$200.00 gallon of gasoline!

Can you imagine paying $200 for a gallon of gasoline? Well that is what one of National Church presidents and his assistant calculated the cost of a gallon of gas locally after I supplied them with the data. According to USA Today the average US salary is a bit under $3000 per month. According to the US State Department, the average Macedonia salary for the same time period was $244 per month. So if the average gallon of gasoline in the States is 3 bucks or so, the EQUIVALENT for the Macedonian who is purchasing gasoline at local prices here (almost $5 a gallon) is $198.00 a gallon. This is the same percentage of a Macedonian average monthly salary as a $3 gallon of gas costs an American. That also means that the pair of pants I purchased last night (the first and the last pair I will EVER buy here!) cost the local eqivalent of $3000! They were the most expensive pair of pants I have ever purchased in my whole life and it's a long and embarrassing story about why I did indeed ultimately purchase them in the first place and this is not the place I want to air my weak character out too much. Most people who read this will not believe these figures, but that is because you live in the land of plenty and Wal-Mart is just around the corner -- always. But much of the rest of the world lives with tiny miniscule salaries and Western prices. The combination of the two working together makes everything 1000 % more expensive. I think I will stop and pray and be thankful.