Going back to ~1972, gas was about $0.35/gallon and min wage was $1.60/hr IIRC.
At that ratio, min wage should now be over $12/hr (not that I think mandated min wage is a good idea).
I think the key thing in getting a bargain in the energy market is more competition from more sources, something we have too little of.
As to fuel efficiency in cars, we cannot expect to have 30mpg from ethanol as long as the engines
are designed to accommodate multi fuels and gasoline. It has been said that an engine can be designed to get 30mpg from ethanol, and the trick seems to be a higher compression ratio.
There is a better way to gain leverage on energy prices and that is to learn how to do the same thing or get the same results while using less energy input. However, such ideas do not sell because they cannot be copyrighted or patented. They are simply common sense ideas that do not sell because no one gets rich off of using them, or so people think