If you saw the content with Prof. Rob McDonald we posted earlier today you know that we were in the Hudson Valley region of New York – the Empire State. When we departed the wonderful McDonald residence we set our sites on Irvington-on-Hudson – home of the Foundation for Economic Education (where we met some great folks and captured some stellar content including a tour of the grounds with Wayne Olson, chairman of FEE’s Board of Trustees and interviews with FEE President Larry Reed and Prof. Steve Horwitz that we’ll soon post).

As we crossed from the west to the east side of the Hudson River across the Tappan Zee Bridge we stopped at the toll. Though the sign said $5 we were charged $14.50 (though MARV has two axles at some tolls we are forced to pay double or more over the posted rate). Angry that the government was taking even more money from us I retraced our route and realized that that was not the extent of the State’s take.

At 7mpg I figured that we used about seven gallons of gas to get from Rob’s place to FEE, which equated to about $50, a sizable chunk of which was going into the State coffers. Not to mention the distorted price of the gas itself due to the interventions of the United States government abroad.

Obviously we still have some work to do…