Current Gasoline Spending is Not Especially High

Sure, nobody likes to see $4.00/gallon gas, but the fact is we're only spending a little more now than in the past decade, compared to the size of the economy.

Here is the amount Americans spend on gasoline, compared to US GDP. Weekly gasoline prices and demand numbers are from the EIA, and quarterly GDP data comes from the Bureau of Economic Analysis. During the Bush terms gasoline spending averaged 2.4% of GDP; so far during the Obama administration it has averaged 2.8%, with spikes that have been seen before:

Of course, an additional 0.4% of GDP is about $63 billion per year, which isn't peanuts -- it's about $200 per person (per-capita, not per driver.) The US now spends about $1330 per-capita on gasoline.