Free. Find an alternative energy source.

I have always said that .49 cents a gallon is the perfect price.

The perfect price would depend on market supply and demand only and not permit speculative commodity market profit taking. Nice to know that those who got rich off $150 a barrel oil lost their shirts when low demand placed crashed the price to a more relistic $40 to $60 range.

1 freakin dollar...its been there before and everything was fine. people will be usin gas till we run out of it....and not before then are we ever goin to fully tranfer over to any non-gasoline based fuel.

Price is the key driver of consumer behavior (said Adam Smith). This is the most important role. Oil should be below $40 (to discourage more drilling, and to starve the majority of world conflict of resources to buy weapons, not to mention the "what" to fight over). Gas at the pump should be around $4. We hit this price a year or so ago, and that was the first time I started seeing news about people changing their lifestyles in America regarding the fuel price. Below that level, it's too uncool to bend. We'd rather just bitch and pay it, and keep our big stupid cars and big stupid houses. But at four bucks, rational behavior starts to set in, and you hear about mass transit systems being strained (which is a good thing), and badly run car companies complaining "oh my goodness! we never DREAMED that gas could get this expensive! We don't know HOW to make efficient cars profitably!" We've been fighting wars over the crap for decades, yet people still think it's a better idea to bring something from deep under ground on the other side of a troubled world than figure out another way to get to work. There's no need to guess which alternate energy car technology will emerge (and subsidize it accordingly); just raise the price of gas (with a direct tax, to subsidize mass transit) so that more technologies are viable, and let the market work out the rest. Here's a bad plan: transfer the rest of our dwindling wealth to OPEC while using up all the remaining oil; then, JUST BEFORE the oil runs out, pull an all-nighter and come up with an alternative.

I have always said that there is not a gallon of gasoline made thats worth more than .49 cents. Said this in the 80s and its still true today.

The 'perfect' price for gasoline is one where ALL of the costs of its use are incorporated into it, unlike our current situation where we MASSIVELY subsidize petroleum/gasoline use. http://www.icta.org/doc/Real%20Price%20of%20Gasoline.pdf Currently, that 'perfect price' would be in the neighborhood of $9/gallon to $12/gallon.