[TR] gas prices

[Skip Gurnee]

Some contrararian thoughts on the thread:
1. Who's the biggest supplier of oil to the US?  Canada.  Then Saudia
Arabia, then Venezuela, then Mexico.
2. The idiots in charge of the big three are in trouble not so much because of
their
cars (they've reacted a bit to foreign competition), but because they spent
money beyond their means, and loaned it to bad risks.  Just like the banks
with
mortgages and credit cards.
3. At my house, we ran the Tracer when gas prices rose.  It can't do things
the Jeep can, so those things were cut back, but not cut off, because I
can't afford the debt to buy a new car, nor will I when the big three are
out of business.  Other SUV owners think the same way and that's why they're
back on the road.  We need them and can't buy something else.
4. World price differences for gasoline are exacerbated not by the price of
gasoline, but the price of taxes.  In the US, there's a federal tax of
$0.184%, and the states average $0.256 (total 0.44/gallon).
In Europe, they tax their people differently.  One of the differences is
that gas is taxed more than here; see the following:
http://money.cnn.com/pf/features/lists/global_gasprices/  and
http://www.worldwide-tax.com/ .  Our taxes show up with other names, like
social
security, sales tax, medicare, etc etc ad nauseum.  This is highly simplistic,
of course.  Many countries subsidize and/or own their oil supplies and
infrastructure, and politics and power are played with all of it.  In general,
we can be fairly sure that in the "free" world, we work for the government
(i.e.pay taxes) about the same amount, being more than half the time.
Best,
Skip Gurnee
64 TR4
66 TR4A

Don Spence wrote:

> Just another way for the "Gummint" to subsidize the idiots in charge
> of the big three. What a difference you'd see if Americans paid world
> priced for gasoline etc.
>
>> Dunno about buying them; but I've noticed a huge increase in the
>> number of big SUVs and pickup trucks on the roads here in CA over the last
>> few weeks.
>>
>> Almost makes me wish for $4/gallon again ... almost.
>>
>> Randall