patches70 wrote:There is only one explanation for the reason of those long term increases in gas and oil prices.
Inflation, and it's the least exciting explanation of them all, but it's the truth. It doesn't sell newspapers though, nothing sells newspapers better than war, death, greed and blaming specific groups of people for evils. It's not that oil is more valuable, it's that the dollars used to buy the oil become less valuable. So it takes more of them to buy the oil.
Here is the S&P 500-
and the Fed and Obama will trip all over themselves to take credit for the rise and pat themselves on the back for the rising stock market but when it comes to the price of oil-
They invent all kinds of excuses as to why it's not their fault that oil is going up at the same time as the stock market.
Now I'm just explaining reality. One can call me a shill for the oil companies or whatever, but the reality is that inflation hurts the poor and the middle class the most. The rich guy in the maserati doesn't give a crap if gas prices are $5 a gallon. But you should. And you should understand why.
The Fed and the government pursue policies that help the richest, drive up inflation which increases asset prices which makes the owners of those assets richer while making the poor working schmuck poorer because the price of all the things he needs and buys everyday keeps rising faster than he's making money.
The US government doesn't have to cause wars to make the oil prices rise. They do that by just keeping on printing dollars.
So, what do you think about this:
http://www.macrotrends.net/1369/crude-o ... tory-chart
Inflation doesn't explain it all.
Also, how about this? "[This chart] Compares the movement of the real dollar index with gold and oil prices since 1974. The oil and gold series are adjusted for CPI inflation and the real dollar index is adjusted for the relevant trading partners own currency inflation rates":
http://www.macrotrends.net/1334/dollar- ... ical-chart
And then there's this.
http://inflationdata.com/inflation/imag ... _small.jpg
It's adjusted for inflation, yet the price of oil keeps increasing. Why? In the long-run, nominals don't affect reals (i.e. cash money in the LR doesn't affect reals like gold and oil). In the LR, only reals affect reals--i.e. the supply and demand of oil affect its price. Monetary phenomena, like inflation, do affect reals in the short-run--as do risk and uncertainty (which are related to inflation to some degree).
Either you're right and nearly all economists are wrong, or you're wrong and they're right. I'm gonna go with the economic consensus on this one.