Gas Prices at an 11-Year Low for Labor Day Weekend
Drivers will be paying less at the pump as we head into one of the largest travel weekends of the year. Gas prices over Labor Day weekend haven’t been this low since 2004.
The national average price of gas is currently $2.44 per gallon, 99 cents less than this time last year, according to AAA. The average consumer can expect to save $15 to $25 on each trip to the gas station.
Related: 6 Reasons Gas Prices Could Fall Below $2 A Gallon
AAA estimates that 35.5 million people are planning to travel this weekend, a 1 percent increase from last year. The majority of travelers, 30.4 million, are expected to drive to their destinations, a rise of 1.1 percent from last year.
Gasoline prices are moving lower thanks to the falling price of crude oil. Oil has been hit by worries over economic growth in emerging markets, Iranian oil flooding the market and crude oil inventories rising due to economic and weather factors, a U.S. Energy Information Administration report finds.
For drivers, there’s more good news ahead. AAA expects gas prices to keep falling, with gas selling for $2 or less a gallon by Christmas in many parts of the U.S.
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Stat of the Day: 0.2%
The New York Times’ Jim Tankersley tweets: “In order to raise enough revenue to start paying down the debt, Trump would need tariffs to be ~4% of GDP. They're currently 0.2%.”
Read Tankersley’s full breakdown of why tariffs won’t come close to eliminating the deficit or paying down the national debt here.
Number of the Day: 44%
The “short-term” health plans the Trump administration is promoting as low-cost alternatives to Obamacare aren’t bound by the Affordable Care Act’s requirement to spend a substantial majority of their premium revenues on medical care. UnitedHealth is the largest seller of short-term plans, according to Axios, which provided this interesting detail on just how profitable this type of insurance can be: “United’s short-term plans paid out 44% of their premium revenues last year for medical care. ACA plans have to pay out at least 80%.”
Number of the Day: 4,229
The Washington Post’s Fact Checkers on Wednesday updated their database of false and misleading claims made by President Trump: “As of day 558, he’s made 4,229 Trumpian claims — an increase of 978 in just two months.”
The tally, which works out to an average of almost 7.6 false or misleading claims a day, includes 432 problematics statements on trade and 336 claims on taxes. “Eighty-eight times, he has made the false assertion that he passed the biggest tax cut in U.S. history,” the Post says.
Number of the Day: $3 Billion
A new analysis by the Department of Health and Human Services finds that Medicare’s prescription drug program could have saved almost $3 billion in 2016 if pharmacies dispensed generic drugs instead of their brand-name counterparts, Axios reports. “But the savings total is inflated a bit, which HHS admits, because it doesn’t include rebates that brand-name drug makers give to [pharmacy benefit managers] and health plans — and PBMs are known to play games with generic drugs to juice their profits.”
Chart of the Day: Public Spending on Job Programs
President Trump announced on Thursday the creation of a National Council for the American Worker, charged with developing “a national strategy for training and retraining workers for high-demand industries,” his daughter Ivanka wrote in The Wall Street Journal. A report from the president’s National Council on Economic Advisers earlier this week made it clear that the U.S. currently spends less public money on job programs than many other developed countries.
