"In the 19th century, Karl Marx contradicted the artifice of Adam Smith's "naturalisation of the market's behaviour" as a politico-ideologic apology — by and for the capitalists — which allowed human economic choices and decisions to be misrepresented as fixed "facts of life", rather than as the human actions that resulted from the will of the producers, the buyers, and the sellers of the commodities traded at market."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodity_fetishism
The AAA notes that the average price for a gallon of regular gas nationwide has rise from $3.30 a month ago, to $3.52 today. That’s four cents more than it was last year, a record high price for the start of February, CNBC notes.
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That means that U.S. households are paying the highest percentage of income for gas in almost 30 years. This comes even as gasoline consumption has fallen.
http://investorplace.com/2013/02/consumers-paying-record-gas-prices-for-february/