@pkrugman There is something to this, but over simplistic. For many years there was no other useable electric car on the market and the Tesla 3 is still the arguably the best value. Plenty of people who bought Teslas didn't care about the status at all, they were just willing to spend a bit more to cut their personal carbon footprint. The fact that most Americans refuse to accept this is sort of a corollary defense mechanism to how cheaters refuse to accept that others don't cheat.

For the record I hate Musk and approach free speech absolutism sometimes, but posting or sharing someone's realtime location without their consent is not at all OK and should be banned by an self-respecting mastodon server.

@pkrugman Don't we have a ways to go before worker compensation catches up to record profits? The question is how confident are we that continued wage pressure will keep driving up prices if consumers start to balk at them?

@BenRossTransit @pkrugman
Yeah but note also that 1980-2004 is a period of decreasing gas prices adjusted for inflation AND increasing fuel efficiencies. Those two factors kinda cancel out the increased mileage. Which sort of makes sense. If the cost to drive a mile is slowly decreasing in real terms over a 20 year period, people will tend to move farther from work, etc.

@pkrugman Here are two versions of that plot that include federal estimates of rural vs urban driving patterns (more rural miles driven) and average fuel efficiency for sedans vs trucks since 1980 (EPA data). The cost burden for rural pickup drivers is about twice urban sedan owners. Both groups likely saw the highest monthly sticker price for gas they have ever seen this summer, but adjusting for wages they experienced a longer, more expensive periods either side of the great recession.

@pkrugman It would be interesting to see this broken down for Dems, Reps, and Ints. A lot of liberals like me pay a premium to live close enough to work to not have to drive, and when we do drive, we drive hybirds or electrics now. So we have another bifurcation of American life there.

@rbreich Is getting big money out of politics a prerequisite for breaking up monopolies? Or is breaking up monopolies a prerequisite for getting big money out of politics?