Expect High Gas Prices for Much Longer

Ultimize. Gas prices, they may stay painfully high for a while. I know, try not to celebrate all at once, but pace yourself. Hear me out on this, because sometimes the most honest teacher in America isn't a professor, a journalist, a politician, or a commentator. It's a gas pump quietly judging you. And unlike cable news, the gas pump doesn't yell. It doesn't spin. It doesn't tweet. It just says, that'll be $82 for the privilege of going to work this week. Now, this isn't just my opinion. According to AAA, the national average price for regular gas recently crossed about $4 per gallon, up from roughly $2.90 before the latest— let me politely describe this as geopolitical disruptions. That's not narrative. That's a number. And it's a big number. So, why do I think this is so instructive? To find out about that, stay tuned in just a moment. You know, there's one thing I always find interesting. People will listen to a podcast like this, get ideas, maybe even feel a little motivated, and then just move on with their day. Nothing actually changes. And I get it. Information alone doesn't do it. Repetition does. That's actually why we built Ultimize. So if you're getting any value from this, just go to ultimize.com. That's spelled U-L-T-A-M-I-Z-E dot com. There's a free course waiting for you there. You can start with communication skills. You can start with building better habits. But the whole idea is simple. Don't just hear something once. Actually build it into your life. Again, it's free. Go to ultimize.com. If you've filled up at the gas pump lately, you didn't need AAA to tell you, you felt it in your soul. Now here's where things get historically interesting, because if you look at strongman-style leaders across the globe, the pattern is usually the same. At first, things often look like they're improving. Take Viktor Orbán in Hungary. When he returned to power around 2010, Hungary was coming out of a financial crisis. And for a few years, you could point to real improvement. Unemployment dropped. It had been very high, roughly 11% in 2010, to around 7-8% a few years later. According to Hungarian statistical data and the Eurostat, GDP growth stabilized. Fiscal deficits tightened. Now, you can debate how sustainable or equitable that was, but early on, supporters had something concrete to point to. Same thing with Erdoğan over in Turkey. Early 2000s Turkey, real growth. According to the World Bank, Turkey averaged roughly 6 to 7% GDP growth between 2003 and 2007 when their dictator kind of took over. Inflation, which had been wildly out of control in the 1990s, dropped dramatically into single digits. Foreign investment surged again. Whatever came later, there was an early stretch when you could say, okay, something's working. These strongmen, these dictators, something's working. Now let's go back further. Early 1930s Europe. In Germany after 1933, unemployment fell dramatically from around 6 million people, roughly 30% of the workforce, to closer to 2 million within just a few years based on historical economic data compiled by institutions like the Federal Statistical Office of Germany and academic resources. Industrial production increased, infrastructure projects expanded. On paper, it looked like rapid recovery from the Great Depression. In Italy, under Benito Mussolini, there were early campaigns focused on public works, infrastructure, and attempts at economic stabilization. The battle for grain, land reclamation, large-scale state involvement Mixed results, but again, early supporters could point to visible action and some measurable change. Now let me be crystal clear, this is not praise, this is context, because in many of these cases, early gains were either unsustainable, uneven, or came with massive long-term costs that completely overwhelmed any short-term improvement. But here's the point: at least there was a period when people could say, look, Something improved. Now let's compare that to the United States. When Donald Trump took office in January 2017, the first time, the economy was already in a long expansion. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, unemployment was about 4.7%. Inflation was low. According to the Bureau of Economic Analysis, GDP had been growing steadily for years. This wasn't a rescue mission, this was a polite handoff. And yes, there was continued growth early on, that's true. But here's the stat that almost nobody mentions, and it should be tattooed on every political discussion. By the end of that first term, the United States had about 2.7 million fewer jobs than when it started. That's according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, which makes Trump the first president since Herbert Hoover to leave job with a net job loss. Think about it. Every other modern president through wars, recessions, crises managed to end with more jobs than they started. This one, fewer. And today, okay, higher prices across the board since Trump was first inaugurated. Energy prices higher, groceries higher, insurance, housing pressure. The US Bureau of Labor Statistics Consumer Price Index shows how sharply inflation spiked in recent years compared to the relative stable period in the year before. Yeah, I understand there was higher inflation when Biden was president during COVID but it really wasn't that high the last year. And again, this isn't abstract. This is you standing at the pump wondering why your car suddenly feels like a luxury item when you see the cost of gas today. Which brings us back to why I said this was great news. That gas prices were so high because sometimes the only thing that cuts through the noise is repetition. You can watch hours of cable news and forget it. You can scroll social media and ignore it, but you cannot ignore paying $80, $90, $100 to fill up your car. This is a daily nudge, a weekly reminder, a recurring subscription to reality. And here's the personal development lesson. Hiding in all of this. We all make decisions emotionally. Everybody does. We respond to stories, fears, identities, whatever grabs us in the moment. But growth, real growth comes from feedback. And the most powerful feedback is the kind you can't ignore. So if higher prices force people to ask better questions, if they shift focus from slogans to results, from personalities to performance, then that discomfort actually has value. Nobody likes pain, but pain that teaches you something, that's different. That's the kind that prevents you from making the same mistake twice. And in the end, the goal isn't to win an argument, it's to make better decisions next time. And sometimes the most effective teacher in America isn't a politician, isn't a pundit, isn't even me. It's a gas pump quietly saying, you sure about that last decision? And so let me be clear here. I've been a little vague so far. If you voted for Trump or any politician who aligns themselves with Trump, you have voted for higher gas prices for yourself. Because while it's true Trump was not a crazy man in his first term as far as starting unnecessary wars, I'll grant him that, he was consistent in that he was wildly inconsistent, irrational, hectic, chaotic, and did crazy, irrational, illegal things constantly. So it was only a matter of time until he, until he started bizarre, crazy wars that no one else in the world supported. It was only a matter of time how he wreaked havoc on the international economy. And you might not care about consumers in Australia, their energy cost, or Japan, But when you as an American have to take out that gas nozzle, put it in, and you see going from $10, $20, $30, $100 to fill up your gas, that's when you need to ask yourself, did I make the right decision last time pulling the lever for somebody like this? Because let's not forget, we knew all we needed to know about Trump. Trump has basically destroyed everything he's ever touched, whether it's his casinos, whether it's his airlines, whether it was his professional football league, whether it was Trump University. The only thing Trump ever hasn't really destroyed was the real estate properties his rich daddy gave him. And that worked for Trump. It's a great revenue model if at the age of 5 your daddy can start paying you $200,000 a year, which is what happened to Trump. You can look it up. But it doesn't really help the rest of us, especially since Trump's daddy has been dead for decades. Look at other things Trump has touched, things like the Plaza Hotel. Bought it at a high price, sold it at a low price. That's essentially what he's doing to America right now. So I, for one, am celebrating the fact that we have astronomically high gas prices now, because finally, this is a report card that people who voted for Trump and his minions, the Republicans in Congress, have to look at every single day as they drive to work. They see the gas prices at least once a week when they're filling that gas tank. They get a reminder, hey, you're a sucker. Hey, you're a sucker. Hey, you're a sucker. You did it again and again and again. So this idea that, oh, the biggest thing affecting me in life is if I have a daughter and if she's a great swimmer and if there's a transsexual swimmer in my city and if they both are trying to win races, My mythical fictional daughter might have to compete against this transsexual swimmer. If you think that's the biggest ill in your life, that's the biggest threat, well, I hope you enjoy staring at that gas pump every single day. And maybe if you can't afford the gas, you know, maybe you have to start walking to work. That'll give you more time to reflect on your voting choices in the past and give you some time to think about who— how to vote this fall. And if you don't want to vote for a Democrat, fine, vote for a Green Party candidate, vote for a Libertarian. But if you don't send a clear message to Washington that Trump is the biggest unmitigated disaster in the history of this nation, you deserve even higher gas prices. Here's something I've learned after years of doing this: the people who actually improve don't necessarily hear better advice, they just stay around it longer. They keep exposing themselves to the same useful ideas until it finally clicks. Most people don't do that. So if you want to be in the small group that actually follows through, go to ultimize.com, that's ultimize.com, and get the free course. There's one on communication, one on building better habits, nothing fancy, just something you can keep coming back to. If you're already there, you're doing the hard part. Just go to ultimize.com and build on it. Ultimize.