Posted on 05/01/2006 8:44:05 AM PDT by kellynla
While Americans complain about $3-per-gallon gas, drivers in Britain and much of continental Europe wish they had it so good, according to a story in the Washington Post.
The average gasoline price in Britain has risen 19 percent since January 2005 to a national average of $6.48 a gallon. And many stations are charging well above that, with at least one in London's chic Chelsea neighborhood charging nearly $8 a gallon last weekend.
What's more, drivers in 11 European countries are now paying an average of more than $6 a gallon for gasoline, according to Britain's AA Motoring Trust. The disparity between European and American gasoline prices is accounted for by high taxes charged in Europe, where governments have long used gasoline taxes as an important source of revenue and as a policy tool to drive down oil consumption and reduce pollution.
Taxes account for about 66 percent of the pump price in Britain. Of the current average price per gallon of $6.48, about $4.27 goes to the government, while U.S. drivers pay an average of about 46 cents per gallon in combined state, federal and local taxes, according to the Tax Foundation, an independent organization in Washington.
I wish I was a Vespa saleman in Europe!!! :-)
Well, darned, if I don't feel grateful to only have spent $60 to fill up my tank over the weekend!
Socialism doesn't work.
In other words, the REAL price is about $2.21.
I'm sure the MSM will be all over this...
Taxes account for about 66 percent of the pump price in Britain.
Britian is learning that being the dedicated dumping ground for millions of welfare sucking 3rd world "refugees" so the liberals in that country can boast "we lead the world in human rights" has a high cost.
All thse welfare benefits has to come from somewhere.
Bummer but 70% of Englands fuel pricing are taxes to fund its government. Based on this fee, the government of England must be gouging the citizens in England.
And as anyone who has been to London or Paris recently can tell you...it ain't working.
England changed their fuel excise taxing policy a few years back. Not only did they index it to fuel prices so that taxes go up as fuel prices go up, but they put an accelerator on it so that taxes go up faster than the price of fuel. They thought that this would be a quiet tax source that would slowly grow as fuel prices went up. In the hectic and quite volatile oil market we're now in this accelerator is quite a kick in the head for the private and commercial vehicle operators there. The lorry operators staged a shutdown of several major highways the last time the prices spiked.
In the USA our excise taxes stay flat as the price of gasoline flucuates.
Well if the government wants to do something about gas prices, they could always subsidize oil at 45 dollars per barrel for three months.
We bring in 3 million barrels a day so it would be 135 million dollars per day for 90 days. So 4.5 billion a month for 3 months. Which is about the size of Exxon/Mobils profit.
By eliminating The oil companies perks, since they cannot drill or build refineries and are just swimming in cash, we use that money to fund the project.
Gas prices goes down, the oil companies still make a huge profit and no one really gets hurt. In addition, the drop in gas prices due to this would encourage families to travel more this summer, spending money that they would otherwise save to buy expensive gas.
"In other words, the REAL price is about $2.21."
That fact always gets ignored and worth repeating:
Yo, Dems, it is the taxes "STUPID", that make European gasoline costs HIGHER than USA.
Dems want to see the same costs as in Europe so they have more of OUR money to spend on give away programs.
See clip below:
"In addition, U.S. consumers pay less for a gallon of gasoline than consumers in many other industrialized nations, in large part because the United States imposes much lower taxes on gasoline than these other countries. "
http://www.gao.gov/htext/d05675t.html
From GAO report number GAO-05-675T entitled 'Energy Markets: Understanding Current Gasoline Prices and Potential Future Trends' released on May 10, 2005.
In the USA our excise taxes stay flat as the price of gasoline flucuates.
-----
Britain is an excellent example of socialist taxation and government control of your life. All we need to do is put a Marxist liberal in the Oval Office and we will have it too -- and tragically, we have a Repub party that is working hard to make that happen...
and the Saudi's are filling up at 65 cents a gallon.
Enough said.
Who care what gas costs in England or anywhere else? It's $0.35 a gallon in Venezuela. England and the Europeans use the exhorbitant gas taxes to fund their failed socialist experiments. Let them.
Until the Kennedys get involved, and then "do something" for he "little people" so they can fight against the "big bad oil companies".
Do you think they are blaming President Bush for that?
This is surprising. According to the MSM, the US is the only place in the world where gasoline is expensive.
Weren't the Brits taking to the streets just a few years back when it topped $5 a gal? Been strangely quiet this time around.
They must investigate BP & Royal Dutch Shell immediately!
Europeans buy fuel by the liter.
$6/gallon is about $1.60/liter. That would be less than 1 euro per liter, and well under 1 pound per liter.
They WISH their fuel was so cheap.
While looking up info on the price I found http://www.petrolprices.com which lists the average unleaded price as 96.3p/liter. Which I think is 2 shillings and a farthing per fortnight. Or in more familiar terms 6.59334737 U.S. dollars per US gallon (according to Google's conversion).
Perhaps at the Federal level, but at the State level sales taxes are a percentage of sale price, and some excise taxes are a percentage of sale price as well, so those taxes go up as the underlying cost of fuel goes up.
I have sympathy for anyone at those prices. When I left England fifty years ago, there were 14 million cyclists. When the automobile became available to the masses, cyclists dwindled to about a million and a half. Funny how every one coped then.
At the Canadian border in Northern Ontario. Gas is by the litre. Yesterday,I halted the gas pump at $4.40 cents and read 3.875 litres. The American gallon is equivalent to 3.785 litres. So for 89 octane at $1.13 a litre, we have between a $4.20 cent gallon and as high as about $4.55 cents.
I also went over to the Michigan side and gas was 3.03 a gallon for 89 octane. I figure even with the more expensive US dollar I got it for about 97 cents a gallon cheaper.
Lucky Michiganders! (Laughs)
"Which I think is 2 shillings and a farthing per fortnight..."
I seem to recall Germans or Dutch paying something like $3/liter. I may be mis-remembering. Or I might have made it up.
Look, all I know for sure is that Abe Simpson's car gets 40 rods to the hogshead, and that's the way he likes it.
The Uk imports 17% of its gas as of Dec 05.
87% of that came from Norway.
They exported more gas than was imported.
Figures are from the DTI.
http://www.dti.gov.uk/energy/inform/energy_trends/index.shtml
That's about 0.002 miles per gallon. Is he driving the Hummer 5? The Queen Elizabeth 2 gets about 0.009 miles per gallon.
Hmmmm, and I thought the brits paid by the liter??
1 gallon [US] = 0.83 gallon imperial [UK] I don't know if this article has factored the larger imperial gallon.
If democrats had their way, they would tax gas like they do in Europe. Imagine all the "free" government services they could administer over with that revenue.
And, RAH, RAH, RAH, it's 80% TAXES!!!!!!!! WHEEEEEE!!!!!
They do.
1 gallon [US] = 3.78liters.
1 gallon [UK] = 4.54 liter
I wonder if the writer converted his measures properly?
You forgot the /sarcasm tag.
>In other words, the REAL price is about $2.21.
I'm sure the MSM will be all over this..<
That and the fact that the dollar is weak against the pound.
It looks like they did. In post 27 I found a British web site that tracks their daily price in pence per liter and converted its average unleaded price to $6.59 per US Gallon. It would be even more than $7/imperial gallon
To make this entire taxation situation interesting...lets get rid of sales tax and income tax...just make a gallon of gas set to $10 taxation. After all...the rich have two vehicles or more...so they will contribute more...and the poor only have one vehicle...which they will learn to drive less. You could fire all of IRS, and just have the oil companies handle taxation...paying it to the Feds. Even better...airline tickets will soar to $3,000 for a roundtrip from Chicago to Nashville. Again...only the rich travel...the poor stay home...so its quiet a fair tax idea. Good idea?
Or we can simply wait this out...and let compeition drive the price to $150 a barrel...and the mideast countries will be stinking rich and the western countries will be poor. Think about that a second...because thats precisely where this whole mess is headed. Oil is oil...its the same stuff we pumped out at $10 a barrel back in 1950. Production and transportation really haven't changed much since then. Gas is still gas...it really hasn't improved a single bit. You are paying people to simply pump it out of the ground and deliver it to a refinery in New Orleans.
You would think at those prices, electric vehicles would be all the rage in Europe. Even at 20 cents a kwh, an electric vehicle would cost 4 cents per mile. Fuel at $7/gallon and 35 mpg costs 20 cents per mile. 12K miles driven each year would be $2,000 saved each year.
Then again, they've become so addicted to the fuel tax revenue that they'd have to find some other way to charge even electric motorists. Probably by taxing electric vehicle registration each year based on miles driven.
If you doubt it, notice that it is actually a criminal offense to use cooking oil in a deisel car in England because there was no fuel tax charged. Even though it is much less polluting than regular deisel. Buying cooking oil in 5 gallon jugs was so much cheaper than deisel that supermarket shelves were empty.
Sounds about right.
Gas is still cheap in the USA. It will stay that way unless Democrats get in and 'fix' that. People complaining just don't realize how good we have it compared to other countries.
unless you properly denature that cooking oil, you'd be nuts to try burn it, unless you want to rebuild your motor. Veggie oil isn't all it's cracked up to be- it isn't as simple as running to Safeway and buying a gallon of mazola.
It's also illegal here too if you don't pay your share of taxes on your fuel. The government here just ignores it because there just aren't many people going through all the trouble of converting veggie oil for use. By the time you buy all the chemical, ethanol and spend the time trying to make veggie diesel, it's much cheaper just to drive to the pump and fill up with real diesel.
Most towns in Europe are crammed in one spot where there is a lot of public transport...
In countries where most states or provinces could hold a european country or two, higher fuel costs are more of a concern...
You forgot the /sarcasm tag.
Sorry.
the UK has long been taxed up the wazoo..
Margret Thatcher tried getting Bush Sr. to negotiate a fixed price of oil per barrel (I believe it was $35 to last 100 years)during the first Gulf War, but he wouldn't agree to it.
Sure, making bio-deisel is a hassle. That allows you to run an engine with no modifications. But just adding cooking oil to a deisel is not a problem. It can be added to petroleum deisel to run on a mixture of 50/50 with no modifications or you can modify the fuel delivery system for under $1,000 to run on 100% cooking oil.
http://www.poughkeepsiejournal.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050731/BUSINESS/507310336/1003/NEWS
And this is USED cooking oil, where it has to be filtered of food bits.
Using fresh oil, it doesn't even require filtering.
http://www.usatoday.com/money/world/2005-10-17-eurogas-usat_x.htm
They are probabably paying in Euros by the litre. If in Italy and they appear to be tourists they are also paying whatever the clerks can shortchange them, which has been legal since Romulus suckered Remus.
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