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"I agree that the taxing of gasoline in Europe is getting ridiculous, but at least they can tax it like a alcohol or tobacco and still have people get around in public transportation."
I just looked up the UK fuel tax on Wikipedia and I see that they are paying $2.92 per US gallon just for tax. I am currently buying gas at $2.85 per gallon including $.456 state and federal tax. If someone wants to kill this country quickly, raising the taxes to European levels is an excellent way to do it. And the tax on alcohol is $13.50 per proof gallon, based on 100 proof or 50% alcohol content. Do you really want that kind of tax on gas too?
As far as being able to get around by public transport, to even utter those words must mean you are from an urban area that HAS public transportation. To get to my last employer would involve taking a train from Jackson to Ann Arbor at a cost of $9 and the earliest one leaves Jackson after noon. Then a Taxi for the last 30 miles to arrive as everyone else leaves for the day. Out here the only public transport you see available to all homes on a regular schedule is the school buses and some of the districts are talking about dropping them because of finances.
People that talk about how great Europeans have it should go there some time. Yes, they have some wonderful things, but they have some wretched things too. I worked with a guy from UK and he said that he hadn't seen his grandparents for several years because they lived so far away. I asked how far and he said 70 miles! I commuted longer distances twice a day. The last time I visited England the jobs postings for engineers were paying engineers there about the same as we were getting based on one pound equal $1.50. But the cost per item was the same in pounds as we would pay in dollars, in other words we made about 1.5 times as much as they did. Yes they got 6 weeks holiday per year, but they were fixed, you couldn't take them when you wanted. And they had nationalized medicine, but those that could afford it paid for private insurance so that they would be treated in a timely manner. You can't look at a situation through a telescope from 3000 miles away and say "That little piece looks good" it is a package deal. Good and bad. Public transport would work great, if we were still in the thirteen original colonies, but I REALLY like the open spaces that you don't see in Europe. In England you see houses built wall to wall to wall until you get to the city limit, then it is farmers fields. There is no suburbia, no 1 acre lots, much less 5 or 10. There were farms you could drive across and there were public lands that you could walk across, but no one could live there except the farmer.
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