Amazing Map Showing Impact of Gas Prices on a Percentage of Income Basis

[bullwinkle428]

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2008/06/09/business/20080609_GAS_GRAPHIC.html#tab1


Notice where it appears to impact the hardest - don't those areas (with a few exceptions) look suspiciously like the usual RED areas, demographically speaking; i.e., Republican strongholds?

You can also click on the tabs to see the gas prices and median incomes separately...

I mentioned in a reply downthread that this was not intended to be a "Ha-ha...that's what you get for voting for Bush!" kind of posts, which do happen from time to time here.

The overriding point of my posting this article was that the major impact of the price increases might actually result in a change in thinking on the part of many voters in these particular areas.

[Mabus]

1. Not a perfect screen grab but close enough

fyi, I centered the picture and then hit Alt-prnt Scrn and then pasted it into MSPaint. Then I saved it and uploaded it to photobucket.

[Liberal Gramma]

2. Looks to me like a picture of poverty

Gas prices as compared to income: gas prices are about the same across the country, income varies greatly. And, yes, red states have lower incomes. You'd think they would vote blue, since that's where their economic interest lies, but I guess low income states also have large pockets of low information voters.

[MedleyMisty]

6. And that is why hating on "red states" oozes with classism

[Bob Dobbs]

10. More correctly, stupidism.

Voting against your best interests because of peripheral wedge issues is not real intelligent.

[SammyWinstonJack]

27. Exactly!

:thumbsup:

[Lorien]

9. Looks to me like those areas with good public transportation options

are much better off than those without ANY public transportation. I'll say it again: we need to invest in a Nation high speed MagLev rail system with light rail connectors, and we need to invest in solar farms for rural areas.

[Indenturedebtor]

11. Algal oil farms! And we need fewer rural areas

That's part of the problem, people are too spread out.

[ThomWV]

18. There's the plan, let's turn the entire nation into one big city.

[Indenturedebtor]

19. Less environmental impact that way, and

Could more effectively use our resources to benefit the max number of people. Not that you could do something like this with social engineering but I think that with the cost of transportation going up, things will trend this way.

[Liberal Gramma]

33. The steady rise in gas prices may nudge our politicians toward public transportation

I certainly hope so.

[BadgerKid]

15. Price equalization had long happened

in the fast food and casual restaurant prices. No matter where you went, it seemed you'd spend around $5 for drinks or a quick bite and around $10 for lunch.

[bobbolink]

31. EXACTLY! Yet, it's so "progressive" to wish ill to these people, and look down on them.

Liberal elitism at it's best.

:banghead:

What the hell does it take for "progressives" to GET IT????

[bullwinkle428]

4. I appreciate you doing this for me!

This may be a case of a picture being worth a thousand words, so it might help drive the point home a bit better to have it sitting there in plain sight.

I'll try to remember the steps for the next time I want to post image and can't do it the "standard" way...

[Mabus]

12. If it's not too late to edit your post

you can add it to your OP.

Remove the spaces between the "//" and the "i2" http:// i2.photobucket.com/albums/y33/KSNewsJunkie/gasprices-1.jpg

Or you can right click on my graphic and copy the link. This second option might be easier.


Glad I could help out.

[roguevalley]

28. hardest hit areas have the least amount of mass transit. the west

is screwed over every time. Also my state is not there. We are screwed period. we have two highways and almost no mass transit. Gas in Barrow, Alaska is imported and although I have been trying to find out its cost, have failed so far.

EDIT: It is $6.07 a gallon in Bethel, Alaska. Can't find gas stations in Barrow but Bethel is way out west and has to import everything too. Milk was $8.99 a gallon in Barrow last time I checked.

[Mabus]

29. Don't I know it?

We moved from Kansas to Maryland this year. Back in Kansas we didn't have mass transit that would outside my city limits. Both the city and university had bus lines but there were so many transfers to get where I was going that there were fewer headaches and it was easier to just drive. Plus, most of the bus routes I needed to use shut down whenever the university was on break.

Here, there's a bus stop around the corner and the Metro is about a mile away. It's almost too convenient not to use. We've gone from filling up car once a week or so to filling up once a month, if that. We've been here for just over six months and I have filled our tank (6 gallons, we drive a Honda Civic) seven times. I've been keeping track.

Mass transit is great if you have it. Here the system is well-planned, convenient and fast. I was a little reluctant to use it at first but it's just too damned convenient not to use it. Plus, I'm not limited to just my city.

[SteelPenguin]

3. Well...yeah

Red areas tend to be lower population density, lower income, with a larger need for trucks and suv's. Hence gas prices will hit them by far the hardest.

[bullwinkle428]

7. Very true - I should have added the accompanying article

and it's link as well:

TCHULA, Miss. — Gasoline prices reached a national average of $4 a gallon for the first time over the weekend, adding more strain to motorists across the country. Josephine Cage says her 30-mile commute to a fish processing plant costs $200 a month, or nearly 20 percent of her pay.

But the pain is not being felt uniformly. Across broad swaths of the South, Southwest and the upper Great Plains, the combination of low incomes, high gas prices and heavy dependence on pickup trucks and vans is putting an even tighter squeeze on family budgets.

Here in the Mississippi Delta, some farm workers are borrowing money from their bosses so they can fill their tanks and get to work. Some are switching jobs for shorter commutes.

People are giving up meat so they can buy fuel. Gasoline theft is rising. And drivers are running out of gas more often, leaving their cars by the side of the road until they can scrape together gas money.


http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/09/business/09gas.html?_r=4&th=&adxnnl=1&oref=slogin&emc=th&adxnnlx=1213283155-rdsOGRlo5h3FvVTiLxbWbA

[Coyote_Bandit]

5. Ummmmm

Two things:

(1) That is a pretty useless map. It measures gas prices relative to median income. Median not mean. So it does not reflect averages. Even if it did there would still be a farily significant number of outliers.

(2) There are Dems who live in those red states. They work and are paid according to the prevailing wages in the area. And they pay market prices for gas. What you may think of as red state pain is a very real issue to some fellow Dems.

[bullwinkle428]

13. The overriding point of my posting this article was that

the major impact of the price increases might actually result in a change in thinking on the part of many voters in these particular areas.

It was NOT intended to be a "Ha-ha...that's what you get for voting for Bush!" kind of posts, which do happen from time to time here.

[Coyote_Bandit]

23. The map still isn't a good reflection of what is actually happening

Given a situation where the median household income is $38,000, the per capita income is $21,000 and the mean household income is $50,000:

(1) There will be a more significant impact in an area where there is little or no access to public transportation.
(2) There will be a greater impact where the mean and median income figures have less disparity.
(3) Add the fact that only 8% of households have incomes in excess of $100,000 and about 25% of the households have earnings between $50,000 and $100,000. There is likely a greater impact than what the data might suggest. Only about one third of all households have earnings in excess of the mean. And household earnings here are among the highest in the state.

The above data describes Tulsa - a gray shaded red state area.

Now lets look at an orange colored area in far Southeast Oklahoma. In McCurtain county nearly 25% of the population lives in poverty. It is one of the poorest counties in Oklahoma. The entire county population is less than 35,000 people and is declining. What kind of public transportation do you think is available in McCurtain county? The unemployment rate is above average and has consistently been above the state average for decades. Per capita income is about $18,000. Median household income is about $24,000. Mean household earnings income is less than $35,000. Mean household income considering all sources of income is even lower. A state prepared report analyzing economic conditions in 2003 found:

"The county has 13,828 housing units and 73.1% of these are owner occupied. The median home value in the county is $29,200, the median housing rental contract is $146.00 per month and statewide housing units number 1,406,499 of which 68.1% are owner occupied. The statewide median home value is $48,100."



Like another poster suggested, what this map depicts is poverty. In wealthier areas the map ignores relevant factors such as income disparity and access to public transportation. Most areas that are poor have been poor for a long period of time. Increasing gas prices in these areas only further reduce quality of life among those who live there. IMHO it is wishful thinking to hope for this to change long held political views - though one can certainly hope.

[raccoon]

8. K&R. nt

[Mountainman]

14. This seems to assume all people drive the same vehicle and the same distances doesn't it?

In every debate on gas consumption I have seen no one takes into consideration the variables of how far a person drives in relation to the mpg of the vehicle the drive.

In CA many people have long commutes and drive in bumper to bumper traffic which has a large impact on how much gas they buy and if they are driving vehicles that get poor gas mileage it is also a factor.

[bullwinkle428]

16. That's another big factor that I hadn't considered, and it

does not appear to have been taken into account for this study either.

[Oeditpus Rex]

21. I was about to say

the chart apparently doesn't take commute distances into consideration, but merely figures average income ('1') with average fuel price ('1') and gets '3'.

I don't have any figures, but I'd be willing to bet that many people in my area of California (just south of San Francisco Bay) now spend more than 3-5 percent of their income on gasoline, or, at least, it's on the high end of that range. Roughly one-third of this county's working population commute to Silicon Valley, which is 40-50 miles each way. And, by my own estimation, many drive SUVs.

[Mountainman]

25. And the drive slowly don't they. I use to have to go to Fremont and people were full of road rage

when they got to work in the morning after a 45 minute commute of 10 or 15 miles.

[Oeditpus Rex]

26. Depends on conditions, I guess

If there're no accidents or rain or anything, it seems to flow at about 65 — at least, if you believe "Traffic and weather together every 10 minutes" or whatever. But, one fender-bender can glom up miles of freeway for awhile, and that's to say nothing of surface streets like El Camino Real.

It got a lot better for local commuters a few years ago when Caltrans finally widened the stretch of 101 between Mortgage Hill and 85 in San Jose, but there's still no way in hell I'd live like that.

[Juche]

17. I once read 39% of mississippi families are working poor

After the economic state we are in it is probably closer to 45%. Combine that with the pickup culture and the higher gas prices (as well as higher healthcare and real estate) and I have no idea how they are making do down in areas like Mississippi.

[annabanana]

20. Of course the places with the most poverty are the hardest hit.

It's not like there's a progressive scale of gas prices or anything. Maybe there should be.

[leftofthedial]

22. If those areas do indeed support McBush,

it will prove that (sociologically at least) the stupid people stayed on the farm while everyone else moved to the city.

My roots are southern and country, but the pig-headed obstinance with which these people act against their own best interests has no explanation other than stupidity.

[slackmaster]

24. I don't see our rich, powerful Democratic legislators from the SF Bay area doing squat about it

We work, they live.

[bobbolink]

30. Another one of those "Screw the poor people for their own good" posts, eh?

How really "progressive" and "liberal" of you.

This is good information, but for exactly the opposite reason of what you post.

[Wednesdays]

32. The map can be a little bit misleading

Because it doesn't take into account how high prices are for other things, which affects the percentage spent on gas.

For example, in places such as California and urban areas in the northeast, where rent and mortgage costs are extremely high, fuel costs won't be as much because housing takes such a large chunk of the pie. On the other hand, here in Oklahoma housing and rent are far cheaper, so then of course other things such as gas would take a larger slice. We bought a brand-new house, nice and 1700 square foot, in a really nice neighborhood in suburban Oklahoma City in 1998, for $110,000. In some areas of the country, you couldn't buy a shack for that much.

I'm not sure if the higher gas prices are having a greater effect on people's attitudes here, as opposed to the rest of the country. Sure, no one's happy about it, and there is a *slight* movement towards conservation (there are more motorcycles and scooters around than a few years ago), but by and large people seem to be going about their business as though everything was normal. There are still LOTS of SUVs, Humvees, and monster-sized pickups all over the highways, and the Repuke politicians are chanting "Drill the ANWR!!" and "Build more refineries!" (paraphrased from an actual flier we received by our good (cough) Congresscritter Mary Fallin, just yesterday). :eyes:

[mdmc]

34. kick