You may actually want to try looking at the data about what % of income people spend on their "energy" rather then just emoting. Conservative think, we do response to vapid emoting. Your statements on this thread are pure hysteric emotionalism that do not have any base in fact.
If you burn 20 gallons of gas a week, which is a considerable amount of gas for the average person and the price goes up to $5.00 the change in cost to you each week is 20 x$2.50 = $50.00 a week or $200 a month. Since the price rise lasts about 4 months out of the year, that is an annual increase in cost of about $800.00
That is NOT going to require the average family to significantly change their lifestyle. Maybe they will eat more home cooked meals rather then going out or buy more generic rather then name brand products or cut back on some of their leisure time activity but it is NOT going to cause an Economic Depression.
So far I’m not seeing it. I was just at the fair this weekend, over and above being an entirely discretionary spending event the Pima fair is WAY out of town, minimum 30 mile round trip for the vast majority of people. Even people who live in the Southeast “boonies” of Tucson that are conceptually “near” the fair have a good 5 miles to get there. And yet the place was packed and the money was flowing. Still got the huge pile of Mexican license plates at the malls every weekend too. Gas prices don’t seem to be slowing down everything, everybody complains but nobody is actually changing their habits.