Gas is more affordable now than it was in the 60s Options

[impala454]

Pretty interesting article someone pointed me to. So many people are completely fixed on prices and prices alone, they don't really look at all the other factors.

http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=9585

part of the article:

Consumer anger about rising fuel prices has taken a while to build because, until the last year or so, the increases could be shrugged off as natural year-to-year price variation. Moreover, pump prices still seemed relatively cheap given increases in personal wealth. Personal disposable income since 2000, for instance, has increased by an average of about $4,800 a person. Those very real increases in economic well-being reduced the pain of higher prices at the pump. People didn't notice that real gas prices were higher because the percentage of their income going to the gas station was at an all-time low until recently. The bad news for politicians is that motorists are noticing now. We are bombarded with reminders, from nightly newscasts to front pages, that gas is more expensive now than it was in the late 1990s. Ask Americans the price of milk, bottled water or orange juice and many won't have a clue. But virtually every American of driving age sees the large signs proclaiming the price of gas at street corners every day, and has watched the dial on the gas pump tick up to $40, then $60 or higher as they fill their tanks. The bill is high, and it is drilled into our heads.

But perception is not reality where gas prices are concerned. By June of this year, disposable income had risen by an average of $1,627 per person over last year's figures, according to the Department of Commerce, while the average person's real expenditures on gasoline increased by about $490. Our incomes are still outpacing gasoline price increases. The problem is that our incomes aren't outpacing the increase in gas prices lumped together with increases in everything else — air conditioning, food, etc. Our homes, meanwhile, are losing value.

But gasoline is more affordable than it was during the early 1960s, an era fondly remembered by many as halcyon days of cheap fuel and gas-guzzling American cars. We're overlooking that context because it's easier to remember 1998, when we saw the lowest inflation-adjusted gasoline prices in recorded history.

[dauss]

Holy crap, air conditioning has increased too?!? Those poor bastards in Alaska must really be suffering.

[chook]

The problem is that our incomes aren't outpacing the increase in gas prices lumped together with increases in everything else — air conditioning, food, etc. Our homes, meanwhile, are losing value.