The high price of gas is causing American consumers to rethink the family budget. Consumers have already begun to put fewer miles on their cars. In 2007 so far, according to a study by Leo J. Shapiro & Associates, 57% of households reported cutting back on driving to save gasoline. This percentage was 58% in 2006, 55% in 2005, and 44% in 2004. Shapiro’s research shows that households are planning to cut their driving by 27% this year. Reporting for their newest car, they expect to drive 11,000 miles this year, compared to 15,000 miles driven in ’06. Dropping 4,000 miles from their odometer this year is worth about $600, given current gas prices. This is a significant amount of “extra cash” for many households. According to the Shapiro study, households are now using the money they save on gas to spend more generously for food and for apparel. The high price of gas is, in effect, loosening up dollars for other kinds of spending. Contrary to some retailers’ complaints, high gas prices are now causing consumers to spend more at retail.

The size of market for residential housing is now fluctuating so rapidly that decisions based on forecasts – assuming that what was will be – are no longer trustworthy. Given the convulsive market moves, we are launching a periodic report on the state of the housing market, based on over thirty years of monthly consumer tracking by Leo J. Shapiro & Associates. The U.S. housing situation in July 2007 is explained in this report.

Last year, over half of American households said they were cutting down on the amount of driving they do to save gasoline. Many used the money they saved on gas to buy apparel and food. While retailers attribute slowdowns in sales to the high price of gasoline, by driving less American households are, in fact, supporting retail sales. A national survey conducted in June of this year by Leo J. Shapiro and Associates found households reporting driving on average nearly fifteen thousand miles in 2006 in the newest car that they owned. Based on their driving for the first half of the year, in 2007 they expect to cut that total to eleven thousand miles, a decline of 27%. A recent study conducted by Chain Store Age found 52% of households saying that they were doing less driving to accomplish their shopping by bundling trips and avoiding long distance trips to stores.

Many new products that come on the market are designed to change how Americans eat. A driving force behind all these products is to control weight and to preserve health. Now, bread, long a target of abstinence, is making a return in a new form. It is competing with a cornucopia of snack foods, which have been targeted as a cause of obesity and ill health. Ironically, the snack food industry developed early in the last century as an evolution from bread. Instead of snacking on bread, consumers learned to snack on crackers, chips and various puffed products made from corn, wheat, potatoes, rice, and flavored with salt, cheese and spices.

How does one bring about social change?

Is it by protesting, lobbying, marching, or something else? In many cases, the best way to create change in any environment is by leaving it. Much like the mass migration of the Swedes in the early nineteenth century, only when mass groups of people migrate away from negative situations does the situation itself improve.

So, where are the disgruntled people of the modern world heading?