Gas priced in gold
Here's a little something for those of you who think that gasoline is expensive. The price denominated in dollars may be rising, but in historical terms, it's still a bargain for those of us in the U.S. of A.
This chart is inspired by The Silicon Graybeard's post on OPEC and gas prices. Among other things, The Gray One writes about the price of gasoline compared to gold prices, which got me to thinking... what kind of chart would we get if we calculate the average price of gasoline per gallon, in ounces of gold (using the average gasoline and gold price for the year)?
Some examples:
In 1919, with gold at $20.67 an ounce, and gasoline at $0.255 per gallon, it would have cost 0.01232 oz. of gold to buy a gallon of gas.
In 1942, gold was $35/oz. and gasoline at $0.204/gallon, and it would have cost you 0.00584 oz. of gold to buy a gallon of gas.
In 1970, with gold at $36.07/oz., gasoline at $0.357/gallon, you would have coughed up 0.00989 oz. of gold to buy a gallon.
Today, with gold at $1,440/oz., and gasoline at $3.154 (man, I don't know where you can get it for that price, it's about $3.70 a gallon in northern California), you need only 0.00219 oz. of gold to buy a gallon of go-juice.
This may not be all that interesting, except as a reminder that gold isn't going up, paper money's going down. (We might say the same thing about commodities, which I expect are suffering from relatively weak demand in this economy -- but there's far less demand for U.S. Dollars relative to the supply, and people aren't so confident in the U.S. economy's near-future prospects...)
Now, having said all that, gas prices may be causing you pains, because you may be falling behind the inflation curve–I understand your frustration, I agree that it sucks, but it's misguided to blame the oil companies for that. You can thank your genius 'representatives' in Washington who.......................along with the Federal Reserve, are doing just about everything in their power to destroy the value of the Federal Reserve Notes you received for your labor.