I got gas for 82 cents a gallon yesterday

No, really, it's absolutely true. I got regular unleaded gasoline for 82 cents a gallon yesterday. No this is not an April Fool's joke. If the Blogger program that allows me to post had been working, yesterday, I would have posted then. Now, anyone who knows where I live would immediately say to this, "No you didn't. The lowest price I saw was $2.20 a gallon." To which I would respond, "You're not thinking fourth dimensionally."

Allow me to explain. The price of the dollar is not constant. It has been falling for a hundred years (which makes sense -- more people working, creating new value, causing more dollars to be printed to represent the additional work/value, and slightly reducing the value of the existing dollars). Keeping this in mind, cast your mind back to 1979 (if you remember driving back then). Long lines at gas stations. Gas rationing. $1.12 per gallon gasoline. You thought that was a lot for gas back then. Well, guess what, it still is. You see someone printed a lot more Federal Reserve Notes between then and now, and someone else has decided to abandon the strong-dollar policy, which caused the value of the said Federal Reserve Notes to fall even more rapidly in the past few years. The result is that one 2005 dollar is worth about thirty-seven 1979 cents. Chew on that for a minute. The gas prices you are paying now are around 85 cents per gallon in 1979 dollars. And there are no lines at service stations or gasoline rationing. Life is good. Quit complaining.

posted by The Sovereign Editor | 1:28 PM

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