I live in the UK where the government insists in placing a tax levy of around 614% on a litre of unleaded petrol.
Two years ago, when petrol prices rocketted throught to roof, there were protesters everywhere, refineries where picketted and you could not but petrol for love nor money.
Eventually the prices dropped a but and all the ruccuss dies down.
Two years on and i an witnessed pump prices soar by 5pence PER LITre in one WEEK.
So i ask, why are all the people now accepting the stupidly high fuel prices, where are all the protestors and picket lines??????
Come on folks, do we really wanna pay these prices for fuel, after all you car is not a luxury it is an essential part of you life.
Try refineries puprosely shutting down and claiming problems(purely artificial reasons) and increases of - gosh - we had a period a few weeks ago where it was (converts to U.K.) roughly a 20 pence increase in a week.
Sure, we pay less for gas, but that's not the hard part so much as when it fluxuates wildly in a short time. Suddenly it costs 20% more to fill up than a week ago. For some people, that completely messes up their budget(especially the poor sods who bust their hump doing delivery jobs - talk about a rough career)
I was thinking of doing a delivery job a few months ago to raise some extra cash and they were expecting a 300 mile a day route. That's like 15 gallons of gas a day(since most of it was short trips with lots of starts and stops).
Even at $1.75 a gallon, that's $26.25 a day in gas. When it jumped to $2.25 a gallon, $33.75 a day. Suddenly, it got to be a big problem as the gas reimbursement was a puny 10 cents a mile. That dropped my wages by almost 50 cents an hour - I was looking at a loss of income just from the gas - and that didn't cover maintainence on the car, or oil changes every other week. The final calculation was that I would clear $4 an hour after factoring all of this in. Went from a $3.75 net gain per day(acceptable - covers oil changes every other week) to a net $3.75 loss in a week's time. The delivery company didn't adjust their reimbursement, of course. They never do. Heh.
Needless to say, I got a different second job.
I can't IMAGINE what it is like in the U.K. Even with a micro-car like the Smart, at 45mpg(avg city), it's still what - $5 a gallon(equivalent)now? I don't think they reimburse the delivery people 6-7 pence a mile. Maybe they do. It's probably closer to 5.
Of course, we don't get 50+ mpg cars here in the U.S., so... (Toyota Pruis is probably the only one, but at $20K, it's a tough purchase for a delivery person)
....I really love driving a diesel car as my primary mode of transportation.... if the price swumg like gasoline does you would have truckers and delivery truck drivers going rampant.... Diesel has been a nice ~61 cents a litre for a while now.
Some observations from the land of ludicrously low fuel prices - -
Just back from a month's vacations in the UK, I must say that it was a pain to fill up our Ford Focus at US$5.13 per gallon. I believe that it was generally about 10p more for the premium that goes in our Volvo's here at home.
It's all relative, I think. Fuel prices in the US go up and down so fast and often that you never know what to think, much less have time to make much complaint. Just before we left on vacation, gas was at $1.769 here in Reno (we tend to be high). Six weeks later, it had risen to $2.069! I bought gas today at $1.869 - a $0.20 drop in two weeks for no apparent reason. Of course, one wants to fill up prior to weekends and holidays, as prices go up by several cents per gallon when more folks are going to be buying. With taxes fixed on a /gallon basis, the rest is all marketing games. Of course, 95% of the motoring population have no idea how cheap our gas is - the only "first world" country where gasoline is consistently cheaper than bottled water, I've often heard!
Along about the time that world supplies of fossil fuels are gone, some US politicians may suddenly develop the balls to increase the tax burden on our fuels here. Most of us consider it our God-given right to consume irreplaceable resources as fast as we can. How sad!
so you're advocating higher taxes. why? don't you think you are better at spending YOUR money the way you see fit rather than shipping that money off to the government so they can spend YOUR money the way they see fit?
From a point at sea, to the circles of your mind, this is JohnDoe:
You're not thinking this through very well.
How else are you going to be able to afford to prosecute a decent, satisfying war against those tiresome countries that have got all the oil? Taxes are an important part of bombing the shit out of other people. This in turn keeps fuel prices cheap.
you're not especially bright are you? the US is financing it's wars with debt, the fact is that your euro brethren, (it's quite obvious that you don't have 2 quid to rub together), are the ones buying that debt so in effect the europeans and asians are financing the war. when you have a clue you can come back and play.
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