This is what happens when I buy a car:

Here's a chart of gas prices over the last few years. They plummeted when the economy melted down but quickly recovered to a bit less than 3 dollars a gallon, which is where they stayed until last fall.


Here's the same chart with a red line to show when I bought my car:


The first tank of gas that I bought for the car was about $3.10/gallon. Two months later, the cheapest gas near my apartment in California is $4.30/gallon. I would like to personally apologize to each and every American for the dramatic increase in gas prices since I bought my car. I'm pretty sure that if I hadn't purchased it, gas would still be right around 3 dollars a gallon.