And what is “average”? The “average person” might be a reference to the *median* rather than the mean. Just like income, where the mean is much higher than the median, the average consumption can be biased by the extremes. For every person in NYC who does not drive, there is someone (like my wife’s coworker) burning 5 gallons a day commuting in a huge SUV … and don’t forget the taxis.

I have not checked the reliability of the data, but stats at statemaster.com show California has the lowest gasoline consumption per capita (1/10 of the national average). Bizarre. Most of the big electoral states were below the mean, by the way, so McCain helps Wyoming (at the top) and hurts Ohio (next to last) by transferring debt needed to cover the rebate from one to the other.

IMO, a “gas” tax cut is pandering because it is a small change that is highly visible yet easily stolen by Big Oil. A “diesel” cut would have a bigger impact, but the change in food prices might be stolen to increased margins in grocery stores and would be invisible to the typical consumer. (I consider it highly likely that I consume more diesel, indirectly, than gasoline.)

Finally, gasoline consumption is said to be inelastic to price increases, but I think that is only because we only did the experiment twice (in 1980 and today). Consumption is going down in the face of a *real* increase in price. The effect of inflation masks what is really going on.

http://oregonstate.edu/cla/polisci/faculty-research/sahr/gasoline_prices.pdf

The price of gas (in real dollars) reached its ALL TIME LOW in 1998 (the equivalent of 27 cents per gallon in 1970 dollars), and has only recently exceeded the $3.00 per gallon equivalent of the price in 1981. We drove gas guzzling muscle cars back in the 60s, so why not an SUV in 1998?

Do you think that the oil companies will just raise prices once that would go into effect? I guess I appreciate the effort, but I truly believe that this is just rhetoric. Something to ease our minds.