Gasoline still costs 34.9 cents a gallon

I don’t know why this is my most vivid childhood memory regarding the price of gas. Brains are funny devices that way.

It was a summer evening, I think, early in my career as a driver, and I had a dollar in my pocket. I pulled into Serbe’s gas station in my then-hometown of Chester, New Jersey, and realized that at 33.9 cents a gallon, maybe 25 miles per gallon, I could drive all over northern New Jersey for that buck if I wanted that night. Ah, the freedom of youth.

I come back to that memory from time to time, along with the memory of how the gold standard was explained to me somewhere, sometime. By tying the dollar to the value of gold, prices remained relatively stable. And the person did some math to show that based on the face value of a dollar gold coin, comparing it to the actual value of an ounce of gold, gas was still around 10 cents a gallon.

By releasing the dollar from its chains of gold, and printing however many dollars it needed, the government caused runaway inflation, the economist explained. Because while gasoline was still worth pennies per gallon, the price of those pennies was no longer one cent apiece.

Those two memories came back to me a year or so ago when the government created $2 trillion out of whole cloth to “stimulate the economy.” And they returned again the other day when another $1.2 trillion was printed to “repair our infrastructure.”

The inevitable result of such dabbling is a jump in inflation. The intrinsic value of things hasn’t changed, but the value of the dollar is being reduced with each new buck that comes off the printing press.

Let me show you the math with the help of my trusty calculator app.

The price of gold Tuesday was $1,862 an ounce.

A 1907 solid gold coin with a $2.50 face value weighs .12094 ounces.

.12094 of $1,862 is $225.19.

$225.19 divided by 2.5 is $90.08.

Thus a gold coin with a $1 face value would be worth $90.08 in today’s “dollars.”

A gallon of gas was $3.14 at a handful of local gas stations on Tuesday.

$3.14 divided by $90.08 is .0348579.

Therefore, using the gold coin as our base, the price of gasoline is still 34.9 cents a gallon.

When you visit the grocery store and are looking for someone to blame for the rising prices, don’t blame the farmers or the grocers, who are charging what they need to cover their own costs and a little more to feed their families. Nope, the culprits you’re looking for cloak their crimes with hopeful names like the American Rescue Plan or the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act.

Serbe’s gas station isn’t there anymore. And, thanks to the purveyors of inflation, neither is the freedom a buck could bring.

The parable of the four lights

© Mr. Namart Pieamsuwan | Dreamstime.com

It feels like an act of daring to go ahead

and live what would have been a normal life two years ago,

To take the risk of walking out the front door,

knowing you could hit a deer or get hit by a car yourself

or catch a bad cold or otherwise encounter, at last,

Whatever it is you’re going to die of.

•

All this second-guessing of what to say

And what to do, instead of living.

•

I want to live.

I want to enjoy the time that’s left.

So many people can’t stand for people to live

And love and be free and go in peace.

•

A weirdness has settled over the world.

Perhaps the real virus is a disease

That makes people half-cocked,

And the absurd and the outrageous have seized power.

•

Except the outrage is often over nothing at all

and people spend their days searching

for the next pariah, who happens to be

the next person to stand up and say,

“This is all nuts,”

and even I can’t tell anymore if I’m making sense

or if I’m the one who’s nuts —

except the insane person is the last person

to recognize his insanity — which is why

so many people finally see the emperor has no clothes.

•

Run on, sentences, run on —

you’re old enough to know better,

so run on, sentences, run like the wind.

Object permanence

He was a simple man, or so he liked to think. He thought he was one of those guys who is born, lives for a bunch of years, and then dies without making an appreciable mark on the universe, one of those guys like the billions who had come before and the billions who would follow. Then he met his guardian angel.

“What, you wish you’d never been born?” The angel said. “I suppose I can arrange that.”

And just like that, the whole universe blinked out of existence.

“Yeah, right,” the simple man said. “Like I’m the center of the universe.”

“Let me ask you something,” said the angel. “Has there ever been something you’ve seen where you weren’t right there in the middle of it all?”

“What you talking about?”

“Have you ever seen something except with those two eyes? Have you ever smelled something except through that nose? Did you ever grab something except with those two hands?”

“Of course not.”

“So there you have it: You’re the center of the universe. Nothing happens except when you’re there.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

And then he saw it: 7 billion universes walking about on a small planet in the Sol system. New universes bursting into existence every day, old universes fading out of existence at the same time. And every dying universe a tragedy, and every universe born a miracle.

“No, no, no, that isn’t right,” he said. “I’m just a simple man.”

“Yes, you are,” said his guardian angel, “and a universe. An irreplaceable universe.”

And the angel went on guarding him until the end of time.