Have gasoline prices risen or fallen?
I guess my answer will be scolded. Let's not talk about the conclusion, let's talk about the data, look at the trend of China's gasoline prices in the past decade, and then convert it into the purchasing power of the Chinese people, and then analyze whether the price of gasoline is up or down.
1. China's gasoline wholesale price trend chart from 2012 to 2021, the unit is yuan / ton. These are prices at the end of each year.
Converted to our common unit, yuan / liter, the trend is like this. It can be seen that the price of gasoline has not been rising, but has risen and fallen, maintaining a relatively stable range.
2. Trend chart of disposable income of Chinese residents from 2012 to 2021. As you can see, our income has been rising.
3, and then calculate the ratio of residents' income to gasoline prices, that is, how many liters of gasoline can be purchased by the disposable income of the people, the trend chart is as follows:
It can be seen that the overall trend of the amount of gasoline that our disposable income can buy is rising, and the increase is not small. For example, in 2012, our income could only buy more than two thousand liters of gasoline, and now, we can buy nearly five thousand liters of gasoline. Do you say the price of gasoline has risen or fallen?
Just like twenty years ago we needed ten years of income to buy a car, and now we can buy a car with a year's income, although the price of the car has not changed much or increased slightly, but our income has grown faster, the purchasing power has risen, so the price of the car is generally down.
The reason why we feel that gasoline prices have been rising is mainly because gasoline prices in 2020 are too low. At that time, due to the impact of the epidemic, the international crude oil price was at a historic low, and we also enjoyed the "floor price". Since last year, the international economic situation has improved, the international crude oil price has risen, and the domestic gasoline price has also risen, and it has been rising, so our feeling is that gasoline always rises in price. But compared to the previous decade, or as measured by purchasing power, the price of gasoline is actually falling.