Gas cost $1.46 when W. took office. Here that is again in case you missed it:
I was musing over that the other day, did a little research and found this analysis in the Left Business Observer, a newsletter edited by Doug Henwood, a contributing editor at The Nation:
Maybe that’s all there is to it. Take note, Presidential candidates.
Please share widely!
Make gasoline free, get 100 percent approval ratings! Brilliant!
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Economics from The Nation so it must be wrong. BTW, where’s Bill Clinton’s graph?
Oh, do compare Clinton’s approval ratings to Bush’s. That would be a very exciting graph.
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It might even require different scales.
Oh Wikipedia, is there nothing you can’t find?
His though, is a little different as it charts # of BJs vs popularity.
Actually to be honest, I hated Bill at first but when I saw all the extramarital ass he was copping, he kinda became my hero.
I suspect that most people to realize that the price of raw oil (which is what the gasoline price reflects) also affects the price of heating oil, the price of natural gas, the price of electricity (look at what at leasted used to be called the “fuel adjustment charge”), the price of plastic products, ad nauseum.
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But most people don’t see that directly, but it affects them indirectly. It’s the price of gasoline that they see directly.
you don’t get to complain about gas prices to me. I mean, a 20 oz bottle of Dasani runs what, $1.00? That’s $6.40 a gallon for tap water, and you’re worried about paying half that for gasoline? Don’t forget, tap water is virtually free, easy to store and carry for daily trips, just as safe [likely safer] than bottled water, and doesn’t contribute to additional consumption of fuel to deliver the stuff or litter/garbage to make the bottle.
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Having said that, a correlation of -0.85 isn’t remarkable, and I’d speculate that if you narrow your data sets to times when one of the two sets of data isn’t changing very quickly and you’ll see far less correlation. If you take two data sets with matching extreme points, you’ll always get tight correlation — but it doesn’t predict very much at all.
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Interesting, but not particularly useful from a political science or plain ol’ science perspective, even in consideration of raj‘s point that the price of a barrel of oil is often correlated with the general welfare of the economy.
They encourage conservation and innovation. Or at least in theory…
consumers are rational, and aren’t “price sticky”, and consider total cost of ownership.
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In American automobile reality, consumers are easily persuaded by advertising, consider $3/gallon substantially more than $2.90 but $2.90 about the same as $2.60, and weigh the sticker price far more than the total cost of ownership.
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To make matters worse, they tend to worry more about the recent direction of gasoline price changes more than the actual price: once the price stabilizes, they grow accustomed to it and stop using it as a factor. The evidence? Check out the chart of hybrid sales next to gas prices. It’s not high gas prices that drive sales, but increasing prices that drive sales.
But, it’s not all or nothing, and there are plenty of consumers — both individuals and businesses — who do weigh the price of gas appropriately. So, raising the price of gas will reduce demand, will stimulate demand for higher MPG vehicles, and just might increase public pressure for better mass transit options.
…a crate of liter bottles of Evian over here in Muenchen is dirt cheap. The Amis are getting screwed. And Poland Springs isn’t any better–or cheaper.
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For the life of me, I do not understand why the mother-in-law and her son insists on Evian. We get plenty of calc here from the tap water.
it’s tap water. Worth about $0.01, because that’s what tap water is worth. It’s perfectly fine water, but it’s no more reasonable than buying Perri-air
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