Recently, as I'm sure you are well aware, people have been complaining about the price of gasoline. It's in the media, on the television, in the newspaper, on the radio, on Internet news sites. It's everywhere. I used to complain about the price of gas constantly increasing until I realized I have enough to complain about and including the price of gas is not worth it. I used to get tense when people started to complain about the increasing price of gas and realized it wasn't doing me any good. I decided to try and put it in perspective.

Gas has been increasing as the result of economic forces over which I have no control. The real question I want to pose is, "Has the price of gas been undervalued over the years and is now being realigned with current economic realities?" To a certain extent, I do believe that there are world events that have increased the value of raw crude. Some of these events include the instability in the middle east as well as the desire of futures speculators who dabble in guesstimating the price of crude in the future and 'bet' on it. But, has this artificial manipulation of the price of crude also forced the market to reevaluate the price of gas at the pumps and realigned it to be more realistic?

I decided to take a look at the price of some of the other liquids that I purchase to see how gas compares. This was a quirk of mine rather than any scientific experiment or statistical analysis to come to any profound conclusions. It was simply a quirky comparison.

Keep in mind I take the following into consideration regarding the numbers that follow:

1. When you buy gas, you pay a certain price per litre. It doesn't matter if you buy one litre or a thousand litres, you pay the same price per litre.
2. When you buy many other consumer liquids, the more you buy the cheaper it becomes. For example, if you buy a bottle of water it is more expensive per millilitre than if you buy a pre-packaged bundle of 12 bottles.
3. When you buy a bottle of water at a 'convenience store' it is more expensive than if you buy a bottle of water at a grocery store. Hence the term 'convenience store'. It's convenient, not cheap, to buy there.
4. I thought of using the prices from a convenience store but realized that the increased cost would be more sensational than using a more reasonable cost from a grocery store. Bottom line, I chose prices from the Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company (A&P). It's within walking distance and open 24/7. The data collection occurred around 4:00 a.m. on June 30, 2008. The price of gas is based on the price from a local Shell station a couple of days earlier.
5. When sourcing the prices of consumer liquids, I chose the items that were as close to a litre as possible. For example, rather than finding the cheapest bundle of 12 or 24 bottles of water, I chose a bottle that was as close to a litre as possible. It was a trade off since you don't get any kind of discount when buying multiple litres of gasoline.
6. There are a few more things I was thinking of adding and if I get the motivation, I'll add them. Otherwise, consider this a completed list.

I hope you find the following information interesting and informative.

As an added note, a bottle of water at a movie theatre costs $3.38 for a 591 millilitre bottle. At that rate, one litre of water at a movie theatre would cost $5.72. Now, that's something to complain about.