Record High Gas Prices?

[Frank Lee]

Or own a house, or pay utilities, or have an income, or have a phone, or....

[bdesj]

Yeah, plenty of taxes there too, Frank. But in the case of cigarettes, the taxes are far above the price of the product- not so with your examples.

[Piwoslaw]

Originally Posted by Frank Lee

We really don't have a right to complain. It's a finite resource and our consumption rate is astronomical, thus leading to a supply crisis at some point. Sure there are "artificial" manipulations of supply and price along the way, but sooner or later the piper must be paid. If you have designed your life around using lots of fuel and using it inefficiently, you had better not let out a peep about fuel prices. Another favorite pastime for fuel price whiners is to project the blame onto anyone but themselves: govt, oil companies, speculators, etc.. The bottom line is if you sit around and wait for science or govt or whatever to bring back 99 cent gas, you are wasting your time. Only you can take control of your fuel expenditures.

True, but even someone who lives in a passive house and rides a bike will feel the higher oil prices through more expensive food and services. Oil is in every single part of our (global) economy, from fertilzers, to transport, to heating, to plastics production. You'd have to have your own self-sufficient farm and make your own stuff, ie be 100% independent, to not really care.

The Wife and I ride our bikes to the farmer's market every saturday year round, but the stuff we buy (or at least a sizeable part of it) used oil in one form or another. We use our own shopping bags, but some things always come in disposable packaging, either when we buy them (cheese and milk), or before they are sold (packaging during transport).

Originally Posted by bdesj

If you REALLY want to have fun with taxes, take up smoking as a hobby.

Here, cigarettes and alcohol have lots of taxes, just like fuel. About 2-3 years ago one of our ministers lowered alcohol taxes and, to the surprise of many, alcohol tax income increased. Some claimed that this was because the price fell, so people would drink more (nothing like good anti-alcohol programs), but the real reason was that when legal alcohol became cheaper, it became more competitive with alcohol of illegal and unsafe origin. The number of people with methanol poisoning slightly decreased.

[Arragonis]

Taxes in the UK for each litre - not even a gallon.



and diesel



Slightly out of date though. The downside of tax is the cost. The upside of it is that it insulates us to some extent from world oil price spikes - the cost of a barrell has more than doubled since last summer but uk petrol has risen about 25%.

The sad part is that if we had artificially high gas prices, then we would have more small fuel-efficient cars to choose from. The Japanese didn't storm into the USA with ground-up car designs to solve our gas crisis problems in the 1970's, they just sold us what they were already building.

So did we - the Europeans. The Japanese advantage was that what they built was better engineered, better designed and up to date. I read a book written by a tech executive from the 1970s fuel squeeze when he parked his Cadillac and bought a Nissan (or Toyota or Subaru, can't recall exactly).

What amazed him was that the Nissan never failed, everything worked every time and apart from servicing he never had to visit the dealer for anything compared to the Caddy which rattled, smoked and would regularly go out of tune or wear some service part out very quickly and was requiring constant attention. He sold the Caddy and kept the Nissan.

Same over here - as soon as people got used to Honda, Nissan (Datsun) and Toyota reliability they never went back to British cars which by that time were so badly built that the rear windows would fall out when they were jacked up.

Mind you even Honda cock up sometimes. I was reading about the Civic Hondamatic last night - 2 speed MANUAL gearbox and torque converter. Or maybe it was a joke.

[Arragonis]

PS - This part of the wikipedia entry on Nissan describes the relationship they had with Austin of the UK to make cars under licence. What it doesn't mention is that the agreement also said that Austin engineers had a quality veto on parts being made by Nissan before they could be used in production models.

Unfortunately for the Japanese the British engineers still had bad feelings from the war and would make them jump through extra hoops - for example the Austin side would regularly reject parts the quality of which was way above what was going into UK made models at the same time.

A side theory, in additional to Toyota TQM, is that this pressure meant Japanese Nissan/Austins were much better made than the original UK ones. Which kind of worked against the UK industry when they came back with their own models later on.

[bdesj]

Originally Posted by Arragonis

Taxes in the UK for each litre - not even a gallon.

Mmmm....
p = .001 Pound?
"58.95p" = 58 Pounds + 95 pence?
Just so I understand what you`re telling us- I`ve never been clear on all the different English monetary units.

[groar]

France, for 1 liter of diesel (2011/01 average) :

diesel       1,267 euro    100%
-------------------------------
petrol       0,447 euro     35%
refining     0,065 euro      5%
distribution 0,085 euro      7%
taxes        0,641 euro     51%

(errors in % are mine )
And taxes for gasoline is 60%, to keep diesel price lower.

Denis.

[Piwoslaw]

Here is the breakdown in Poland for 2010, also in liters. In 2011 the taxes will be even higher because of VAT increase. (1 zł = 1 PLN = 0.35 USD = 0.25 EUR at today's rates):

A comparison of taxes in Poland and USA (2008):

A comparison of european countries' petrol (not diesel or fuel in general) taxes, again 2008 (I gave up on translating country names and trying to edit them into the image):

And European fuel duty (only a part of taxes), 2009:

And just for fun, again 2009,

[Arragonis]

Originally Posted by bdesj

Mmmm....
p = .001 Pound?
"58.95p" = 58 Pounds + 95 pence?
Just so I understand what you`re telling us- I`ve never been clear on all the different English monetary units.

p = 1 pence, 1/100 (0.01) of a pound. Think p = cents, £ = $ in terms of units. Obviously exchange rates mean they are worth different monetary amounts.

So each litre has duty of 58.95 pence, and then VAT (sales tax) is added to that + the production cost + the retailer portion (5p).

[jamesqf]

Originally Posted by Frank Lee

The bottom line is if you sit around and wait for science or govt or whatever to bring back 99 cent gas, you are wasting your time.

If you look at it from a cost/mile perspective, though, I DO have 99 cent gas. In fact, I do even better. I average 71.2 mpg in the Insight, a typical SUV gets say 15 mpg. So at $4/gal, it costs him $4 to go those 15 miles, but it costs me only 84 cents :-)

Even for a smaller American car getting 25 mpg, I'm still paying only $1.40 for what costs them $4.