"Jason Bleazard" <dml@bleazard.net> wrote:
: On Thu, September 1, 2005 1:23 am, jon@dakota-truck.net said:
:>
:> People like to complain about gas prices, but
:> you've really got to adjust them for inflation in order to make a
:> meaningful comparison.
: Here's a question, just to further confuse the issue. I'm sure there's no
: good answer for this, but it's worth thinking about. How much of the
: general inflation do you think has been driven by increases in fuel
: prices?
: For instance, if it costs more to truck food to the grocery store, then
: grocery prices increase. I've seen the price of fuel used to justify
: recent increases in food, postage, electricity, and just about any
: consumer item you can think of. To say nothing of airline fares, although
: since so many people have quit flying the story usually isn't "we have to
: jack up fares because of the price of fuel" it's usually "we're going out
: of business because of the price of fuel... anyone want to buy three
: hundred airplanes, cheap?".
: I'm tempted to say if they weren't driving the price of fuel up so much,
: we wouldn't have so much inflation to begin with. But that's just my
: totally uneducated opinion. I'm not an economist, just a pissed off
: consumer.
Yep, I'm sure there is some of that factored in; people (and companies)
basically think to themselves "back in 1970 we were paying $.35/gallon
and now its several times that amount, this is expensive!" Factoring
in inflation, they might not actually be any more than they used to,
its just that the dollar amounts are bigger. There is a certain
psychological effect to that though, which no doubt has some influence,
although technically it shouldn't. This is probably exaggerated due to
the fact that gas prices are a highly visible thing; its like the price
of milk and bread, a factor that people generally gauge against past
prices. I know for myself, my brain thinks that gas "should cost"
about $1 per gallon. Any more than that and it feels like I'm getting
ripped off. That's just because that's about where the price was when
I started driving, and thus started paying attention to it. In reality,
if I were buying gas today at $1.50 per gallon, that would be the same
as paying $1 per gallon back in 1990.
Fuel most certainly is hugely important; most of our products are
transported domestically by truck and train; most imports via ship.
Airplanes play a role as well. ALL of these require fuel, and if
you increase the cost of the fuel, the end cost of the product can't
help but go up. I agree that if fuel prices were reasonable, almost
everything else that we buy would cost less as well.
--
-Jon-
.-- Jon Steiger --- jon@dakota-truck.net or jon@jonsteiger.com --.
| '70 Barracuda, '90 Dakota Convertible, '92 Ram 4x4, '96 Dakota |
| '96 Intruder, '96 Kolb FireFly, '99 Cherokee, '01 Ram 3500 |
`----------------------------------- http://www.jonsteiger.com --'
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