I think that gasoline diluted with ethanol is one of the most pervasive examples of how the wealth has been stolen from us.
There are multiple ways to view it, but the simplest way to think of it is that folks spend more currency for less gasoline at the pump.
The price of gasoline changing doesn't matter if it keeps getting diluted. The real price of gasoline is the 100% pure stuff. Bucc-ee's tends to have it for less than $4/gal, but most stations sell it for $4/gal and up. Plus, it's an effort to find it. Most gas stations sell only adulterated gasoline.
Just my two cents.
Tetra ethyl lead (TEL) was a good way to increase the octane of gasoline and is still used in AV gas for piston-engined aircraft. The reason it was banned for automobiles was not because of public health but rather to prevent lead from coating the inside of catalytic converters in car exhausts. Today, octane numbers are achieved at the refinery through different cracking processes and no lead is used. One of the supposed benefits of TEL was it extended the life of the valve seats in cylinder heads but I don't think it made that much of a difference in an era where rebuilding an engine every 100k miles was pretty common.
Apart from the lower efficiency and convoluted political motivations for adding it to gasoline, ethanol will run fine in just about anything. The two downsides of ethanol are 1) it is hydrophilic and will hold water which can lead to corrosion 2) it doesn't always get along with "soft" components in the fuel system like fuel lines and gaskets.
Diesel cars in the NA market never took off for a few reasons, 1) tax is not based off of engine size or fuel type so there's no incentive to get a diesel. 2) [the Oldsmobile diesel engine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oldsmobile_Diesel_engine) 3) diesel costs more than gasoline in the US so any increase in fuel economy is largely negated by increased fuel costs. 4) availability of diesel at passenger car fuel pumps (this isn't an issue anymore, but when I was growing up we had a Volvo 240 with a VW d24 diesel engine and we could only get fuel at certain gas stations because not all of them carried diesel. 5) if you live in a cold climate, gasoline engines are much nicer. I know diesel technology has improved, but between gelling and general cold start issues, gasoline is hard to beat for winter starting.