[Fat Charlie]

Arragonis- talking to people would be a waste of time for something like this, it's just a matter of correlating statistics. How much money was spent on gasoline in a given year, and how much personal income was earned in that year? Somebody probably got a grant to do this study and I'll bet they didn't even have to do any actual research for it, just have a grad student dress up data that they already had.

$1 gas wasn't really a low point in the US, it's around what gas had been for a long time. Not to sound all Ron Paul or anything, but Washington went from buying back debt in the 90s to printing money so fast that they can't even keep track. So while the cost of oil may have gone up, the number of US dollars needed to pay that cost has gone up even more. Add that to wages not moving much and major unemployment and that graph looks right.