Look Mom, Cheap Gasoline!

As I was browsing the Energy Information Administration’s website, I encountered an interesting chart.  It shows that gasoline is cheaper for us today than it was for our parents, one short generation ago. 

Sure, we’re paying more for it than we were ten years ago.  But we’re not paying as much as our parents were paying twenty five years ago.  They paid a lot more per gallon, in constant dollars.  In other words, it took them a lot higher fraction of a week’s paycheck to buy twenty gallons of gasoline than it takes us today.

If I remember correctly, there was a bit of hysteria about it back then, too.  Come to think of it, wasn't the earth supposed to run out of extractable oil about ten years ago or so? 

In any case, here’s the chart from the Department of Energy (with a few cosmetic modifications by me, for clarity; click to enlarge.)