One issue that seems to have influenced voters Tuesday was the price of gasoline — over which Biden has no control. Here's US gas prices and the world price of oil (divided by 42 to make it a price per gallon) pic.twitter.com/rSwv1q8DzN
— Paul Krugman (@paulkrugman) November 4, 2021
Everyone is complaining that gas prices are high, and they are for the last few years, but they really aren't for the last 10 years or so, when adjusted for inflation:
This is weekly data on gas prices from EIA's This Week in Petroleum, adjusted for inflation via the Consumer Price Index. Gas prices were high during the Bush Jr administration -- probably a feature, not a bug -- and then after the financial crisis.
But it appears, from Krugman's graph, that presidents don't have much, if any, influence on gas prices -- they're set quite deterministically from the price of oil.
2 comments:
"adjusted for inflation"
Inflation hasn't been this high since the early '80s. It's not quite right to say "don't worry about gas prices because everything else is unaffordable as well."
No, I'm not saying don't worry about gas prices. But adjusting for inflation....
Post a Comment