I apologize if this question has already been asked and answered before.
Is the nearly $3.00 per gallon that Americans are currently paying for gasoline still cheaper, when adjusted for inflation, than what people in Japan and other countries were paying thirty years ago? I can find no sites, but I can vaguely recall being shocked as a teen that, in parts of the world, people were paying the equivalent of $2.00 per gallon in the 1970s. Is my memory faulty?
Thirty years ago, the price of gasoline was more expensive in the U.S. than it is now and I’m sure it was even more expensive in other countries. I recall gas prices going over $1 a gallon in 1974-5 during that oil crisis. Pumps at that time couldn’t even be set to charge more than $1 and that’s when electronic pumps first started to show up. Before that the prices were set mechanically. According to the CPI calculator
http://woodrow.mpls.frb.fed.us/research/data/us/calc/
$3 today is equivalent to 80 cents in 1975
The period from about 1986 to 2003 had the lowest inflation adjusted prices in the 20th century. The highest price ever for the U.S. in real terms was in 1980-81.
Gas prices in other countries are skewed because taxes are so high in them. A recent article (can’t remember where exactly) pointed out that taxes alone are higher than the equivalent of $3.00 per gallon in most western nations. It’s quite likely that some countries were paying the equivalent of $2.00 per gallon total in the 1970s.