He said “Gas prices have doubled since Obama took office!” I told him the price of gas is lower now than it was under Bush.
You know what? We’re both right. It depends on if you look at the price of gas in the summer of 2008 (it was a little higher than it is now, over four years later) or if you look at the price of gas at the beginning of 2009 after the economy crashed, leading to massive job losses and cheap gas (people don’t need gas to get to work if they’re unemployed and when businesses aren’t selling things, they don’t need trucks burning gas to deliver stuff). It’s macroeconomics – and supply and demand.
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Look closely at this chart of average gas prices in the U.S. over the last eight years:
The price of gas peaked in July 2008 at about $4.12 per gallon. Then the economy crashed (remember Lehman Brothers and McCain saying, “the fundamentals of the economy are sound”?). When the economy went in the toilet, the price of gas plummeted. Because of market forces and so on. When Obama took office, the price was under two bucks. And now it’s getting close to four bucks. But it’s still lower than it was in July 2008 (just before the Great Recession began).
So the next time a Republican friend says, “The price of gas has doubled under Obama,” you can say one of the following things:
“Yes, but the price of gas is still lower than it was under Bush, four and a half years ago.”
You might need to print out the graph. Or grab a scrap of paper and draw it out. Laffer did something like that.
--or--
“Yes, the price of gas is going up because the economy is getting better after Bush’s policies caused the Great Recession. It’s supply and demand. It’s how markets work. The economy is improving because of Obama's policies.”
--or--
“Yes, the price has gone up because oil operates in a global market. Did you know that our oil refineries were so busy that in 2011, the United States exported more gasoline, heating oil, and diesel fuel to other countries than we imported for the first time since 1949? The U.S. is also importing less crude oil – the least we’ve imported since 1995.”
So there are three things you can say to your Republican friends who blame Obama for the rising price of gas.