OT - Gas to hit 4.00

[Jacob Fugal]

On 8/31/05, Andy Bradford <amb-plug at bradfords.org> wrote:
> Thus said James Clawson on Wed, 31 Aug 2005 14:37:08 MDT:
> > No one in the Federal Government  or the governments of the respective
> > states has  the responsibility or  the AUTHORITY to control  the price
> > of  gasoline or  of  any  other consumer  product,  or  to impose  MPG
> > restrictions on automobiles.
> 
> If  only we  lived in  a  truly free  market, this  wouldn't sound  like
> economic theory...  How about we  start by eliminating  the rediculously
> high gasoline tax?

I've been remembering something I read recently in the paper (just
before Katrina). I don't have the sources they used off the top of my
head, so feel free to correct or doubt. Anyways, they had a chart that
compared US gas prices to european prices. The interesting bit is they
broke down the pre-tax and tax components of the price. Across the
board, raw prices were about equal, with the US being cheapest by a
small margin (5-10%). But taxes in almost any european country were
nearly %100, doubling the price of gas. The taxes in the US were about
10-15%. As a result, US gas is several dollars cheaper per gallon. And
that savings is in taxes, not raw price.

Jacob Fugal