With summer travel season nearing peak capacity we are treated to stories of misery at the gas pump and the usual complaining about prices.
Don’t get me wrong, I am not happy with high prices but the psychology of the reaction to gas prices is interesting to me.
Assume an average family of 4 drives roughly 3,000 miles a month between work and personal driving.
Taking that 36,000 miles and adding ten percent for extra travel we get 40,000 miles of driving. Although they do a bit better overall I decided to assume an average of 20 miles per gallon which works out to roughly 2,000 gallons of gas a year. According to news reports gas prices have risen by no more $ 1.00 over the past 18 months (since early 2012) so the total cost per year for them has been about $ 2,000 dollars or roughly $ 5 per day (or $ 2.50 for each driver, assuming that you have two parents)
Now I am not going to dismiss the importance of this money especially to a young family. But many of the people who complain (correctly) about the spike in gas prices are the ones sitting every morning at Starbucks. There they spend four or five dollars on a coffee that they could make for twenty five cents at home. Or they go into the convenience store at the gas station and spend two bucks on a bottle of water that has the same stuff that comes out of the tap at home.
Back at home these families spend money on cell phones for six year olds, they eat out to dinner several times a week and so on. Now just to be clear I’m certainly not meaning to suggest that these families are living in the lap of luxury. There are perfectly good reasons to give a child a cell phone for emergencies or to give Mom a break by eating out. But you don’t see people complaining about prices or trying to get more of a bargain here. They frequently pay far more than they should to get these services and don’t make a peep.
But if you raise gas prices then they act as if the world is ending, when it really isn’t. Gas prices are high but we don’t have people unable to drive to the grocery store because of the price of fuel. I understand and agree with people when they complain about high gas prices, but I don’t understand why they don’t have the same attitude about everything else in their lives