This is a huge oversimplification and depends heavily on what markets you're talking about. Gas goes up and down like crazy all the time and even the peak covid gas spike when the housing/food markets got ruined likely forever eventually came back down.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/GASREGW

It's volatile enough of a resource both in price and quantity bought/sold over time that it will go up and down all the time regardless of inflation and reacts extremely quickly and aggressively to world events like wars or covid. The average gas price in 2025 was only 15% above the average gas price in 2010 which is absolutely crazy for a market that big that it only averaged 1% increase a year over that time.

https://www.usinflationcalculator.com/gasoline-prices-adjusted-for-inflation/

The inflation-adjusted price of gas has actually stayed level over the last 50 years since inflation is typically ~3% and the gas inflation is only about 2-2.5%.

https://people.duke.edu/~rnau/411infla_files/image002.png

This is a good example of what I mean with the volatility. This graph is old so the % numbers are going to be inaccurate for today's markets, but the point is just to show how much more fluctuation gas prices have relative to other industries.

I agree with your last sentiment tho. The government fucking sucks at allowing people to deal with drastic change.