Just wanted to make a comment on one thing: Food.
Though I can't name one food item that has seen a drastic price increase based on the rising gas prices, I would say that when it comes to any shipped items that are sold to the consumer in smaller amounts than how they are shipped, the increase in price can be so small as to seem almost negligible. We could be talking about a penny more for a pound of apples or a box of Oreos, multiplied by the tremendous amounts of food that can be held in those trucks, that makes up for the extra money spent on transportation. You could make the same potential argument for, say, the transport of CDs/DVDs, or video games, or clothes, or small kitchen appliances, to their respective stores. If a store like Target only wants to pass on the extra cost of transportation to its customers, and it costs an extra 100 dollars in gas to transport a truck filled with 300 microwave ovens to a store, then they'd only have to raise the price of each microwave oven 34 cents, and they'd still come out a little like a profiteer with that extra 2/3 of a penny extra profit per microwave sold. As a consumer, you might not even notice an increase like that, though the more financial dire of the population, who feel every little increase, would. But again, for most items, the increase would be so small, it could even be explained away as less than the normal cost of inflation.
Welcome back! :lookaroun
