Reminds me of when I went to a conference in Karlsruhe. One lady had been driven in from the Frankfurt airport by a local representative of her company. She remarked, "I thought gas was supposed to be expensive here? I saw the prices at a gas station we passed." "Uh, you know that was in liters?"

The United States federal excise tax on gasoline is 18.4 cents per gallon and 24.4 cents per gallon for diesel fuel. The federal tax was last raised October 1, 1993 and is not indexed to inflation, which increased by a total of 83.74% from 1993 until today. Or to put that another way, the gas tax today is only 54.4% of what it was in 1993. Now you know why the highway system is so highly subsidized. Over half the cost of building and maintenance comes from non user taxes. And people complain about Amtrak...