These are the old prics from yesterday.
Posted on 05/05/2006 12:26:34 PM PDT by NormsRevenge
Do you want to reduce the price of gasoline by almost 60 cents a gallon immediately?
Get the real price gougers. They take nearly 60 cents of every $3.00 gallon of gas. They should pay the windfall profits tax. They should be investigated. What are they doing with this money? How is it being spent? How are they ripping off the gasoline consumer?
They manipulate the market in oil. They withhold large amounts of the oil supply from the public, artificially reducing the supply so that the price of gasoline continually goes up. They prohibit the refining of oil, and, in fact, add useless, polluting chemicals to gasoline (claiming that it makes the air cleaner), which also artificially increases the price of gasoline. In fact, they profit from their activities at the expense of consumers everywhere. They gouge consumers, take home exorbitant salaries from their price gouging practices, and do absolutely nothing for the gas consuming public. They take the food from the table of the hardworking people of this state and country to satisfy their appetite for the big bucks they make from big oil.
How have these gougers avoided investigation so long? They blame others for the high price of gasoline. They use their public relations mechanisms to manipulate the press into shifting the blame from themselves to powerless scapegoats, and keep the flow of big bucks headed into their pockets from the pockets of working families.
Who are these gougers? They are the politicians and bureaucrats in the state and federal governments. Federal taxes take 18.4 cents of every gallon of gas. State gas tax is 18 cents a gallon. The state sales tax adds 22 cents to every $3.00 gallon of gas. Of course, the amount of sales tax goes up as the price of gas increases. Add these together, and the consumer pays 58.4 cents to the government for every $3.00 gallon of gas. These taxes don’t include the income taxes paid by oil companies, which last year was over $108 billion to the federal government alone.
And what does the consumer get for this price gouging? Nothing. Government tells us they collect the tax to build roads and freeways, yet the freeways are overcrowded and the roads are crumbling. All the consumer gets is bigger government, and useless studies. Lots of government bureaucrats make six figure incomes from the gas tax to do absolutely nothing. Billions of dollars a year flow to these useless government executives and politicians, and they use these billions to line their own pockets and increase their power.
In addition, these same politicians purposefully place some oil of limits, artificially limiting the supply, increasing the price of gasoline, and shifting more of our national wealth to the terrorist nations in the Middle East. The United States has over 200 years of known oil reserves that no one can touch because the government won’t let them. Add to this the fact that the government won’t let anyone expand the refining capacity in this country, and mandates the inclusion of artificial chemicals to gasoline that can pollute our water, and the result is constantly-rising gas prices at the pump.
On average, only 30 cents of every gallon of gas flows to the oil companies, yet politicians, and their allies in the press, accuse oil executives of gouging consumers. One politician in Sacramento wanted to assess a windfall profits tax on these oil companies this week, claiming that oil companies were ripping off consumers. This same politician did not once mention that government makes double the amount that oil companies make off the same gallon of gas on sales and gas taxes alone. The press dutifully reported his scapegoat tactics, never once investigating him for his consumer rip off.
Don’t be fooled by the rhetoric. The real price gouger in the oil industry is government.
I hate taxes as much as the next guy but I really don't have an objection to gas taxes - provided that they are used for roads or other road related things.
I consider gas taxes to be user fees for roads. The more gas you use (and that generally translates into the more you drive), the more you pay.
What I oppose is using money collected by gas taxes for things other than building roads.
A lot more than that. Royalties on the crude are in the 15% range in the US. Deduct that our off the crude price and add to the tax amount. Plus the corporate taxes paid at the production and refining, as well as the distribution and final sale at the pump.
Sounds like he read my post from earlier in the week:
Here is a prescription for lower gasoline prices:
Increase Supply
1) Drill in ANWAR
2) Drill offshore California, Florida, LA, etc.
3) Stabilize Iraq and Nigeria so their exports become assured
4) Resolve the nukes standoff with Iran which is putting risk into the market (I favor JDAMS)
5) Speed development of tar sands deposits in Canada
6) Eliminate regional differences in gasoline mixtures
7) Fast track / reduce bureacratic impediments to new refinery capacity in the U.S.
8) Allow importation of non-U.S. (read: Brazilian) ethanol without tarriffs. (If we must have ethanol, on which there is more below)
Reduce Demand
1) Leave market prices alone. High gas prices encourage reductions in fuel use. Isn't this the conservation of resources libs want anyway?
2) Teach people how to drive without consuming so much gas. Coast more! Accellerate slowly! Inflate those tires! This would be a few simple PSAs that would reduce consumption several percent.
3) Build more freeways. Idling on a packed freeway is a huge and wasteful consumption of gas.
4) Correct the EPA fuel mileage estimates. They're overly optimistic, and don't take into account real-world driving conditions.
5) Post the total energy consumptions from mine to recyle-bin for each vehicle. Hybrids consume more energy than Chevy Suburbans when you consider the energy required to produce and recycle those batteries.
6) Eliminate the ethanol subsidy. Ethanol kills gas mileage, and we shouldn't artificially encourage the use of something like that.
Eliminate Gas Taxes
1) Taxes increase the cost of gas. Eliminate them.
2) Taxes earn Governments about $0.50 per gallon, while the oil companies earn only about $0.27 per gallon. Who is the real price gouger here anyway? Governments make 2 times as much as oil companies when you fill your tank.
There. That wasn't so hard, was it? Just got to kill a few sacred cows, and we'd be fine.
I would have thought he would have more savy than that then. Bad idea. First, reducing the taxes simply increases the demand in a high demand market like we are experiencing now. Second, because it is a high demand market, the price will again rise to equalibrium, transferring the taxes to profit for the oil companies. Finally, the taxes given up will have to be recovered elsewhere or highway funds will deplete. User fees such as this are the best form of taxation.
Well in California the gas tax that goes into a fund for roads, etc has/is raided just like the social security fund.
You might want to check in your state, it seems to be commonplace.
"Government tells us they collect the tax to build roads and freeways, yet the freeways are overcrowded and the roads are crumbling."
My guess is that they are fibbing...
You mean as in "Trust Fund"???? Like Social Security.....LOL......
"What I oppose is using money collected by gas taxes for things other than building roads."
California is considering the use of cigarette taxes as a means of funding a pre-school program.
Less than a year ago NYMEX crude sold for about $47/bbl. That's about $23 less/bbl than today's close of $70+/bbl. A year ago governments took roughly 50-60 cents/gal in taxes and oil companies took their profit of 9-27 cents/gal which is basically the same as taxes and profits are today. Since the US consumes roughly 20,000,000 bbl/day, that's about about a $460 million difference? Where does that money go?
http://www.tfhrc.gov/pubrds/may98/finance.htm
Try this link to learn something. Our federal, state, and local governments collect a lot of taxes on gasoline. They also spend a lot of money on roads.
There are other, driving related revenue sources, and government spending includes surface transportation costs that don't directly involve roads.
There is also transportation tax revenue that is directed to other spending (and vice versa), but gas taxes pay for roads (generally speaking).
Gas taxes, oil company profits, and service station profits are all reasonable. The price you pay for gasoline is determined by market forces.
If you want to spend less, use less gasoline. This will save you money, because you will buy less, and if many others do the same, the price will drop too.
Of course, it will also help if millions of Americans work against artificial cost increasers (designer blends, off limits drilling areas, ethanol tariffs, etc.)
These are the old prics from yesterday.
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