>This really sucks. It really noticeably eats into your
>(my) disposeable income.
The Consumer Expenditure Survey data is a little out of date, but if you do some estimates based on gas prices, it looks like people in the bottom quintile, with about $9,500 in after-tax income, are spending 10% of it on gas and oil. At the middle (appx $41,000), it's around 5%; and the top 20% (a-t inc appx $135,000), less than 3%. For the bottom three quintiles, that's an upward shift of about 1.5-2.0 percentage points - $4-10/week.
If I wanted to minimize this, though, I"d point out that these numbers are about in line with what people spend on "entertainment."
Doug