Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => The O' Club => Topic started by: danny76 on February 12, 2010, 09:42:16 PM
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Sorry about this abstract thread, i was just looking at some old threads around 9/11, and the price gouging that was being undertaken by fuel suppliers.
In the UK our regular unleaded is now at average £1.20 per litre, around $1.88
Which makes a gallon of normal unleaded around £6.00 or approximately $9.39
Anyone else out there thinking this is tantamount to extortion. :mad:
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The law of supply and demand, get familiar with it. If it looks like WW3 is about to be fought on the middle eastern oil fields, the COMMODITY known as oil will become very valuable, very rare, very fast. No amount of government investigations will change that.
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The price of fuel in the UK (and much of Europe) has little to do with supply/demand... I've been tracking commodity prices for a couple of years and in the last year, the US market price of unleaded gasoline has hovered roughly between $1.90 and $2.10. Global prices in developed nations are not far off from that except in odd markets where access is limited (islands or otherwise isolated nations for example). Figure 5% markup for the distributor, and the rest is all taxes. The market simply hasn't changed enough to account for the big swings in gas prices we see, and the gas distribution companies (the big ones that own the gas stations) are still paying about what they paid when the US markets took a dump. Gas station profits change with demand, but because of the competitive nature of the business they average out over time to just enough to stay operating.
When the govt triples the price of a commodity, it isn't extortion. It is a combination of wealth re-distribution and economic dis-incentive. In other words and in this specific case, the govt figures that people who have enough money to buy gas need to share more with everyone else, and the govt also wants to discourage excessive fuel consumption.
The equivalent situation in the US is for tobacco and alcohol products. The govt determined that both are "evil", so they're taxing the heck out of both products in order to re-distribute wealth and discourage consumption.
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valid points, however the UK taxes the living daylights out of us for alcohol and tobacco as well.
vehicles are hugely expensive here, we have a national health service that has had money thrown at it in exponentially increasing amounts for years to no avail. We have a miniscule armed forces, our police service is tiny and predominantly unarmed, we are closing fire stations left right and centre, an ambulance takes 15 minutes to get to you, irrespective of your condition. Our police now have fewer regular officers and more "community officers", who are really just civvy's in uniform with absolutely no more powers than a civilian.
Pensions have failed totally, the road system is falling apart because we send 40 million pounds a day to europe to repair and build roads for them. Our workers are hog tied by regulations from Brussels which include a 'driving licence' test to be completed before you are able to use a LADDER. Unemployment is going through the roof, largely due to the fact that the indigenous population of this country has no work ethic and a huge number have been on benefits since leaving school.
I love my little country, and have served the crown for a number of years, but getting back to the original moan, we have many, many offshore oil rigs, owned by British companies, i just wondered what the disparity would be between the US fuel prices and our own, and it seems that we are paying five times the going rate
Also, the forecourts make little money from each litre sold, the overwhelming influence on price is government taxation, which on uk fuel is running around 79%. This, coupled with increasing domestic fuel prices, tax on property, death taxation, tax on saving, annual vehicle excise duty, income tax, national insurance, not to mention stealth taxes levied from speed camera's, is breaking the back of the average working man and woman in this country. You would imagine that the increases would fund better public services and infrastructure, but this is not the case.
There are many complaints that the taxes are used to fund the war in Afghanistan, if so why do our troops, as my relatives did in WW1 WW2 Korea and the Falklands, and my self and my friends in Northern Ireland, Iraq, Afghanistan, have to buy their own equipment because the crap that is provided by the military is not up to scratch and costs lives. America has a massively greater personnel and material input in the middle east, but at least your guys are wearing half decent boots, and carrying weapons that don't jam up at the first sign of dust, (not ideal in desert warfare), and i was just interested if you are seeing huge fuel charges or tax rises recently.
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See Rule #14
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The price of fuel in the UK (and much of Europe) has little to do with supply/demand... I've been tracking commodity prices for a couple of years and in the last year, the US market price of unleaded gasoline has hovered roughly between $1.90 and $2.10. Global prices in developed nations are not far off from that except in odd markets where access is limited (islands or otherwise isolated nations for example). Figure 5% markup for the distributor, and the rest is all taxes. The market simply hasn't changed enough to account for the big swings in gas prices we see, and the gas distribution companies (the big ones that own the gas stations) are still paying about what they paid when the US markets took a dump. Gas station profits change with demand, but because of the competitive nature of the business they average out over time to just enough to stay operating.
When the govt triples the price of a commodity, it isn't extortion. It is a combination of wealth re-distribution and economic dis-incentive. In other words and in this specific case, the govt figures that people who have enough money to buy gas need to share more with everyone else, and the govt also wants to discourage excessive fuel consumption.
The equivalent situation in the US is for tobacco and alcohol products. The govt determined that both are "evil", so they're taxing the heck out of both products in order to re-distribute wealth and discourage consumption.
CC that, but I was referring to the 9/11 aspect of it...Aside from that, I expect most European countries look at taxing gasoline as some sort of jolly-do-gooder-save-the-whales sort of thing...like taxing cigs to keep people from smoking
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CC that, but I was referring to the 9/11 aspect of it...Aside from that, I expect most European countries look at taxing gasoline as some sort of jolly-do-gooder-save-the-whales sort of thing...like taxing cigs to keep people from smoking
no, it's a matter of controlling the populace couched as a do gooder safe the whales thing..
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"death taxation" you have got to be kidding, you cant even get out of them by dieing?
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I think the inheritance tax ("Ok, give us 1/3 of the market price of the family farm your father just left you, which has been in your family for generations. Can't do that? Well...sell it, THEN give us that 1/3 of the proceeds...after the capital gains tax, of course") gets a 1 year break either beginning at Christmas, or ending at Christmas
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there are two different taxes, inheritance tax which is state run and estate tax which is federal, there are ways to reduce or eliminate the taxes, consult your tax attorney for details.
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Yah, estate tax is what I was thinking of