Price of gas in 1913 was 8 cents a gallon, which is $1.86 today.
http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_was_the_price_of_gasoline_in_1913
http://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl?cost1=.08&year1=1913&year2=2012
There was no gas tax in 1913, federal or state. The first tax per gallon was levied in Oklahoma in 1919. It was 1 cent a gallon, which would be 23 cents today. In 1933, there was a federal tax levied as well. Near as I can tell, this was at the pump like it is today.
http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2009/02/dayintech_0225 (article is from 2009, numbers do not translate to today. For instance, it claims the increase of 1 cent a gallon is equal to 19 cents, the calculator says it should be that 1 cent is actually 22 cents, and today in 2012 it is 23 cents).
So, I shall use 1933 for the comparison. In 1933 the cost of a gallon of gas was 17 cents a gallon. Converted, that is $3.68 a gallon. Gas is actually cheaper today that it was then, once you remove those taxes. The tax in 1933 was 2-4 cents a gallon, total, according to the earlier article. This equates to 46-93 cents a gallon of tax today.
The tax was 11.76-25% of the total price.
http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_much_was_gas_in_1933
Cost of gas without taxes in 1933 would be (using the highest tax since I'm going to compare it to the number 4 highest of today, Illinois) 13 cents a gallon or $3.01 today.
Today in Illinois there is an additional 62.8 cents per gallon cost because of taxes (includes state and federal, 4th highest in the nation).
http://www.api.org/Oil-and-Natural-...~/media/21EBD0B62EBA42B1965EE82EFFB6585D.ashx
As an aside, this part is actually kind of shocking to me. I expected today's tax to be much higher than of yesteryear.
According to
http://www.stlouisgasprices.com/Collinsville/index.aspx price of gas where I live is 3.78 (as of 9:21AM 02May2012, I don't know if that link will auto-update or not) Subtract the tax and you will get $3.15 a gallon. An increase of 14 cents over 79 years or 0.177 cents a year.
Other things to consider is fuel efficiency of vehicles. Take the same car from then and it will get less efficiency today because of ethanol additions, which decreases fuel efficiency since you get less energy out of ethanol than gasoline (that is if the ethanol doesn't destroy your engine which it will). E-85 gases also don't have nearly as much tax (that's why it is cheaper at the pump). There is subsidies to consider, for instance on the corn and ethanol industry, oil industry as well. All of these take more money from us and gives it to those industries. This manipulates cost and price. We also drive faster and drive more than the people of 1933, which decreases economy more (the faster you are going the more energy it takes to maintain your speed against the drag from air, 4 times more each meter per second increase). There is also the regulator restrictions on the entire fuel creation industry.
Then there is this:
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-wsoMz4L_mGo/TbiUGJn_tjI/AAAAAAAAPP8/pqaRujV0kls/s1600/gastax.jpg
Exxon makes 2 cents off of each gallon, in profit. The average tax is 48.1 cents. For that 2 cents profit a gallon, we get gas. For that 48.1 cents a gallon we get crappy roads that are built by crews where one guy is shoveling and 6 guys are leaning on shovels watching him (you know you've seen it). We get zero innovation in roads, they are pretty much the same as they were back then, no real technological improvements (you know, like heating or covering the roads which at first would cost a lot, but the savings down the line would be astronomical. If you covered the roads with an arch type covering the roads would be safer. They would not get wet from rain, they would not get snow on them, you would not have to deal with the sun in your eyes, you would not have to deal with the sun heating your car up in the summer forcing you to run the AC as much which would improve your fuel economy. You would not have to deal with ice or snow on the roads, thus you can eliminate road crews that salt the road, you would not have to buy salt each year, you would not have to suffer the ecological damage from the salt run off. Cars would last longer because they would not be eaten away by salt each year. I could go on if I really thought about it).
The next time you complain about gas prices, you should really complain about inflation and the government spending (which is the cause of the cause of inflation. They spend more than they can tax and borrow so they turn to the federal reserve which makes new money. THAT is the inflation and it make the dollar less valuable which drives prices up over time as that new money makes its' way around). If your wage increases aren't matching the rate of inflation, government is making your poorer.
