Gas was $3.87 at Wal Mart two days ago. It's going back down. Check oil companies profits next quarter. Greed!!!

It is not a completely FAIR comparison between the prices of a gallon of gasoline from today to a time of 50 years ago. There are at least 2 factors that have changed. One factor is the time value of money - which takes into consideration interest rate and inflation. Let's say that one gal of gas cost 40 cents in 1970 and now it costs about 3 dollars. There are tables that allow you to convert the value of money from past years to today. I have not done that but I would imagine that just based on the change in the value of money (the US dollar) if based only on that one factor - then 1 gal of gas would today be about $3.25 or $ 3.50 here in Florida.
.........the other factor that would explain the (say) 75 cent difference would be the increased global tension in the world due to a possibly (?) widening war in Europe. Which could affect an increase in projected future global oil prices. AKA oil futures. I would note that Saudi Arabia seems to always be in the "driver's seat".

I disagree with the contents of this post...........because oil prices and amount of inflation and interest rates are NOT controlled by 1 person, 1 government, or even one country. World-wide oil price is controlled by supply and demand. There are probably (guessing) about 100 countries that have oil in the ground. That's the supply part. On the demand side, in general, the 1st world countries would use the most. Countries with a large GNP and a large population would be the bigger oil users and create the most demand. As a thought experiment, imagine where the price of gas would be if the population of China was ZERO people - world demand would drop significantly and oil prices would drop.
.........Wars in the world can threaten supply and thus drive oil prices up.
.........So, what some might call "funny money" is really worldwide inflation caused by many worldwide factors - some like war can be controlled by no one and can accidentally spiral out of control. Luck sometimes controls the fate of the world.