 1700's.
So, why do gas stores get to use mills in their prices? I don't know, but I'm sure they do it either for a legal reason that outdated, because they get to derive extra profit per transaction, or because it's an extreme form of the ¢99 advertising trick.
In any of those cases it's really annoying.
Well the federal gas tax is 18.4 cents per gallon, and the state gas tax where I am is 28.5 cents per gallon, for a total of 46.9 cents per gallon, that's where the $0.009 comes from.
It mattered a lot 100 years ago when gas was like 5.5 cents a gallon.