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The Real Gas Price Gouger (Imagine you had to spend50c in taxes for every $1 you spent on groceries)
The American Prowler ^ | 3/16/2006 | Eric Peters

Posted on 03/16/2006 1:38:18 AM PST by nickcarraway

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Comment #21 Removed by Moderator

To: Clemenza
"Get a smaller car, get a smaller house closer to work."

Not everyone is 'metro' and able to live within city limits or 15 miles to work. Try being a Mechanical Contractor and dismiss any work outside of 15 miles from your home. Oh yeah and try hauling the equipment to be installed in a Prius.

Too early to rant. More coffee.
22 posted on 03/16/2006 3:33:04 AM PST by poobear (Islam - A Global Lynch Mob !)
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To: Clemenza; ottersnot
I think the point of this article was not so much that fuel price are high, but that government is a major source of the expense in fuels, as well as just about everything else in our lives, and when we do complain about the high price of fuel or other expenses we totally ignore (as we're meant to) that which government imposes on the price. And we're supposed to think even less about how government abuses those funds it confiscates.

Secondly, chastising a person who whines about confiscatory taxation because he had the nerve to buy a big house or lot is like blaming a rape victim for being raped or blaming a theft victim for leaving a door unlocked. It's a little off the point. Governments and other crooks love it when you blame the victim.

I always like to remember that "rich" and "poor" are very subjective concepts. Government rape of it's citizenry is pretty much demonstrable.

See fairtax.org if you haven't already.
23 posted on 03/16/2006 3:39:34 AM PST by wgflyer (Liberalism is to society what HIV is to the immune system.)
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To: ketelone
Consumers pay business taxes. For a business, taxes are a cost of doing business. They are factored into the selling price. A business that makes an after tax annual profit of 5% made 7% profit before taxes. Where did the company get the 2% profit to pay its tax bill? The buyer. When it's a grocery store the tax comes from the consumer. When it's the baker the baker's 2% tax comes from the grocery store. Thus, the grocery store not only collects 2% from the consumer for it's corporate tax, it also collects the 2% tax the baker charged the grocery store. So the consumer is paying the grocery store's tax and paying the baker's tax.

It's called embedded tax. It is embedded throughout the chain of manufacturing and production. In the case of a loaf of bread the taxes are included by and passed up from the seed producer, to the wheat farmer, to flour mill, to the baker, to the wholesaler, to the grocery store, and paid by the consumer at the cash register. Each stage in the chain of production includes it's own tax in its selling price. The consumer is paying a tax on a tax on a tax etc., for as many stages there are in the production chain.

On a basket of goods, 22% of the price is embedded tax.

Embedded taxes increase consumer prices by 22%. 

Solution: FairTax 

24 posted on 03/16/2006 3:40:42 AM PST by Zon (Honesty outlives the lie, spin and deception -- It always has -- It always will.)
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To: wgflyer

You said it. Some would say someone who makes 50000$ a year is fairly well off. Others would say hes an absoulte plebian.


25 posted on 03/16/2006 3:41:08 AM PST by ketelone
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To: wgflyer
I think the point of this article was not so much that fuel price are high, but that government is a major source of the expense in fuels, as well as just about everything else in our lives, and when we do complain about the high price of fuel or other expenses we totally ignore (as we're meant to) that which government imposes on the price. And we're supposed to think even less about how government abuses those funds it confiscates.

Well said.

I've been posting on FR for almost eight years and I've never said this before. This forum has incrementally declined toward sheeple level. FR is a shadow of it's former self.

And we're supposed to think even less about how government abuses those funds it confiscates.

As your last sentence says, this forum is heading evermore toward complying with that.  Toward keeping up (down depending on how you look at it) with the sheeple/Jones'

26 posted on 03/16/2006 3:51:31 AM PST by Zon (Honesty outlives the lie, spin and deception -- It always has -- It always will.)
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To: nickcarraway
The people in the MSM, Libertarians, and others who bitch about high gas taxes are the first ones to support tolling and privatization of our highways and roads.

Right now, even at 50 cents/gallon, I pay a grand total of 2 cents per mile (above the market price of the gas itself) to drive my 25 MPG car. I can afford that.

In London it now costs $14 per day just to enter the city center. San Francisco and New York are looking at similar plans. We have a toll road in California that cost nearly $1.00 per mile (that's MILE, not gallon) during peak hours. We have new publicly-built toll roads around the nation that cost on the order of 20 cents per mile. We have privately operate roads in North America (including US) pushing 30 cents per mile (foreign-operated, I may add). We have the state governments of California, Texas, and many others looking for ways to use GPS to track and toll drivers for every inch that they drive (with a pilot program in Oregon already running). We have state after state looking to sell off their highways (for conversion to private tolling) for a short infusion of money (i.e., heroin fix).

This is what I face as the alternative to my 2 cents per mile.

As mentioned earlier, the fight should be to stop the DIVERSION of money away from roads and highways, not to give the government huge new ways to tax and track us.

Roads are expensive. We will get roads. But do we really want some way other than the gas tax to pay for them?
27 posted on 03/16/2006 4:59:07 AM PST by MediaAnalyst
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To: TXBSAFH
If you study the oil business you will find it mercilessly competitive. The "Seven Sisters" are a bogyman.

Developing new reserves has become amazingly expensive. The Sakhalin Island project is expected to cost another $40 Billion. The entire Caspian area was recently drilled and the oil found did not cover 10% of the costs except offshore Kazakstan. The pipelines will cost billions and the bribes way more.

China is offering a lot more for the oil than the western firms can afford. The Chinese have an infinite supply of dollars and figure oil is going to get expensive pretty soon. They are doing a huge project in north west Brazil that will be a loss unless oil hits $100 a barrel. The Chinese are paying the entire bill up front, offering trade concessions and major technology, the rumor is nuclear weapons, aircraft, and long range missile tech for starters.

The Japanese offered the Russians a multi-billion dollar project for free and did not even ask for any oil later. The Chinese outbid them. The rate of increase in world oil consumption has been much larger than the rate of increase in reserves and production for decades.
28 posted on 03/16/2006 6:46:45 AM PST by Iris7 (Dare to be pigheaded! Stubborn! "Tolerance" is not a virtue!)
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To: Clemenza

Or have less children. Actually our Explorer gets much better gas mileage than our 1973 Suburban did.


29 posted on 03/16/2006 6:49:47 AM PST by HungarianGypsy (I'm writing a post to a message board. I don't care if it's not grammatically perfect.)
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To: Zon

Solution: there is not going to be one. Votes cost a lot of money. Somebody is going to pay for it.


30 posted on 03/16/2006 6:50:22 AM PST by Iris7 (Dare to be pigheaded! Stubborn! "Tolerance" is not a virtue!)
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To: Zon
Free Republic was way different a few years back. In June 2002 my sister called Free Republic an "intellectual chat room" when I showed her the site. One can't say that anymore without lying.

Nowadays the word "sheeple" is very rarely used. "Sheeple" is what they are, resentful and cranky sheeple.

31 posted on 03/16/2006 6:58:42 AM PST by Iris7 (Dare to be pigheaded! Stubborn! "Tolerance" is not a virtue!)
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To: ketelone
"That comes to about 34$ a month. I can see A LOT of people not even noticing it."

Geez, if the oil companies are making all this money, why not invest in them? Wouldn't take too much of an investment to make $34 a month in dividends and stock price increases.

32 posted on 03/16/2006 7:20:57 AM PST by robertpaulsen
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To: TXBSAFH

Try not to be so helpless.


33 posted on 03/16/2006 7:29:09 AM PST by Mr. Lucky
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To: AlexW
It is the reason that most people have small cars, and do not drive great distances, as in the US.

Actually that's the reason your gas is expensive. So you won't and can't.

There's no reason a gallon of gas should cost more there than here. It all comes from the same source.

34 posted on 03/16/2006 7:29:14 AM PST by lewislynn (Fairtax = lies, hope, wishful thinking, conjecture and lies. (no it's not a mistake)
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To: Smokin' Joe

Talk about unbeleivable.........


35 posted on 03/16/2006 7:34:06 AM PST by manonfire
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To: Clemenza
Most folks driving those

S-upremely

U-nderutilized

V-ehicles

Have more dollars than sense...

36 posted on 03/16/2006 7:39:34 AM PST by litehaus
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To: nickcarraway

you mean taxation is used for behavior modification, not raising revenue??? I'm shocked.


37 posted on 03/16/2006 9:33:08 AM PST by Rakkasan1 (Muslims pray to Allah, Allah prays to Chuck Norris.)
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To: nickcarraway

Add to that gov't enforced requirements for "cleaner fuels"...taking out the small amount of sulfur; putting in then being forced to take out MTBE; ethanol; etc.


38 posted on 03/16/2006 10:23:39 AM PST by kaktuskid
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To: nickcarraway

Driving an economy car versus an SUV the tradeoff is economy versus safety. You are more likely to be killed or severely injured in an accident driving a small car than in a large car.


39 posted on 03/16/2006 10:30:09 AM PST by 38special (The statistics show that)
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To: Clemenza
If I see one more person complain about "high oil prices" when they drive an SUV or commute more than 15 miles to work, I'm going to go postal on their a-s.

Where I work, we have all these green weenies who are out to save the environment. They'll berate you for five minutes for throwing a cardbord box in the garbage or leaving you computer in sleep mode overnight.

The funny thing is, all these green weenies live out beyond the exurban ring, and commute 50 miles a day to work, so they can commune with nature on their off-hours. I live five miles down the road on a quarter acre lot like a normal person. But when I tell them that I could leave my computer on for fifty years and not use as much energy as they burn driving back and forth in a week, they don't wanna hear about it.

40 posted on 03/16/2006 10:35:09 AM PST by bondjamesbond (RICE '08)
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