Posted on 04/05/2011 12:45:37 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
Inspired by Cord's thought-provoking post on the per gallon prices of various liquids, and by Sarah Palin's ill-informed Facebook rant on the "$4-Per-Gallon President," I decided to take a closer look at gasoline prices around the world. Mrs. Palin might be interested to learn, that the world already has quite a few $4-Per-Gallon Presidents. In fact, the world already has $6-Per-Gallon Parliaments, $7-Per-Gallon Prime Ministers, and $8-Per-Gallon Presidents!
We've collected a broad sample of gas prices from throughout the industrialized Western world in the chart below. Important to note: this chart includes only official data from throughout the European Union and North America. I've included some self-reported gas prices from a handful of relevant nations below the chart.
All of the European data comes from the E.U.'s European Energy Portal website. U.S. and Canadian data come from the respective Automobile Associations.
Here are a few others countries that I thought were interesting, but for which I couldn't find official data. All of these numbers are self-reported within the past six months (unless otherwise noted) through the Gasoline-Germany website, a popular energy and petroleum forum.
An odd trend seems to be that the most of countries that have gas prices under our own, are those same countries that so many politicians routinely cite as "evil" or "undemocratic." Does Sarah Palin want our oil economy to be more like Iran and Venezuela?
From this recent chart in the Economist, you can see that the bulk of the premium costs in most European nations is due to higher taxes and duties on crude and gasoline. Many nations recognize oil as a finite resource, and are utilizing gasoline taxes to reduce oil imports, create a more efficient transportation system, and better prepare for longer-term oil price volatility.
“utilizing gasoline taxes to reduce oil imports, create a more efficient transportation system, and better prepare for longer-term oil price volatility.”
And helping to pay unemployment and welfare benefits to a large section of their population.
So the author should move to one of these reasonable countries, rather than stay here and force the rest of us to accept her values.
AMEN!!!!!
There used to be a saying “An American thinks 100 years is a long time and Englishman thinks 100 mile is long way”.
Well, If lived in Amsterdam or Paris or London I really don’t need a car. I do agree however, that we should consider ourselves lucky.
I don’t care what anyone but us pays for gas.
What these “Everyone else but us pay more” clowns don’t tell you is the amount that fuel is taxed by the govt in those countries. The other thing they refuse to put in their snarky little articles is the fact that we have enough oil reserves right here in the US to get us off the tit of OPEC.
At this rate, I’m afraid we won’t have to move ...
“When G. W. was in office, all you heard from the Media and the RATs was Bush/Oil Prices - strangely, the media and the RATs are now silent about the skyrocketing price of oil and gasoline since Hussein Obama is in the Oval Office.”
And do you remember how he (Bush) made them drop? He announced that he was opening up the coasts for offshore drilling. Oil prices fell of the cliff.
O’Dumbo wants high oil prices, I swear.
We grow the bulk of the world’s food for a reason, fuel is a large component of the cost of food.
Our low fuel prices are needed to keep the cost of the world’s food low. If they think there is global chaos right now, let the fuel price in the US get to 6 dollars a gallon.
Obama is going to have civil wars on every continent.
Can I have some of what the author is smoking? It must be something potent ....
"reduce oil imports" - if that were true, then the monies collected would be used to fund alternative types of energy instead of filling gaps in the budget.
"create a more efficient transportation system" - oh please - Public Transportation has about the same priority as any other socialist utopian promise.
"better prepare for longer-term oil price volatility" - right - artificially jack the prices via taxes and blame the evil oil companies, in good times as in bad ....
Your charts don’t mean squat unless you take out the taxes paid on gas in each country.
What is the raw cost of gas in each country - without government added taxes.
That gave me chills !
This message brought to you by your local communist ELF network. Let’s all go back to the stone age and wash oil off shore birds. Remember! No wearing anything leather, strict vegan (I wonder how the plants feel about that after all they are living organisms!) and tune up that bike for your 40 mile commute. Suck it up for ELF while they burn out car dealers and bomb research labs! All us rich guys should support these shiftless bastards who have never worked a job in their miserable lives, never paid taxes, have outstanding warrants for arrest, and live off the public dole!
This ain’t Hungary, Bozo!
Sarah Palin's ill-informed Facebook rant
And why was this dolt claiming that Sarah Palin's Facebook post was "ill-informed"?
Start your argument with a lie, you lose the debate.
There was not a single thought in this whole waste of bandwidth.
This whole article is pure emotion based drivel.
If the author had bother to THINK, for even a heartbeat, he would of realized the sheer idiocy of comparing the USA to countries that are smaller then many of our individual states.
Savor trhe most moronic piece of text you will encounter for quite a while. Let's see. Iran and Venezuela are despotic states with cheap gasoline. What else do they have in common? Something having to do with gasoline. Hmmm.
Just taking Netherlands for example, the total tax on gasoline is about 69% of the price, making the price without taxes about $2.83 per gallon.
In the USA, the average amount of tax on gasoline is about $.52 per gallon. That makes the average cost of gasoline per gallon in the USA a little over $3.00, using the figure in the chart.
That throws a pretty mean curve ball to the chart, doesn’t it?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.