>Can you translate that into price per gallon of gasoline. (Just so I
>can gauge how many fill ups your $500 will buy.)
Peak was $2.80 in 2004 dollars, in 1981. But the relation between crude and gasoline prices isn't constant; peak oil price was $81.40 in 2004 dollars in 1980.
> And does the US CPI include energy costs? If so, it seems that
>would be a closed loop in your equation.
Energy accounts for 7% of the CPI. A better measure might be the number of hours it takes the average U.S. worker to earn the equivalent of a barrel of crude (since you avoid all the complications of price indexes); it was 5.25 at the 1980 peak, vs. 2.56 in May 2004.
Doug