Another way to look at gasoline prices.

Everyone's talking about the high price of gasoline, and it is indeed higher in raw dollars than ever. But there's always a couple of different ways of looking at things. One of the most intriguing is a chart I've linked to on several other occasions that was put together by a fellow named Stuart over in Texas.

He's kept up with his gasoline receipts for 992 fill-ups, from April 1979 to July 26 of this year. Here's the graph, and as you can see, although gasoline prices have been trending upward since around 1998 or so, the actual cost as adjusted for inflation would be about the same as a gallon purchased in 1979 before the big spike in 1980, or about the same as the spike during 1990. Not to say that it won't go higher, obviously it can. But while it sounds horrible, it's not quite the worst shape we've ever been in.