Oh, and a bit of historical evidence probably only interesting to me:
Average price of gal of gas in 1982: $1.30.
Average price of gal of gas in 2013: $3.60.
Works out to an average annual increase of approximately 3.2%/year.
(price of gasoline doubles roughly every 23 years).
Cost of living (CPI, average consumer, excluding gasoline expenditures)(1982-1984 dollars) in 1982: 96.5
Same, but in 2013: 233.0
Works out to an average annual increase of approximately 2.8%/year.
(average cost of living doubles roughly every 26 years).
What would be really interesting would be to add to this story the increased productivity between 1982 and today that happened at the same time as this (IMO a lot smaller than most people think) increase in relative gas prices actually can be connected to. It's a more complicated computation, and I'm still not done with that grading, so I'm not going to do it (at least not now) but my gut feeling is that the benefits we've received from paying an additional 0.4% per year are a lot bigger than that.
Sources used to make calculations:
Gas prices:www.davemanuel.com/whatitcost.php
CPI: www.bls.gov
Originally Posted by: Wade