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Gas Prices Jump; California Hardest Hit
New submitter jefery23 writes with this excerpt from an Associated Press article (as carried by the Denver Post): "Californians woke up to a shock Friday as overnight gasoline prices jumped by as much as 20 cents a gallon in some areas, ending a week of soaring costs that saw some stations close and others charge record prices." Friday's jump followed another big one just a day earlier, too. Texas gas prices have gone up, but not quite so dramatically ($3.59 at the station nearest to me); how are they in your neck of the woods? Those Bloom boxes and charging stations can't arrive too soon.
Yeah but, according to the Labor Department gas prices had already dropped in California, so be happy.
$4.19 is Western Washington. You are complaining about $4+ gas but think it is ok to spend $40,000+ on an e-car and use a charging station..... Where will the charging station get its power from? Coal, natural gas.... try to think it through.
20 cents on $4 is only 5%. Being as California is probably paying a fair bit above $4, that would put the percentage even lower. I'm surprised they would make a big deal out of it if it one just one moment in time. If it was 5% in one day, for several days in a row, that would be more noticeable, but this is barely above the variance you'd likely find between two gas stations.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
An improving economy demands more gasoline.
Since supplies are already so tight that we are increasingly using extreme sources of oil like very deep sea drilling and oil sands, we should expect to pay more for gasoline.
I hope you've all been buying fuel efficient cars...
What's special about CA that made them have a higher increase than the rest of us?
We've been closing down refineries for many, many years in the US due to low profit margins. Basically, it's a lot more lucrative to get the crude out of the ground and sell it as a raw product than it is to turn it into something useful. Now we're left with no spare refining capacity and as soon as something happens, the laws of supply and demand send the price skyrocketing. And there's almost always something happening somewhere. That's why even when we have a surplus of crude (and we often do), gas prices don't really reflect it. And why opening the SPR would do very little to bring down gasoline prices unless there was a true break in the crude supply chain, not just refinery problems.
The prices have been artificially raised, because of the presidential debate. Just like the unemployment rate has fallen or not fallen.
Now, I can't figure out which candidate thinks he benefits from higher gas prices.
So maybe just like the unemployment rate has fallen or not fallen, maybe the gas prices haven't jumped . . . or jumped.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
It is beyond me how americans can complain about gas prices. In Sweden people pay more than twice as much, and everyone seems to be fine with it. On top of that, americans have even more money to spend than do swedes. So, are americans cheap, or just spoiled?
On this side of the pond, we're paying a bit under $8/gallon...
Maybe if California didn't demand a specially blended gasoline mixture that the majority of the country didn't use they wouldn't have to deal with a shortage. This is a regional shortage for specially blended gasoline, so gas prices in Texas wouldn't go up.
Why is this on Slashdot again?
My local Gas station just dropped it's price to 3.59 earlier this week.
4.59 a gallon for 87 unleaded
I live in California. We are paying the price for years of anti-business policies and nimbyism. We have no spare refinery capacity, and we have fewer gas stations per-capita than most states, and few new stations are being built.
I don't expect things to get any better. Pro-business people are leaving the state, shifting us even further to the left, and the car-culture is thriving. My son's elementary school has 800 students, and despite perfect weather almost every day, exactly two (2) of them bike to school: my son and a kindergarten girl from our neighborhood. Every morning we pedal past a long line of moms in idling SUVs waiting to drop of their kid.
Where I am it's Euro 1.73 per liter, so that's about Euro 6.55 per gallon, which is about $8.55
I'm a work-from-home computer programmer with two full time jobs doing this.
Taking the vehicle out of the equation makes the problem less relevant. Sure, the cost of food goes up because the cost of transporting it went up. But seriously: I only drive on friday once a month when I need to resupply a month's worth of beer and food.
A year ago I was bankrupt and now its looking like I could buy a house next year. Just commit to it and stick with it and these gas prices don't hurt at all.
Invent something fast to inv^H^H^Hliberate Iran, Venezuela, or other oil producing country... wont lower the prices but maximize profits.
Plugin cars are making a lot more sense.
Lots of critics argue plugins don't make economic sense. But looking at the long game ( next few decades ), getting plugins to the point where economies of scale reduces their price is one of the best solutions to this energy problem.
You can thank the Federal Reserve and President. All that quantitative easing (money printing) is doing wonders to the US Dollar, making your imports more expensive, pushing up your energy imports.
Take Nobody's Word For It.
Look it up...
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
The largest contributers to the republican party represent "Big Oil" and "Big Coal". Could this be a ploy to weaken the economy and increase the chances of their candidate being elected?
3.59 a Gallon? I WISH I could pay that price. In Canada we're paying 6.00
Here, its already over 5$
People once told me 68K ram was all we needed,
The price of Gas is not reacting to a Supply vs Demand price rise. 2005 remains the peak of oil consumption in the U.S.
http://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=PET&s=MTTUPUS2&f=M
On the other hand, we are producing more oil. Why hasn't the price fallen?
We have embarked on QE3 (after QE2 and QE1). We are printing money and injecting it into the Financial Institutions on Wall Street. Obviously countries who have been producing products for the United States (like oil) for decades and decades know that the value of the dollar is going to slide. Not saying crash necessarily, but there isn't any doubt in the world it is going to slide.
What do you do if you are such a country? You raise your prices. Because the dollar isn't going to be worth as much going forward.
This is the stated goal of Paul Krugman. Get Inflation up to 5 percent or 6 percent even. That is going to increase (he claims) employment. But prices lag the actual inflation, and wages lag the actual inflation even more.
So the result is going to be higher prices and lower real wages, less ability to buy goods (because we increasingly uses foreign components and raw materials even in domestic goods).
We are proudly following Japan into 20 years of dragging economic activity. And I think that is the up side.
It has already hit hardest to European countries, especially Northern territories. For example in Finland and Sweden gas price is humongous 9 -10 $ /gallon ( = 1.7 - 1.8 euros /l ).
This summer topped at 2.00€/lt (over 10$ per US gallon at today's change) for unleaded petrol here. Over 45% of the price is taxes.
Just saying...
Mastering the English language is fucking easy: all you have to do is to put an f* word in every fucking sentence.
What do they have to do with the price of oil? They provide electricity, which currently comes from other fossil fuels (mostly). This is an issue onto itself (assuming you're not just in denial about carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide) but the only cost issue here is that coal is too fucking cheap for the amount of damage it causes.
Here in the UK, petrol (gasoline) is the equivalent of about $8.30 a gallon. We buy in litres these days and I only realised we are paying > six quid a UK gallon when I did the conversion to post here.
Note to self: Nerds evidently have strong opinions about gasoline pricing, but do not display much insight one cannot get from celebrities, in fewer characters, via twitter.
Gently reply
I live in San Diego and on Monday,October 1st, the local Chevron was 4.09. When I got home, it was 4.19. When I woke up on Tuesday, it was already 4.29. Yesterday, it was already 4.89. Big Oil is saying that a refinery that is responsible for 8% of production, a power outage and the switch from Summer blend to Winter blend (appearently there is different additives during the year) is causing the spike. People out here believe there is gouging going on while the local independent stations are shutting down as they can not afford to buy the gas. That in turn means you can only buy from Big Oil.
It's a bit hard to be a work-from-home machinist.
Learn to take the bus.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
The energy market's derivatives market (itself larger than most entire industries) is not only the most profitable, but also produces the most efficient pricing to the demand.
Wait - it's actually only the most profitable. But don't worry, it's only the market far most essential to all our other economics. Wait - you should worry.
--
make install -not war
Reducing your petrol consumption means that the US will finally start to contribute to reducing CO2 emissions - whether you wanted to or not. Can't argue with global economics.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
It is $4 per gallon. What really irks me is that you can work the math backward and come to the conclusion that a gallon of gasoline costs less than $1.50 to extract, ship, process and distribute. Another $0.50 is tax. So the other $2 - is just pure ass-rape profit.
The more expensive you make it to run refineries, the fewer you have, and then when there's a mishap at one, you're screwed.
This is not exactly supply and demand issue, this is a shrinking economy and inflation issue. The shrinking economy causes people to use less gasoline and inflation causes nominal prices to rise (while real prices are actually falling due to the deflation, so if you measure oil in gold, then you'll see that the prices are falling, not rising).
As the productivity in USA and Europe shrinks, more of the product is distributed to the productive nations, which are able to buy more of that product, but this causes supply irregularities in the countries with less supply.
The situation is similar to what happens in the meat market due to inflation and other factors (like drought). As the supply of feed is reduced due to higher input costs because of inflation and as less supply is produced due to other factors like drought, the farmers start getting rid of their animals, they slaughter more and the prices can fall temporarily. However once that glut of meat is consumed, the overall supply of the animals is reduced and the prices for meat products will jump up.
I believe you are observing the same phenomena right now with oil prices and it's due to higher nominal cost of oil drilling and refining due to inflation as well as lower purchasing power by the population due to the inflation and due to the shrinking economy.
As a side note, the funny jobs numbers that came out (unemployment down to 7.8%) are indeed quite educating to the political situation in USA. 10,000 jobs were added in government and 16,000 jobs were lost in manufacturing sector in September (22,000 manufacturing jobs lost in August). However a 'household survey' shows that 873,000 jobs were created in September, this is the highest number of jobs added in one months since 1983. 66% of these jobs are part time, so the U6 number is unchanged (just under 15%) in September (number of underemployed people as well of those who are unemployed). Don't forget that every revision that comes out the next month revises the job growth numbers down and elections are in November. Don't forget that Obama's white house pressured the military (and other) contractors not to send out pink slips to their employees, who will be fired in 2 months and who must be notified 60 days prior, the white house promised all those contractors to take care of the penalties that they will incur due to this malpractice, this is clearly a violation and manipulation aimed at winning the elections, which is likely highly illegal.
A week ago GDP numbers came out, not that anybody should actually take those numbers at face value, they are absolutely misreported, but even as they are, they were revised down for the second quarter from 1.7 to 1.3%, and this is after using a completely fake deflator of 1.6%. How is it possible that the economy that is "growing" (officially) by 1.6% is adding all these jobs to take the unemployment down to 7.8%? The truth of course is that the economy is shrinking and if the real inflation number is used, then it becomes immediately obvious. Even if the inflation number is only 3%, then the economy is shrinking, because the pre-deflator GDP is 2.9%. The inflation is a few times bigger than that though, so adding jobs in a shrinking economy sound very fishy.
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Think about this: the official deflator for the GDP is 1.6%. Here is a chart of CPI. That's the reported number. The revised GDP is 1.3% Which is down from 1.7% earlier, before the revision. The U6 unemployment number is 15%.
You can't handle the truth.
There is no demand increase or shortage of crude oil.
The tightness in supply of gasoline is due to limited refinery capacity.
Why is there limited refinery capacity? Because the oil companies have been closing refineries.
Why are they doing that? So there can artificially limit supply and drive up price.
http://www.hydrocarbonprocessing.com/Article/3021014/Valero-CEO-believes-refining-capacity-still-too-much-in-US-western-Europe.html
Obama won't fix it but he will allow it to be fixed. Romney will make sure that 90% of Americans are enslaved by the rich.
Anyone who votes for Romney is an ignorant cunt.
Once you realize how much energy is contained in a pound of gasoline and compare that to a pound of lithium batteries you'll understand why. Electric cars will remain a gimmick until cold fusion becomes a reality. Until then try and match the power in petroleum, you can't.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
Anyone who votes for Romney is an ignorant cunt.
Anyone who thinks Obama and Romney are actually different is an ignorant cunt. I think that's what you meant.
It's the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man.
Every state requires its own special gasoline blend which is the most asinine concept ever developed. If California runs out of California blend they cannot buy blends designed for other states. If Nevada runs out of gas, tough shit they have to wait for the refinery to make more. What makes these two states require different gas? All the cars are made the same, a car sold in Alaska can run just fine with gas from Arizona so what is the problem here? Don't get me started on how no new refineries have been built in over 30 years. You don't make money by building refineries that's for sure.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
US Election BS related?
If someone came up with a good in-road delivery system for electricity for cars, they could probably successfully pitch wiring all our roads for electricity
There are already good proposals for doing this that do not require wiring the roads. These proposals assume that in the future cars will be capable of driving in "platoons", separated by only a few inches to reduce drag and increase road capacity.
Option 1: inductive coupling. Cars contain coils in their bumpers that can transmit and receive energy from cars immediately in front or behind them. If you are on a long drive, the computer in your car negotiates with the computer in the other cars and buys power from them. If you are on a short commute, and have spare power, you sell the power to other cars as you drive and make a small profit.
Option 2: magnetic coupling. This is similar, but the bumpers contain electro-magnets that pull or push leading or trailing cars. So if you are on a long trip, you get on a freeway, join a platoon, automatically negotiate to buy power, and then coast to your destination without consuming any of your own battery power. You could even use your engine to recharge your battery as you siphon power from the rest of the platoon.
Both of these proposals assume that cars on short trips are more common than cars on long drives. That is mostly true. But on long stretches of highway it is possible that dedicated vehicles with big batteries (or CNG generators on board) will be used to convoy platoons of regular cars.
Here in lower Michigan I filled up last night at $3.79, at least according to GasBuddy that same station is up to $3.94. Unfortunately this kind of thing is far from usual around here at least. At least once a month it will shoot up 20-30 cents in a day or two, then slowly go back down. Its of course blamed on refinery issues, or pipeline maintenance, or some other excuse. But in all likelihood the gas companies simply know they can.
The higher prices create direct economic incentives to invest in alternatives.
Let the prices rise!
I find it interesting that all your doom and gloom about the real reason for oil prices rising doesn't even mention anything about what it takes to produce oil.
First someone needs to drill in the ground and extract the oil. 20 years ago, you could basically stick a pipe in the ground and oil would come rushing out. It was basically free to produce, so we extracted and sold it as quickly as possible, for very little money. But then we ran out of cheap, easy oil. Now we have to work for it.
We're either off shore in very deep water, since the near shore oil is pretty much all gone, or we are far away from home, in a unstable countries. Increasingly we are even converting sand to oil, which apart from being an environmental catastrophe is already very expensive. It's so expensive and energy intensive that in some cases, a nuclear power plant is required to power the operation.
All these costs add on eachother, since the helicopters which resupply offshore rigs, the oil tankers that bring the oil home, and the mining operation that extracts oil sand from the ground all consume vast quantities of expensive oil.
That's why oil is expensive to begin with.
The reason that the price is now rising above its already high floor, is because of an increase in economic activity in the US and a few other countries. Whether or not this increase continues to pick up steam, we'll have to see, but I don't think anyone has given up on an accelerating economic recovery.
The stock market's value has doubled in the last few years, so the market apparently doesn't share your or the republican party's pessimism, despite a cyclical slow down in each spring of the last 4 years.
In fact, many stock indices are near all time highs.
This is not Slashdot.This is not Slashdot.This is not Slashdot.
The stock market is at 40 year low priced in gold. The fact that the stock market value went up in dollar prices only confirms my point about inflation, it doesn't do anything to help your point.
As to the market being at 2x the nominal value from 2009, yeah, first of all you are looking at the 2009 dip, which was pretty steep, so you are comparing 6,626 in 2009 during the crash to today at 13,610. Compare to 2000. It was around 10,000 in the year 2000.
In the year 2000 gold was 300 and today it's 1778.
When gold was at 300, the Dow was at 10,000, so that's about 1 to 33 ratio.
Today the ratio is 1778 to 13610, which is 1 to 7.6 The value of Dow went down 4.3 times over since 2000.
Eventually Dow and gold will be 1 to 1. Maybe at 10,000 to 10,000 maybe at 100,000 to 100,000, whatever it may be, nominal values do not matter, what matters is the trajectory.
Oil prices are going up, gold is going up, all of the commodities are going up. The product costs and prices are also going up, not as fast, because the market is good at finding efficiencies and bringing costs down despite inflation, but the market cannot beat the laws of thermodynamics and so inflation catches up.
Today more oil is extracted than ever and yet USA consumes less oil than every year since 2005. The prices are going up in nominal terms, while falling in real terms and this is not about supply and demand. Supply and demand curve pushes prices down, it's the inflation that is pushing prices up.
You can't handle the truth.
The stock market is at 40 year low priced in gold.
I get paid in dollars, and I'm doing just fine.
You can take your gold and shove it. Oil is a much more valuable commodity.
Americans do drive twice as much per capita as Europeans but they actually manage to consume four times as much gas.
It's interesting in the context of the fuel economy demands for the year 2025 (2020? I forget) that have been debated in the US. I checked what the situation in the EU is, and cars sold here actually would be close to these limits already. I suspect most of the difference is due to American consumers simply wanting larger cars and more powerful engines.
Low gas prices mean an Obama Win, High prices a Romney Win. So both camps are fighting to move them in the desired direction. Obama's using the threat of the US Reserves to try to keep prices down, meanwhile Romney's got strong support from the investor class that's pushing to keep them up in the hopes of a big pay day in the form of tax cuts if Romney's elected.
The rest of the price increases are just speculators skimming off the top of our civilization. The UN has several studies showing most of the increase of food/energy is due to deregulation in the market that's been going on for 20 years or so.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Hey, pretty soon, North Americans might pay for gas as much as Eupoeans!
I think they should start another war.
Another story described how a $125M government investment in the Internet has resulted in 5.1 million jobs and now forms a substantial chunk of the GDP.
Similar investments in basic research and incentive funding of "harebrained schemes" (some of which collapse) often lead to huge advances and significant benefits. Something called a 'computer' had a similar history ("ENIAC's design and construction was financed by the United States Army during World War II. ").
The hard part is to choose between more support for the ill, disabled and elderly and this other group, the young, education or this other group infrastructure, commerce and yet another bunch protection of labor, minimum wage and , of course, another bunch health and agriculture...on and on...NONE of which have had the payback of basic research (though education and infrastructure do 'ok').
Imagine for a moment, $1 @ gallon biocrude...consider the impact (no deep water drilling, cheaper transportation, cheaper goods, more discretionary spending, etc.).
So do we spend today or invest for tomorrow?
Really.
Why did you post it?
Next time, don't. Everyone wins.
I have no idea how much gas costs, my bicycle runs on doughnuts. The car has been in storage for more than a year and I haven't looked back, I'm healthier and wealthier than ever before.
the most powerful intellect is that unbounded by indubitable preconception
So 1 gallon of gasoline costs 3.78541 times 2.22488 or $8.42
Now stop complaining.
Sigs. We don't need no steenking sigs.
Anyone who does not mod up the parent post is probably a terrorist, too.
I'm staring at my last gas receipt. It is $3.74/gal for "Premium" 93-Octane fuel. The tank full was under US$45.
Usually our gasoline prices are near the lowest in the country during winter, but at this time of year, we're stil on smog formulations.
Gasbuddy says that US$3.49/gal is the current price.
I was driving in southern France last spring and there was definitely a huge difference in gas prices, but I think the octane was 98 too. Filling up was ... let me check that ... US$85. My CC bill shows it with a 0.5% foreign exchange charge and no per-transaction fee. I love my CC.
I don't really drive too much when at home, so fuel prices don't matter much to the household budget. Maybe $400/yr. Usually we fill up about every 3-4 weeks. I love telecommuting.
California screws itself. If you don't like it, stop voting all those yahoooos into your state congress.
Romney changes his stripes so often, it's hard to tell whether he's different from Obama or not.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Anyone who votes for Romney is an ignorant cunt.
Anyone who thinks Obama and Romney are actually different is an ignorant cunt. I think that's what you meant.
I think Obama's 2 cent titanium tax goes too far
On the other hand Romney's 2 cent titanium tax doesn't go to far enough
Well we do pay about $10 per gallon here but on the other hand 33miles per gallon is pretty normal for a European car. I drive a relatively old car with a horribly inefficient engine which only gets me 26 mpg.
Where I live (Western Canada), prices are at $1.139 per litre (Canadian Dollars per litre). I calculate your price to be 0.948 US Dollars per litre. I checked with XE and right now 1 Canadian Dollar is worth 1.02187 US. So when I convert C$1.139/l, I am paying US$1.1639/l. In other words, I am paying 21.59 cents US more per litre than you are, even though the gas may have started out in Canada. The difference being that I likely pay gobs more in tax than you do (where I live 26.96 cents out of every dollar I pay for gas is taxes of one kind or another). Without the taxes I would be paying 0.85 US Dollars per litre (9.8 US cents per litre less than you). There are 3 large refineries within 35 miles of where I live, that collectively refine 422,000 barrels of oil per day. That helps too. If the price here went down to a buck a litre, I"d zip on down to the gas station in half a heartbeat with every jerrycan I had and fill them up before the price went up. I know in other parts of Canada the price is a lot higher (there are some provinces that beat up the local populace with 'Carbon Taxes').
They *are* different. Each one wants to screw you differently. You still get to choose which way you prefer. BTW anyone who claims otherwise is an ignorant cunt.
We pay $9 / gallon in Italy... and yes.. we drive SUV as well... Last week a full tank of gas of my Grand Cherokee has been about $130!
Get back to me when your gas prices exceed $5.76 per gallon, which is what they've been in Australia for the last 12 months (peaking at around $6.05 per gallon).
Obama needs to use a page from GWB and open the Oil Reserves...
Two tanks of gas ago, the radio was reporting $3.99 as the lowest price in half a dozen parts of the Bay Area, and I was mainly seeing under $4.10 at the cheaper stations and $4.20-4.30 at the pricier ones. This week my local cheap station jumped from $3.99 to to $4.07 and then to $4.47 for cash, 10c more for credit. Today in San Francisco the cheaper stations were mostly $4.49 and the expensive ones were $4.75 (though I haven't driven that route recently enough to know what their usual price gap is.)
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Yes. (Ok, probably no, because I'm lazy and didn't like most cars on the market, but I should have done something different when I was in your place :-)
I went through these calculations about a year ago, having driven my mid-80s Chevy van into the ground (well, driven it 110K miles, replaced the engine, driven it another 110K miles, decided not to replace the transmission.) A typical car lasts about 200K miles, so it will use 200K/mpg gallons over its lifetime, gas will cost about $5/gallon, so that's $1million/mpg. (You can quibble about the numbers, but they're in the right ballpark, and $1M is a nice round shiny attractive number.)
That means a 50mpg Prius will need $20K of gas, a 33mpg Honda will need $30K of gas, a 20mpg minivan will need $50K of gas, and 11mpg BMW will need $90K of gas. The Prius cost about $8K more than the 33mpg car I bought, and would have saved about $10K of gas, so that's pretty close. And 2013 car engine models are a few mpg better than the mid-2012 models (I got an early-2012; a bunch of manufacturers didn't have their new engine models out until October/November.)
What I obviously should have done was replace my van with a Prius a couple of years ago when I started a job with a long commute, when there was still a huge tax deduction for buying Priuses - the second van engine only got about 13mpg, so I probably spent $15-20K in gas during its last 50,000 miles. Making a car isn't zero-footprint for the environment, but I was burning through twice its weight in gasoline a year.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
At $4.60 per gallon, that's still cheaper than the $5.03 we pay in the greater Toronto area, the $5.29 they pay in Vancouver and the $5.52 they pay in Montreal.
1. We had the freak situation of THREE major oil refineries shut down and a critical oil pipeline also shut down, which severely constrained gasoline production in the first place.
2. Oil speculators in the commodities markets drove the price of unleaded gasoline through the roof, which made the problem worse, not better.
But now that two of the refineries and the oil pipeline are coming back online this coming week, expect prices to drop 40 cents or more per gallon, since nobody wants to be left "holding the bag" on overpriced petroleum products.
They learned that Americans are actually stupider than even their most wildly optimistic stretch of imagination projected. They kept prices low to keep selling the guzzlers, and ta-da, look at the highways. Watch how this affects (not) our choice of vehicle purchase.
They feared that it could be used to suppress protest or support unpopular rule.
Other countries tend to have higher gas prices than the USA because of taxes levied to support various social programs.
This is bollocks, please stop repeating it.
Actually, taxes on fuels are levied to pay for the roads the cars drive on.
In Australia 37.5 Australian cents are levied out of every litre to pay for road maintenance and it still isn't enough. In my state 100% of speed camera revenue goes to road construction and maintenance yet still there is money taken from income and corporate taxes to make up the shortfall.
In the US, they just take 100% of the money to pay for roads from taxes (or debt, which will eventually be take from taxes).
I prefer fuel taxes to income taxes as they work on consumption. In effect they punish the heaviest and most inefficient users, people who use their car less pay less... and saying this, I own a sports car (not cheap on fuel).
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
You should refrain from commenting on economic matters in the future as you obviously have very little insight.
The man's from the UK! They're not even in the EuroZone. Germany is the driving force behind the EU's economy and they're not bankrupt. They outperform the US every damn year in exports. If the EU collapses, which is very unlikely in fact, the countries behind it will remain. The EU is not the "government" of Europe.
It's the Euro currency that might change, where some countries have to leave it. The EU would persist, but the PIIGS might have to use a domestic currency.
It's the Greeks that are bankrupt, a minor economy in the bigger picture, while the PIIGS are improving quickly in fact according to the most recent economic index. Especially Ireland which has seen its best month's performance in years and Spain's borrowing costs have fallen now that the EU's €100bn bailout scheme is in place.
You should stop watching American TV news if you want to know what's really happening, it's made by idiots for idiots.
But it's been there for a few weeks already.
This song say's it all!
"Working For Gas" Link:
http://thewhalefiatlux.bandcamp.com/track/working-for-gas