what they are learning.
So, with my usual political bent here is an interesting look at annual gas price statistics adjusted for inflation.
One interesting thing that I noticed, and one I hope affects the way we all vote is that many of the increases or spikes seem to coincide when we had Democrats in the office of the president or in control of the senate and the house and generally the lowest rates were when Republicans were in office or in notable control of the Congress.
You could have your children correlate this better than my off the cuff observations but I notice the first spike in the charts above takes place when the progressive (read: liberal, democrat) Woodrow Wilson takes office in 1919. There it is up there on the right side of the graph. Up and down it goes depending on the party in control. According to this graph and others, the steepest incline happened in '79 with Jimmy Carter and the drastic decline happened when Reagan took office in 1980. Reagan's vast tax cuts and conservative leadership were a healing balm to our nation.
Gas prices pretty much rise and fall based on who carried the majority in both Executive and Legislative branches with very few exceptions: gas prices went up for Democrats, down for Republicans. It's not that the president or congress had actual control over those prices. These prices are dependant upon the balance of their decisions and what is happening because of the people we vote into office. They depend on what we pay for the foreign oil, the taxes put in place, or kept in place, the wars they engaged in, foreign relations, domestic policies, and articificial manipulation of prices through speculations. All of these are contributing factors to whether or not the prices will generally go up or down. It's not a game of pure chance. So teach your children to vote RIGHT.
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