The 2005 edition of Driven to Spend, just released by STPP and CNT, finds that households spent 52% of their 2003 income on housing and transportation, a figure that’s undoubtedly higher today thanks to a run-up in both. Indeed, both have been rising substantially; despite higher incomes overall, housing and transport expenditures have both doubled as a share of household expenses over the past 40 years — e.g., they’ve grown twice as fast as incomes! American auto dependence has gotten to the point where 11% of the world’s crude oil goes into American gas tanks.

More importantly, cities with extensive public transit already save their residents billions of dollars in personal expenditures each year — a figure that will grow as higher gas prices further raise the cost of driving. “[R]egions with transit are losing less per household from the increase in gas prices… [I]nvestments by… government in more efficient transportation systems, effectively lower[s]… transportation expenditures and convert[s] transportation dollars that would otherwise leave the region in the form of higher payments for gasoline to dollars that help pay for local transportation services plus other household expenses.”

A one-cent increase in gas prices mean that the Big Oil companies and despots who control most of the world’s oil (nearly 2/3 of American oil is imported) get to suck an additional $1.4 billion out of the pockets of American consumers — money that could otherwise be invested or spent in America, for Americans. The toll is especially high for regions that have no local oil industry and therefore see little economic gain from Big Oil: higher gas prices in 2004 took nearly $800 million from metro Chicago and nearly $500 million from both metro Detroit and metro Washington. Interestingly, the New York metro lost $20 million less to Big Oil than Chicago, even though New York has 17% more households — principally because New Yorkers use transit more and drive less. The state of Florida lost $2.3 billion to Big Oil, again more than more-populous New York state due to the former’s auto dependence.

Just think what our metropolitan economies could do with billions of extra dollars. Or, imagine if someone (ahem) had raised gas TAXES earlier, thereby making sure that those billions go back to us Americans instead of building submarine sandcastles in the Persian Gulf for oil sheiks to play in.