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get me to my destination. I once put 32 cents into my tank to get me home that night and to a service station the next day. Today 32 cents is likely the cost of the gas that evaporates while fueling my car.

In the early 1990s I could fill up my tank for roughly between eleven and fifteen dollars. In March of 2008, I filled the same sized gas tank and it cost me $57 and some change. I once looked at gasoline as something that freed me to run the open road. The open road is not as inviting to me anymore. In 2008, I think of gasoline as a tyrannous master who drains my finances while I just try to take care of a minimum of transportation requirements.

Rather than freeing me today the price of gasoline makes it much more difficult to hammer my way out of poverty. Profits earned in business ventures are sucked up by transportation costs which in turn make entrepreneurialism hardly worth the investment. As the gas prices go up, the value of the dollar plummets and what affects me the most about this trend is the impact it will have on the future of the country. More and more people are staying home and buying less which cuts off the sources of income to locally operated businesses while the oil companies rake in record profits. Even gas stations are having difficulty affording the price of gas and not replenishing their supplies as quickly as they did just a couple years ago. Will it get to the point that people in my financial bracket can no longer afford the price of gas at all? That's what worries me the most at this time as I watch the price of gasoline closing in on $4 a gallon.

I remember being broke used to mean that we had to figure out the free things to do with the kids and go there. Now being broke means we can't afford the gas to go the places to do the free things we used to do.

Learn more about this author, Jay Moody.
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