Gas

It was mentioned here that the gas in Mexico is much cheaper than that
of the US. On the face of it, it's true, but in real terms I don't think
so. I'm no economist, but I tried my hand at proving my belief anyway.
This is what I got: An American dollar is $10.23 pesos, and a liter of
gas is $7.10 pesos. That comes to $2.64 dollars per gallon, or about 38%
less than the US national average of $4.24 dollars per gallon. But,
Americans earn more money than Mexicans. The per capita income of the US
is $45,800USD and Mexico's is $12,800. Americans make, on average per
person, about 72% more than Mexicans. This should surely change the
perspective of gas being 38% cheaper. To give a number to that
perspective, I just divided the cost per gallon by the GDP per capita
for both countries and compared them. The resulting number is 2.21. So,
I guess I can say that in real terms, the cost of gas in Mexico is more
than double the price of gas in the US. There are some problems with
this though. Mainly, that GDP per capita is a skewed number, especially
for Mexico, because of the very few people at the top that make a
retarded amount of money. Mexico also has a problem with, as Luke
mentioned, underreporting. I'd assume that records are particularly
inaccurate in regions with large numbers of indigenous peoples - many of
whom don't speak Spanish.