One man's "gas price history" (from 1979 to 2007)

[SoCalDem]

http://www.cynical-c.com/archives/cat_misc.html

Gasoline Price History

The following plot shows how much I paid for each gallon of gas I bought over the past 27 years or so. The data has a somewhat varied pedigree. Most of the purchases from 1979-1982 were in the Rio Vista/Fort Worth, Texas area. From late 1982-1983 was from College Station/Rio Vista about equally. From 1984-1987 was a Rio Vista/College Station/Houston mix and from 1987 on has been mostly Houston with a little Fort Worth thrown in. Just about everything pre-1984 was full service and everything since has been self-serve. Every tank shown was "super" unleaded (92-93 octane).

Three curves are shown on the plot. The upper, black curve shows the actual price paid for each gallon. The lower curve is the data adjusted for inflation using April, 1979 as the datum. That is, the data in this curve has been adjusted to "April 1979 dollars". The "CPI-All Urban Consumers for all items less energy" was used to adjust the data using monthly average data interpolated to the actual purchase dates. The CPI data is from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. The third, faint line, shows the average price for the entire U.S., again from the BLS.

The plot contains data from 1052 fill-ups. TOTO


For anyone interested in the raw data...

Actual price paid: http://www.randomuseless.info/gasprice/gasprice.txt
Adjusted for inflation: http://www.randomuseless.info/gasprice/adjusted.txt
US City Average: http://www.randomuseless.info/gasprice/usa.txt

[Wiley50]

1. I'll Bet Around Oil Company Boards that W's Nickname is "Spike"

We need a dose of Sanity in this country, Urgently.

Thanks for spreading a little.

Hope DUers will notice and spread this much wider

[ngant17]

7. note when the 'surge' happened

or should I say, is happening how.

A Republican-dominated economy. Texas oil men. You'd think the party would be history by now. Except for the electronic vote-rigging, I'd say they already were.

[Redstone]

2. Is someone a bit obsessive?

Redstone

[SoCalDem]

3. There are people like that.. My friend was married to one.

he made her keep track of how much she paid & she even had to write the mileage with every fill up. We don't know what he did with the info, but I marvel that she stayed married to him for 10 years:)

[Redstone]

4. My wife was married to one, as well. As you said, Lord knows what he ever did with

the information, but he DID write it all down.

And probably has it all on his PC now. A very nice guy (I've met him, and Mrs R stays in touch with him, and I talk to him now and again as well), but a bit more tightly wound than I could ever be.

Redstone

[Cobalt-60]

5. mileage data is important.

First and foremost, it gives you a peek at your car's efficiency.
If that figure suddenly drops there is a problem.
Assuming it isn't a sudden change in driving habits, either your car or the gas pump has something wrong with it.
Gas pumps are as subject to tampering as electronic voting machines. Only once in my life have I detected a seriously rigged pump . And I caught it with a mileage deviation.
It was Standard Oil at the time, I still advise: don't purchase fuel from BP in Tennessee.
Second, a good idea of how many miles your mount can go on a tank protects you from inaccurate gas gages. As a GM owner this is my primary motivation for constant mileage calculations.
As far as saving these figures for generations...I wouldn't. But it seems to be a harmless fetish.

[Bucky]

6. How useful is that "adjusted for inflation" number? Isn't gas price the major driver of inflation?

I mean, compare those line curves for the 1999-2000 gas spike (Saudi Arabia cut back on production that year to drive up prices and Clinton had to counter by releasing surpluses from the strategic reserve). The ticket price jumps from 1.40 to 1.75 in a few months, but the inflation adjusted price only moves up 12 cents or so in 1979 dollars.

If gas prices are driving up prices across the market, then shouldn't you ignore the adjusted and just say (like I do) it's all Bush's fault?

[SoCalDem]

8. A while back they "removed" gas & food from the inflation projection numbers

That explains why we have "no inflation", yet we are all getting "broker" by the second :eyes:

[ClintonTyree]

9. How they were allowed to do that remains a mystery to me....

knowing that energy and food are two of the consumers biggest outlays, it makes the inflation numbers meaningless. But I guess that was the desired outcome all along. I would hazard a guess that only about 1/3 of Americans are aware of that little "adjustment" and the rest are completely ignorant of the true facts concerning inflation in our country. Do you know who was responsible for that change in the formula? I'm willing to bet it wasn't a Democrat.