A reader emails with a question:
Could (would) you prepare a chart of gasoline prices (adjusted for inflation) say from 1950 to the present? I think it would be very informative.
Yes indeed! I'd be delighted. Here it is:
Data through 2021 is annual. Data for 2022 is the latest and greatest for this week. Inflation is adjusted using the implicit GDP deflator, which is the EIA's preferred measure.
Now, can you add in average MPG? A gallon of gas goes further now than back in the day.
This is anecdotal, but I was in high school in the late 1960s and the car I drove then got about half the mileage as the car I drive now (Chevy Impala then, Toyota Camry hybrid now). So if gasoline is roughly double in real terms what is was in 1970, it costs me no more to drive in real terms now than it did then.
And until the recent Putin run-up, driving was considerably cheaper for me in real terms than it was back in those golden high school days.
Here you go.
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/the-price-of-gasoline-isnt-really-at-a-record-high-in-fact-the-inflation-adjusted-cost-of-driving-a-mile-was-higher-for-most-of-the-past-century-11646770318
"Gas would have to get to nearly $7 a gallon to match the 30 cents per mile of 1980 and 1981."
thanks!
Kevin's heart burst at the words "could you make" and "adjusted for inflation".
It's interesting to me to see what distorted perceptions we can have when trying to factor inflation into our reminisces about yesteryear. I understand factoring prices forward--what are our current costs in terms of constant dollars from, say, the year 2000. But figuring the other way is counter-intuitive, and difficult.
When I got out of school and went to work fulltime, I bought a car that drank premium gas at 29 cents a gallon. That was 1964. I know that 29 cents was a lot more than it is now, but it's hard to realize how MUCH more it was. After all, it was just a quarter and a few pennies.
My Inflation Calculator app tells me that 29 cents would have been worth $2.65 at the beginning of this year. Quite amazingly, that's what I was paying for premium gas at the beginning of this year. Sumbich. It just doesn't feel that way!
This is a good point, it doesn't feel that way.
Are people habitually putting in more gas at once now than they did in 1964?
Well, "let's get a dollar's worth" was a thing for me back in '63 in High School!
And was that dollar's worth put in by a guy, who you paid while you sat in the car, rather than you having to stand there and do it yourself and then walk into the station to pay for it?
It may be that everyone now puts in more at once just to avoid the hassle of having to do it too often.
As Chuck Berry put it - Wipe the windows, check the oil, check the tires, a dollar gas - Ha!
And how far could you go on that $1's worth of gas???
Where the highway vanishes into the sunset.
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This chart features "regular"? I didn't know they still made "regular," I thought it was all "regular unleaded" now. How does this chart deal with the phasing out of leaded gasoline which I believe drove up the price per gallon for the average car?
I think--but you should not take me too seriously, since I don't even own a car--that the chart should compare a constant octane level of 87 or 89 across time, not a category labelled "regular."
It's actually hard to find "regular leaded." But modern lawn mowers require it.
None of my yard equipment uses gasoline - I went electric starting in 2000. After 80 volt lithium battery powered equipment had been out for a couple of years, I started slowly replacing my corded equipment as things wore out. First, the mower (2017) - which had better torque that any gas or plug-in mower I'd ever used. The batteries charge so quickly that I can rotate batteries with only a short pause to pull the discharged battery out of the mower and swap it for the battery in the charger. By the time the second battery runs down, the first one is ready to go again. Some of my older batteries have been going almost 5 years with no detectable loss of run time.
Interesting correlation here: eyeballing the chart, Democratic administrations have been times of falling gasoline prices while Republican ones have hosted the run-ups to the peaks.
How them apples, Mitch?
Hey, humanity,
Republicans have your back,
https://twitter.com/janet4iowa/status/1501660890894118922
Well, I think we know who eats "raw milk products" don't we?
There's a certain demographic out there -- a kind of overlapping venn diagram of far right and far left kooks -- that believes pasteruization is some evil government or military-industrial complex conspiracy to keep you from enjoying milk the way God intended or something and that the small risk of getting sick far outweighs the many health benefits, and so on. In my neck of the woods, it's the Amish dairies that really push this stuff.
The problem is, if you draw the short straw, and there's even the slightest contamination in your milk, you can get really, really sick and possibly die. And even if you don't die, you can still fuck up your liver, kidneys, etc.
I imagine contaminated milk is even harder on infans and small children. Another "pro-life (my arse!!)" Republican position.
Social conservatives of left and right are the same people despite outward appearances.
I remember gas at <$.30. I still have two steak knives a station was giving out to attract customers.
IIRC oil represented roughly 8 percent of GNP back then, so those increases in the 1970's had a big impact on the economy, much bigger than now.
I grew up in Tulsa where we had two refineries battling for our allegiance across the Arkansas River. I distinctly remember seeing fifteen cent signs in a few "price wars". Normal was nineteen cents almost until I graduated.
Of course, our thermodynamically ante-deluvian V8's got about ten mpg (or less if you have a "big block" Chevvy or OMG! A Pontiac!)
Republicans, with their love of all things human and natural, ought to pass laws granting citizenship to Bigfoot, making it a crime to try to shoot or capture him.
And the same goes for Mrs. Bigfoot.
And the kids.
Fair is fair.
Given what we know about wages and auto fuel efficiency since 1950, I suspect that actual fuel costs as a % of income are still below historical averages and well below prior gas price spikes.
The emotions around the price of gas are part of our still enduring love affair with cars.
I have little doubt that affair is so deeply entwined with our identities that, paraphrasing the refrain about guns, we won't give up our cars until they pry the steering wheels from our cold, dead hands.
And, the price of gas is not as much about costs, as it is about everything we both hate and love in our society.
I've just been thinking, what if the Russian financial institutions targeted by sanctions aren't even relatively stable? What if they're in no better shape than the army or navy, that they're basically hollow shells and the least nudge doesn't just paralyze them but burns them flat?
Where do refugees from Russia go?
I’d pay a lot more for gasoline to see Moscow tuned into a smoking mass of rubble.
At some point, one can argue that the Russian military has already nuked a few Ukrainian cities. The only thing missing is the radiation. And hey… there still a chance we could get some good radiation from a nuclear plant meltdown.
If this isn’t WWIII already, it sure seems like it. Oh sure. It can always get worse. And I’m sure it will.