Here are historical real (inflation adjusted) gas prices for the US. You can decide how terrible this is:
Diesel is almost $7/gallon here. All the stuff we buy (food, services, electronics) are up 30-100% since the beginning of last year, but federal inflation stats claim 3%.
Some of that is differences in taxes, but some of it is due to getting gas from different sources. If we had a pipeline from Texas to CA, there would be less bifurcation.
In terms of food being bifurcated, that too is happening, but to a smaller degree.
Basically the entire West coast is suffering from high inflation.
I think you have to go back to the civil war era and greenback inflation to find numbers like that in any region.
https://www.bls.gov/charts/consumer-price-index/consumer-pri...
US about to be scroogemcducking in oil money