Pain at the Pump Means No Vacationing This Year

Staycation.  Oh goodie.

I’ve got three weeks of vacation to use and really wanted to do some traveling, but it looks like I’ll be vacationing in my living room this year.

Just when I was starting to become hopeful that the gas of price was going to stay down, it shot back up. The national average is just over $3.50 a gallon, but New York isn’t normal, is it?  No, New York likes to jack up the price of things.  I filled up my tank yesterday at $3.79 a gallon. That’s 20 cents higher than the national average. Insane.

The whole gas rising business isn’t a huge shock because if you’ve been watching the pumps, you’d have noticed the prices slowly creeping up over the past few weeks.  On Wednesday the price of a barrel of crude oil topped $105. That's the highest it's been since May 2012. Gas prices are 12 cents higher now than they were a year ago.

What I don’t understand is why New York has to jack up the price of everything.  Taxes are insanely high while salaries are low and jobs are scarce. How does this state expect to keep residents if our salaries are the same or less than it was when the economy tanked, but the price of everything else has skyrocketed?  I haven’t lived paycheck to paycheck in ten years.  Ten years ago is when I last lived in New York and felt the sting of over pricing and taxes.  I’m feeling that sting again and I don’t like it at all. Not all states are like this. Why is New York?

Source: AAA, Wall Street Journal