That was 42 years ago.
Seven or eight years ago gas was around $2, 2.25 a gallon. Now it's TWICE AS MUCH (while everything still costs close to the same, nothing near doubling in price, like gas). Gas prices are soaring for geo-political and environmental reasons manufactured for political expediency.
Other prices have remained relatively stable. Gas has leaped, and always predictably. Increase supply, and the price will go down and the econony will prosper.
The only problem is that demand is growing at an increasingly rapid clip because 2 billion Chinese and Indians figured out... “Hey!! We can have cars too!!”, and all the easy-to-get oil has been found. This isn’t like growing corn where you just plow another field.
Also, oil is just increasingly expensive to get out of the ground. Thats going to have a significant impact on how much its worth. There are many reasons why we’re not going back to the old days. An overly intrusive government certainly plays a role, but thats not all of the story.