There's a news story that came out today..looks like we don't have it so bad. While gas is around 3.53/Gal in NJ it's as high as 18.24/gal in some countries. Venezuala is paying 12 cents a gallon along w/ Kuwait and Said Arabia paying for .40 cents. What the hell is going on here?

To put it simply: WE'RE GETTING FUCKED!!!!

Venezuela has price controls because all the oil companies are state owned. They're losing money hand over fist on that proposition.

Their price controls on food are working well too. Grocery stores are empty because food can't be produced for the amount the government allows it to be sold, so they simply stop producing it.

I'll pay more for gas and not have a nut like Hugo Chavez running my country when given the choice.

You didn't do your research.

In those countries gasoline is subsidized by the government. They are also oil producing countries and members of OPEC. The oil industries are state owned.

Have you bothered to check what Europeans pay for gasoline?

Canada is a major oil supplier and it isn't that cheap up there.

Thats why I asked on here..I knew someone would know the deal behind this one..

Gas is still pretty cheap, all things considered.

Just got back from a week in Ireland. They're paying close to $10/gal over there once you do the conversion.

On the plus side, if you live anywhere with a Giant Eagle in the area you can get their Fuel Perks. Buy $50 in food and get $0.20/gal off your next fill-up at their stations. Since I wait to fill up until after the gas light comes on, I'm saving a minimum of $3.40/tank. And since you can stack them, I'm normally getting $0.40-$0.60/gal off.

The reason for that is Europeans tax the living shit out of gasoline.

European oil companies pay the same on the open market for gasoline as US oil companies.

If Americans want to blame anyone for the price of gasoline they need look no further than the US Congress.

In fact because of Congress, Americans can be expecting to pay MUCH MORE for gasoline in the future.

Because of the wording of the Energy Independence and Security Act passed last year, it looks like the environmental groups are going to either sue or force the US government from allowing us to buy oil produced from Canadian oil sands. The wording of the bill seems to disallow us from purchasing oil produced from "dirty" sources. All in the name of global warming.

Nancy Pelosi was just talking about new global warming legislation this week. If passed, the price of gasoline and everything else including home heating oil will increase drastically.

Plus we have presidential candidates like Obama talking about taxing oil company profits. No one mentions that government makes more on oil company revenues than even the oil companies. That tax would add at least another 50 cents or more to the price of a gallon of gas.

I won't even bother to mention the fact that there is tons of oil right here under US soil which Congress and their special interest allies have for years prevented us from extracting. Therefore increasing our reliance on foreign sources of oil.

Members of Congress are allowed to lease cars, all at taxpayer expense. The insurance, gas, tags, and everything is paid for by the taxpayers. That is a "perk" of being a member of the House of Representatives. They don't give a fuck what the price of gasoline is.

If you are pissed of at the price of gasoline. Complain to Congress. This shit has been going on for years and it is only going to get worse.... all because of Congress.

Exactly. I'm tired of the news stations coming up with the "you think YOU have it bad" argument. It's complete BS. You can't compare the two.

Find another country that has a tax that is equal to ours and THEN compare.

I'd say it's the public's fault, too. Not ALL of the public...but some of it, specifically those infected with NIMBY syndrome. Build some more refineries, asses!

This is certainly part, but not all of it. A bigger issue is that we're talking about an item with limited supply - and we've based much of our economy on it. Allowing legislative fixes to market problems is pretty much always going to fail.

One interesting solution, just in the development stages, on this website .

It's only limited because we are placing artificial limitations ourselves. Hmmm... Congress.

OPEC also plays with the laws of supply and demand with their production level games.

Quote:

One interesting solution, just in the development stages, on this website .

That is a very interesting idea.

It certainly beats the completely asinine idea of food based biofuel. Another idiotic idea with Congressional involvement.

Madman, you serious? That would be so retarded, even thinking about it makes my head hurt. And to think, these people who support this are also the same that claim to really care about the poor. What a joke. Have some fun and read some of the blogs from the Daily Camera website ( web page ) the liberal Boulder newspaper; there are actually people advocating higher gas taxes to reduce global warming. These people are nuts.

I'm dead serious. Serious as a heart attack. I was just reading about it earlier in the week. I'll look for the link.

The people that claim to care about the poor unfortunately don't give a rat's ass about the poor. It's about control. Besides, more poor people mean more government and government control is required. Isn't that the real goal?

We are on the road to serfdom my friend.

On a side note... what asshole politician always says the phrase "my friend"? He also supported raising gas prices(taxes) for "global warming".

Here is a couple of links on the subject mine man...

http://washingtontimes.com/article/20080416/COMMENTARY/982402072/1012

http://www.edmontonsun.com/News/Alberta/2008/04/30/5427331-sun.html

That one made me laugh MM.

I will do some searching and see what I can find about the tar sands stuff. Can't be true, just can't be... I trust you, but that would be... well, I can't think of a better word than retarded.

I think it's more than just control; it's anti-development, anti-growth. These people are like the Amish, they want to freeze time, no more development, leave the third world in poverty. As long as they can still drive their little POS prius and drink expensive wine, they don't care at all and never will.

Ah...you slam the Amish. You'd never catch an Amish person in a Prius.

I'm sure you are familiar with the web site MineWeb.

They had a recent article about the tar sands and Congress intentionally fucking things up...

http://www.mineweb.com/mineweb/view/mineweb/en/page38?oid=50551&sn=Detail

Even the Arabs are talking about it....

http://www.arabnews.com/?page=6§ion=0&article=108556&d=4&m=4&y=2008

Unfortunately, you won't hear the Nightly news with Katie Couric or Brian Williams EVER telling the American public how much their own Congress is fucking them over.

Quote:

I think it's more than just control; it's anti-development, anti-growth. These people are like the Amish, they want to freeze time, no more development, leave the third world in poverty. As long as they can still drive their little POS prius and drink expensive wine, they don't care at all and never will.

It's all about control. If you can control energy, you control the nation, it's wealth, and almost every single aspect of people's lives.

California recently wanted to pass a law where people would have to have thermostats hooked into a government network where the government could control the heat and temperature of your home. According to the thinking of those politicians, if the temperature went higher than they believed you should have it, a fine would have been levied.

Thankfully the idea never made it out of committee in the CA legislature, but ideas like this will be back and back with more force the next time around.

It's all about control. Don't ever believe otherwise. It's also about weakening the country too.

I'm amazed no one has mentioned the falling dollar .

And yeah, sure it's congress. If that was true, the oil company's would be hurting. They\'re doing okay

Also.. no one mentions how much in taxes the oil companies pay every year. I believe I read that Exxon pays more in taxes than the lower 50% of US citizens combined. That equals around 30 billion in taxes for one oil company. Good for them they are making profits.

Congress sucks. (or any career political person for that matter)

But you are comparing corporate taxes to individual taxes.

If my company gets taxed higher, I'll just pass those costs along to the customers. I can't do that with my personal income tax.

(Out of curiosity, does anyone know what the upper 50% pay in income tax?)

Here are the number that I found:

According to the Office of Tax Analysis, the U.S. individual income tax is "highly progressive," with a small group of higher-income taxpayers paying most of the individual income taxes each year.

# In 2002 the latest year of available data, the top 5 percent of taxpayers paid more than one-half (53.8 percent) of all individual income taxes, but reported roughly one-third (30.6 percent) of income.

# The top 1 percent of taxpayers paid 33.7 percent of all individual income taxes in 2002. This group of taxpayers has paid more than 30 percent of individual income taxes since 1995. Moreover, since 1990 this group’s tax share has grown faster than their income share.

# Taxpayers who rank in the top 50 percent of taxpayers by income pay virtually all individual income taxes. In all years since 1990, taxpayers in this group have paid over 94 percent of all individual income taxes. In 2000, 2001, and 2002, this group paid over 96 percent of the total.

Gotta love socialism.

I am just pointing out that they are not just making money and nothing more. With all those profits come higher taxes.

I blame Congress and energy speculators more for the current price of fuel than big oil.

More info on the people contributing the most taxes..

You might be suprised.


The IRS data below include all of the 132.6 million tax returns filed in 2005 that had a positive AGI, not just the returns from people who earn enough to owe taxes. From other IRS data, we can see that 90.6 million of the tax returns came from people who paid taxes into the Treasury. That leaves 42 million tax returns filed by people with positive AGI who used exemptions, deductions and tax credits to completely wipe out their federal income tax liability. Not only did they get back every dollar that the federal government withheld from their paychecks during 2005; but some even received more back from the IRS. This is a result of refundable tax credits like the Earned Income Tax Credit, which are not included in the aggregate percentile data here.

Including all tax returns that had a positive AGI, those taxpayers with an AGI of $145,283 or more in 2005 constituted the nation's top 5 percent of earners. To break into the top 1 percent, a tax return had to have an AGI of $364,657 or more. These numbers are up significantly from 2003 when the equivalent thresholds were $130,080 and $295,495. Top incomes in 2005 are also continuing to surpass the peak they reached in 2000. At the height of the boom and bubble, $313,469 was the threshold to break into the top 1 percent, and then it fell to $285,424 in 2002 only to finally recover fully last year.

God.. I feel like NYMadman cutting and pasting all this crap..

Edit. Here is where I got my quotes http://www.taxfoundation.org/taxdata/show/250.html

True (and I don't disagree about the speculators at all).

But those profits they made - the 30 Billion...is AFTER taxes. I think you'd be hard pressed to find any individual who even comes close to a fraction of that. All the richest people (namely Gates and Buffett) are getting their worth on paper only. They aren't profiting those billions.