It's All Relative
My dad sometimes has this annoying habit of pointing out the fact that everything these days is expensive. Before gas prices started dropping, he could hardly believe that it passed $4.00 a gallon. He would always say, "Man, I remember when gas was only a buck," like back then spending a dollar on gas was a good thing. I constantly have to remind him that it's all relative. Just because gas was cheaper back then, doesn't change the fact that you were probably paying just the same amount as you are today. To prove my point, I made him this little picture:
If that text at the bottom is too small to read, this is what it says:
Based on the average amount of gas that year divided by the average amount of money a person made in a year if said person filled up four times per month on an 18 gallon vehicle. Sure, this isn't totally accurate, but it gives you a fairly good idea of how everything is relative. Just because you paid $0.30 a gallon for gas in 1955 does not mean that it was cheaper.
Notice how even after the OPEC embargo, people were only spending about 13% of their paychecks per month on gas as opposed to 1955 when people were shelling out nearly the same amount of their paychecks that we were in 2006.
Like I said, it's not completely accurate, but I just wanted to give him a general idea. Kind of interesting, in my book.
If that text at the bottom is too small to read, this is what it says:
Based on the average amount of gas that year divided by the average amount of money a person made in a year if said person filled up four times per month on an 18 gallon vehicle. Sure, this isn't totally accurate, but it gives you a fairly good idea of how everything is relative. Just because you paid $0.30 a gallon for gas in 1955 does not mean that it was cheaper.
Notice how even after the OPEC embargo, people were only spending about 13% of their paychecks per month on gas as opposed to 1955 when people were shelling out nearly the same amount of their paychecks that we were in 2006.
Like I said, it's not completely accurate, but I just wanted to give him a general idea. Kind of interesting, in my book.