sci.energy.hydrogen

"Gunner Asch" wrote

> "Paul Thomas" wrote:
>>So? Take a look at the cost trend over the past 50 years. It's not kept
>>up
>>with inflation at all, and has just recently corrected for that lag.
>>
>>
>>It's about where it should be, if not still a tad below par.
>
> /cgi-bin/







/_CTED/documents/
Overview of Washington State Gasoline Prices
Comparing recent and historical fuel prices
Recent press releases highlight that gasoline or diesel prices have reached
record prices.
Expressed in nominal dollars (dollars of any particular year) this is true,
but a more
reasonable way to compare fuel costs in different time periods is to express
the costs in
constant dollars: an inflation index adjustment is applied to make dollars
from a previous
period equivalent to current dollars. Adjusted for inflation, historical
gasoline prices in
Washington peaked in 1981, when prices were significantly higher than today.
Expressed
in 2005 dollars a gallon of gasoline in 1981 would cost about $3 per gallon.




/ ?pub_id=3229
The late great economist Julian Simon, a Cato Institute adjunct scholar, was
famous for teaching us that it is most important to look at the very long
term trends in prices of natural resources, if one wants to make predictions
about the future. Here is what Simon's long term data on energy and gas
prices tells us. Gasoline prices paid at the pump have been on a steady rate
of decline since the 1920s, with the obvious exception of the 1970s, when we
faced an OPEC embargo and gasoline lines. In 1920 the real price of gas
(excluding taxes) was twice as high as today. If the price of gasoline
relative to wages were comparable today to what they were in 1920, we would
be paying almost $10 a gallon for gas. (See The State of Humanity, by Julian
Simon, Blackwell Publishers, 1995, Chapter 28.)






--
Paul A. Thomas, CPA
Athens, Georgia