Why Are Americans So Obsessed With Gas Prices?

Added: 2026-05-23

[00:00:00]I am currently standing in front of a gas station located in the United States of America. And right now, gas is $6.49 a gallon with a car wash. But this number, this price has gone up since last week. Meaning gas has gotten more expensive, which means anytime I need to crank that engine and get those four wheels moving, it's going to cost me more money. And although I live in a thriving, bustling city, if I want to get anywhere, I got to use my car. My city wasn't planned or built for people to walk around in. It was planned for this. Which means I'm paying more money every day just to leave my home. The price of admission to experience the world outside my apartment just got higher by a lot in a very short amount of time, which doesn't make me feel very good. And what's even more frustrating is the reason it went up. The straight of Hormuz, a 24 mile strip of ocean that accounts for about 20 to 25% of global seaborn oil consumption. This closure has resulted in the price of a barrel of oil going up, which now means that this number gets a little bit higher every single day that this stays closed. And as someone living in the heart of empire, this is the most tangible consequence I feel from a war that has already killed thousands, accomplishes absolutely nothing, and was funded by my tax dollars. All I know now is my day-to-day life just got slightly more expensive while the giant fossil fuel companies report record profits. Nice.

[00:01:26]But wait, hold up. Let's zoom out for a second. I need to add some perspective to this and talk about the whole reason I wanted to make this video in the first place. If we look at the price of gasoline in the US over the past 45 years, adjusted for inflation, the price has gone up, but it's also gone down. It actually fluctuates all the time for various reasons. It was high in 1981 and then low in ' 86. High in 2008, then low in '09. Really high in 2022 and then it went back down in 2023. Sometimes the average is over $5, sometimes it's around $2. But it's not like we can see a greater trend of the price of gas. It hasn't been steadily increasing over time. If we look at this line adjusted for inflation again, it's actually kind of stayed the same the whole time. Okay, so let's take the same amount of time about 45 to 50 years give or take, but replace gas prices with home prices or the cost of rent or education or healthcare. We can now actually see a clear trend. The cost of all of these essential things in America have drastically increased. Unlike gas, it's never really gone down besides 2008 for the housing market. Everything else has gone up, even housing passing the peak before 2008. So, it doesn't really seem like a gallon of gas costing a few extra bucks is the reason that you'll never be able to buy a home or send your kid to college or pay off that credit card debt. It's arguably everything else. So, why are Americans so obsessed with gas prices? Well, today I want to get to the root of this obsession, discuss how gas prices have determined the outcome of presidential elections, but also uncover how this whole problem traces back to the weird coincidence of the car being invented in literally the worst year possible. But on top of all of this, I want to dig deeper into the psychology behind this US phenomenon and look at the strange lovehate relationship we have with carbs and how this perceived symbol of freedom slowly transformed into a shackle around the ankle of consumers. Because when oil prices rise, it's not just refined petroleum at a gas station that gets more expensive. It affects everything. Food, shipping, manufacturing, travel, and most importantly, inflation. Yet still, we only seem to really talk about this number. We've built a global system that can't properly function unless this black liquid keeps flowing steadily around the world in a near seamless manner. But maybe this current crisis can help awaken the American population and provide a chance to finally break free from our dependence on oil and from our obsession with this glowing digital number on a sign. But first, I think that things are going to have to break.

[00:03:53]And it seems like they're starting to.

[00:03:58]But before we get into things, I want to take a quick moment to talk about my sleep. This video is sponsored by Brooklyn Bedding. And honestly, after a long day of learning about the fossil fuel industry, I've been sleeping like a baby covered in oil. I've had my Brooklyn Bedding mattress for a little over a month now, and the difference has been pretty noticeable. I've been falling asleep a lot faster. I genuinely look forward to getting into bed at night, and I have always been a really hot sleeper, and this is the first time where I haven't been overheating at like 2:00 a.m. every single night. This is the first mattress I've had that actually has kept me cool. And that is because the Aurora Lux cooling mattress has copper infused memory foam that actually keeps you comfortable and cool all night long. It actually contours to your body for pressure relief. And the quality rivals brands charging two or three times the price. Brooklyn Betting mattresses are designed, assembled, and shipped from their Arizona factory. So, you're getting premium materials for no pointless middleman markup. Plus, it comes rolled up in a box, sets up in minutes, ships free to your door, and comes with a 120 night sleep trial, and a limited lifetime warranty. Plus, my cat Lasso loves it. So, you know, that's got to mean something. Use my link in the description, brooklyn betting.com/binaminute, and get 30% off your order with code binaminut. And if you grab one, let them know that I sent you in their post-purchase survey. It really helps the channel out, so I appreciate that.

[00:05:17]All right, back to it. Okay, so let's think about this for a second. What is it about gas prices that triggers Americans like nothing else? People pull over to photograph the signs. They make stickers. You fill up the bed of your truck to make sure you got a good deal while it was cheap. Nothing gets Americans going more like the fluctuation of the price of gas. And I want to be clear, I'm not saying gas prices don't matter. And as you'll see throughout this video, I think they absolutely do. If you're filling up a standard tank once a week, a dollar per gallon increase cost you somewhere between 30 and 50 bucks a month. That really sucks. And this number is probably going to get a lot higher because of this guy and also this guy and this guy. But it's not the reason you can't pay off your student loans.

[00:05:59]It's not the reason that housing is unaffordable. Those culprits are a lot bigger, a lot more slowm moving, and somehow a lot less rageinducing to the average American. Well, to understand why Americans are wired this way, why we feel gas in our bones in a way we just don't feel with housing or health care or a dozen other things slowly bleeding us dry, we have to go back back to the first time America came face to face with what happens when gas actually runs out.

[00:06:29]1973, the United States is deep in the middle of the Yam Kapoor war, or more specifically, deep in the middle of supporting Israel during it. Hey, that kind of sounds familiar. And the Arab members of OPEC, the cartel that controls a huge chunk of the world's oil supply, decided they had had enough.

[00:06:45]They announced an embargo. No oil for the United States. No oil for anyone who backed Israel. And then America just breaks. Crude went from $2 a barrel to $11 almost overnight. In today's money, that's the equivalent of going from $14 a barrel to $80. Gas prices at the pump jumped 40% in November 1973 alone. Lines at gas stations stretched for miles.

[00:07:09]Guys were beating each other up. People were sitting in their cars for hours just to fill up their tank. Some stations even started rationing.

[00:07:16]Oddnumbered license plates could fill up on oddnumbered days, even ones on even days. The government imposed a national speed limit of 55 mph to conserve fuel.

[00:07:27]Richard Nixon, who was president at the time, went on TV and asked Americans to not put up Christmas lights this year, just to conserve energy. Talk about the real war on Christmas. Nation stole Christmas. This was a full-blown national crisis. And for the first time, it revealed something really uncomfortable. The most powerful country in the world had built itself so completely around cheap, abundant oil that at the moment that oil got expensive or scarce, the whole thing just kind of stopped working. And can you guess who Americans blamed all of this on? That's right, the president of the United States, Richard Nixon. Oh, wait. That's not right. Oh, it seems as though I have just provided false information. Yeah, that's actually not true. So, Nixon was actually able to frame the crisis as sort of a national challenge that we could all work through together by conserving energy and gas usage.

[00:08:19]>> How does the prospect of not being able to buy gasoline on Sunday affect you?

[00:08:23]>> Well, I just fill up my tanks Saturday night and I can ride all day Sunday.

[00:08:27]>> And most of the blame from Americans actually fell on the foreign enemy, that being OPEC and the Middle Eastern leaders fighting against Israel. And because this was the first of its kind, there wasn't really the precedent set for blaming the president for the cost of gas. The price quadrupling seemed like an external uncontrollable shock rather than a direct failure of presidential policy. But all of that changed in 1979.

[00:08:55]A year earlier in 1978, Iranian oil refinery workers went on strike to protest the US's support for the Shaw.

[00:09:02]When the strike hit, Iranian oil production cratered. In January 1979, the Sha fled the country and Ayatollah >> Kmeni >> stepped into power. This is referred to as the Iranian revolution and the subsequent oil crisis of 1979.

[00:09:15]>> Expected to drive the price of unled up to a national average of 77 cents per gallon.

[00:09:21]>> Again, we have our second massive oil crisis within the same decade. More lines at the pump, more conserving energy, and more national panic. But this time, there was a president standing right in the blast radius of all of this. Jimmy Carter.

[00:09:35]>> Isn't this disgusting? Why doesn't anybody contact the president? Why is he letting this happen to us?

[00:09:40]>> Now, look, Carter actually tried to do something about this. He put up solar panels on the White House. He wore a cardigan on television and told Americans we needed to change how we lived. He gave a speech where he said the energy crisis was the moral equivalent of war and that America needed to reckon with its dependence on foreign oil. We simply must balance our demand for energy with our rapidly shrinking resources. This difficult effort will be the moral equivalent of war. Well, the country hated it. To the average American voter at the time, Carter's response to the crisis seemed somewhat pessimistic. Carter warned that Americans would keep buying bigger, less efficient cars, that 3/4 of those cars would just have one person in them, that being the driver, that public transit would keep deteriorating while nobody did anything about it. He predicted that by 1985, energy consumption would jump by a third and that the country would be spending $550 billion a year on imported oil. Well, Jimmy wasn't wrong about any of it.

[00:10:38]>> Too many of us now tend to worship self-indulgence and consumption.

[00:10:46]Human identity is no longer defined by what one does, but by what one owns. We've learned that piling up material goods.

[00:11:01]Cannot fill the emptiness of lives which have no confidence or purpose. For the first time in the history of our country, a majority of our people believe that the next five years will be worse than the past five years.

[00:11:17]But at the time, Americans wanted cheap gas, baby. And when Ronald Reagan came along, promising the opposite of all that sad hippie BS, America chose the guy that told them what they wanted to hear. Reagan even had the solar panels on the roof of the White House removed because it was gay or something.

[00:11:34]Democrats didn't win the White House again until Bill Clinton in 1992, 12 years later. And man, this is just so frustrating to me. Carter wasn't wrong about any of it. Everything he said about oil dependence turned out to be correct. And the country punished him for it and elected someone who actively dismantled the policies that might have gotten us ahead of the problem. The problem that we're still dealing with right now, which brings me to the question that I keep coming back to. If the 1973 embargo was so catastrophic, if 1979 was so catastrophic, if the entire country ground to a halt and people were literally fighting each other at gas stations, why didn't we plan? Why didn't we build the kind of public transit, fuel diversity, or energy infrastructure that would make sure that this would not happen again? Why did we just wait for the next time? Well, that answer requires us to go back even further.

[00:12:23]See, it's not just about taking on the fossil fuel lobbyists and the special interest groups that drive our reliance on oil. there is a larger greater villain that has to be fought as well.

[00:12:36]So, here's the thing. After 1973, after 1979, one reason America couldn't just collectively shrug and say, "Okay, well, I'm done driving. This is simply unaffordable. I'm going to find a different way to get to work." Is because for most of the country, there is no alternative. There is no train.

[00:12:53]There is no trolley. There's barely a bus. And this is still a major hurdle for the country today. and one that definitely plays into our obsession with gas prices. There's a highway, a Walmart, and a parking lot, and that's the majority of this giant land mass we call the United States of America. But to understand how we got to this, we have to understand how the country was physically put together, how it was built. Cities that were built and developed in the 1800s and early 1900s, like New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Chicago, New Orleans, were designed for people on foot. compact blocks, mixed neighborhoods, everything really close together. But cities that exploded in the mid to late 20th century, like Atlanta, Dallas, Houston, Phoenix, Orlando, they were designed around the car from day one. Wide roads, massive parking lots, residential neighborhoods miles away from anything that you actually want to go to. Everything was now spread out. Everything and everybody separated. It was all designed under the assumption that everyone would always have a car and that gas would always be cheap. And once you build a city that way, you're kind of locked in for good.

[00:13:55]You can't just add a subway to Phoenix or Houston. The population density just isn't concentrated enough. I used to live in Atlanta in the city. And this was a huge problem with the MARTA system is that if you even want to get to it, you kind of have to drive anyway just to park and get on the train. It makes no sense. It's not useful. It's not even that helpful. But it wasn't just geography and bad timing. There were also powerful forces who wanted it this way. The fossil fuel industry spent decades lobbying against public transit investment. Car manufacturers had every financial incentive to make sure the car remained the only viable option, and they were very, very good at protecting that interest. From 1938 to 1950, General Motors and a consortium of oil and tire companies started buying up street car systems across the country.

[00:14:39]Over 100 electric transit systems in 45 cities, including cities like Los Angeles, Detroit, and Baltimore. And then they started converting them into buses and then eventually just shutting them down altogether. But don't worry, they were convicted of antitrust violations.

[00:14:55]And then they were fined $5,000. Yes, $5,000 for dismantling public transit in dozens of American cities, which is the equivalent of about $62,000 adjusted for inflation. Way to get them, guys. Good job. But then there's the cultural piece of the car, which is probably the most powerful piece of it all. The car was sold to Americans as freedom. And honestly, it kind of worked. You don't have to check a train schedule. You don't have to sit next to anybody who is stinky. You don't have to go where the route goes. You can go wherever you want. There was obviously something genuinely appealing about that.

[00:15:28]>> It's a whole new way of life. Now I'm free to go anywhere, do anything, see anybody anytime I want to. It's only good common sense.

[00:15:38]>> People just stopped riding trains and street cars when the car grew in popularity. I want to be clear, it wasn't just automotive industry conspiracies and poor city planning.

[00:15:45]Americans love their cars. I mean, how could you compete with the feeling of the open road, windows down, listening to some tunes, just you and the highway, and wherever you felt like going? That image is all over American music, American film, American mythology. I mean, hell, what's more American than a road trip, brother? But here's what isn't as appealing. According to AAA's most recent annual survey, the average American spends $11,577 a year just to own and operate a vehicle. That breaks down to about $965 a month before you've even bought a single gallon of gas, before a flat tire, before anything goes wrong with it. You're paying $1,000 a month just to have this thing. And a separate survey found that the average American spends about 20% of their monthly income on their car. Financial experts say you shouldn't spend more than 10%. So, we're running at double the recommended rate every month on a thing that supposedly represents American freedom. That freedom costs you a car payment and insurance and registration and maintenance and parking and of course gas. And when you add all of that up, the average American spends somewhere around 10 to 12,000 a year just to leave their home. That's not freedom. That's a subscription you can never cancel because there is no alternative to get to where you need to go. And this is the part that really gets me. We have completely normalized a reality where if you step back and look at it, it's genuinely bizarre. In most of America, if you see someone walking down the side of a road, not on a sidewalk, because usually there isn't one, your first instinct isn't, "Oh, they must be going for a nice walk." It's usually, "What happened to their car?" Like something has to be wrong for you to not be driving. A human choosing to move through space on their own two feet has become a sign of distress. So when gas prices go up, there is nowhere to go. No alternative, no fall back. You pay what the price is or you don't get to work.

[00:17:37]You don't get your kids from school. You don't get groceries. The car is not a choice. It's the only option. So it makes sense why a few extra cents at the gallon just kind of hits different. The thing you're already paying almost $1,000 a month for just got a little more expensive. And you're reminded that every day while you're driving that thing to a job where you spend 20% of the money that you make at that job just to pay for that thing that gets you to the job. And you have to have the job or you can't pay for the thing that gets you to the job. What the What have they DONE TO US?

[00:18:08]>> WHAT DID THEY DO TO US?

[00:18:10]>> I WANT YOU TO IMAGINE SOMETHING. You're driving to work and on the side of the road outside your apartment building there's a giant illuminated sign. And on that sign in big glowing numbers is your rent updated daily. And some days it's the same. And some days it's a little higher. And some days you're just stuck at a red light just staring at it.

[00:18:32]Knowing that number is coming for you whether you're ready or not. You'd probably lose your mind, right? That would be genuinely psychologically destabilizing. That's gas stations.

[00:18:43]That's just what gas stations are. You absorb the price of gas almost passively, the way you absorb the weather. Economists actually have a word for this. Salience. How much you consciously notice something. And gas prices are maybe the most salient price in the entire US economy. And here's the wild part. This is just how we advertise what is functionally a utility. Gas is not a luxury. It's not a little treat that we get. For most Americans, it's as essential as running water. But I want to zoom out for a second because as an average American, I've been looking at all of this way too narrowly. So, right now, gas is high. But what does that actually mean? What are the downstream effects that don't involve filling up my car? Because it's not really about the gas. It's about everything else. Gas prices aren't just a reflection of inflation. They kind of are inflation.

[00:19:30]Hear me out. When gas spikes, it doesn't just cost you more to fill up. It's one of the few prices where a sudden jump can cause a genuine immediate shock to the cost of living. The moment oil spikes, a shock wave moves through the entire economy. And by the time it reaches you, it's not just at the gas station. It's in your grocery bill, your Amazon delivery. The price of every physical object that had to be made somewhere and transported somewhere else to get to you. Gas prices are not just a gas problem. They're a preview of what is to come. They're the first domino to fall. So, the anger isn't completely irrational, but it is weirdly selective.

[00:20:07]and watching the news every day, seeing the oil prices surge, and my president talking about how he doesn't think about the financial impact on the American people.

[00:20:16]>> I don't think about Americans financial situation. I don't think about anybody.

[00:20:21]>> I can't help but think about how things could have just been so different. But the past is the past and we can only focus on what is right now. So, what would it actually look like to try to separate ourselves from a reliance on this black goo that's found in the ground? Look, you shouldn't feel guilty about driving, going on a plane, or using single-use plastics. Consumers are not the reason that there are oil spills, or why there's a giant floating island of trash in the Pacific Ocean, or why the US invades every single country that doesn't let us control their oil.

[00:20:51]You don't have a choice. You cannot live in this world without using oil. But the fact that this has become a partisan issue, a left versus right conversation, is probably one of the biggest political cons of the last 50 years. Think about what the other side of this argument really is. The argument against investing in renewable energy is basically this. I think we should keep depending on a finite resource concentrated in geopolitically unstable parts of the world, mostly due to USD stabilization and have it managed by a global cartel we have no control over, whose price fluctuations can tank consumer confidence, spike inflation, and only benefit the CEOs and investors of fossil fuel companies who are ensuring global climate catastrophe and the end of the world.

[00:21:32]So, what if we like didn't do that?

[00:21:34]Well, here's the alternative to that argument. Solar PV costs have dropped 90% since 2010. Also, onshore wind is down nearly 70%. In 2024, 91% of new renewable power projects were cheaper than the cheapest new fossil fuel alternative. Solar is now 41% cheaper than the lowest cost fossil fuel option and wind is 35% cheaper and battery storage costs have fallen 93% since 2010. These are not projections. This is what already happened. A country that is powered by domestic renewable energy is one where it doesn't matter if the straight of Hormuz is open or closed.

[00:22:14]The technology and the taxpaying money to fund all of this already exists. The US government subsidizes the fossil fuel industry to a tune of $35 billion a year. So why not just subsidize a new industry? Let's call it the only option for a future that doesn't result in mass death industry. And yeah, it would require rethinking infrastructure and transit and urban planning in ways that are genuinely hard and genuinely expensive. But you know what else was massively expensive? the interstate highway system, the transcontinental railroad, FDR's publicly funded dams to combat the Great Depression that generated jobs, electricity, and flood control. Every single infrastructure bet that this country has ever made that we now take for granted. America has done this before. I can't think of anything that's more patriotic, more pro America than ensuring that this is our future.

[00:23:02]I'm tired of hearing about the goddamn gas prices. So, I think the reason that Americans are so obsessed with gas prices is whether they're actively thinking about it or not, somewhere deep down, they hate this dependence they never chose. Whether they know the history or understand the global forces that got us here doesn't really matter.

[00:23:20]The anger finds its way out anyway. It's a constant reminder of the daily grind.

[00:23:26]A daily reminder that you'll never get ahead. A daily reminder that you'd be a millionaire if those gas prices weren't so damn high. a daily reminder that you have to pay for gas while those at the top have never even thought about that sign. Gas prices are the American struggle. We are gas prices.

[00:23:48]Thank you guys so much for watching.

[00:23:49]Make sure to subscribe to the channel, join my Patreon, and comment down below your favorite oil company. Mine is probably a tie with Shell or BP. Uh I really like the whole oil spill thing that BP did a few years back. I thought that was cool. That was based.