Gas Prices a Crisis??
The media is just longing to make current gas prices into a crisis. And you can already see them gearing up to bash oil companies for "record" profits (by the way, when reading the profit announcements, pay attention not to just total dollars but to profit margins, then read this).
Glenn Reynolds links this gas price chart this morning at Random Useless Data, showing that in real terms, gas prices are still below their peaks, and not at "all-time highs."
I took this one step further, based on the assumption that it isn't the price per gallon that matters for gas, but the price to drive a fixed mileage, say 100 miles. Since average automobile fuel economy has continued to improve, in real terms we are far below the peak cost of gasoline. Using this and this MPG data (for passenger cars) and the inflation adjusted gas prices here, I got this chart (1979 dollars)
By the way, just so you know my personal incentives, there are very few people out there who run a business whose fortunes are more sensitive to gas prices than my recreation business. This will not be a very good summer for me, but if we leave the market alone to do its work, things will likely be better in 2007. Intervention by Congress will pretty much assure that things will get worse.
