Noah Smith has a piece in Bloomberg, describing the 1970's rise in oil prices and attributing several structural changes in the economy to that cause. This shows gas prices over the last 100 years. In 1968 when I first began driving as a civilian prices were $.34 a gallon. Sometimes you had gas price wars, which would drive the prices even lower. Stations might offer premiums, like steak knives, for filling a tank. (Back in the day, banks used to offer premiums to open savings accounts, since interest rates were capped--but that's another subject.) We're still using a couple knives I got back then.
By 1980 the prices had risen to $1.19--tripling in price. That's after embargoes and long gas lines as people panicked (rather like the toilet paper shortages this spring).
No comments:
Post a Comment