I suggest we plead with the Federal Reserve and Treasury Department to print up another mountain of fiat currency to pay for the oil company wars. That way we'll pay for them all through inflation and higher prices without knowing it.
Add federal excise tax of 18.4 cents per gallon which brings California (highest) to 68.9 cents per gallon and Alaska (lowest) to 26.4 cents per gallon.
Exxon Mobile has been pilloried by liberals, Democrats, and the OWS idiots for making 9 cents per gallon profit.
If any of these people where honest they would see it is the government, not the big corporations, that are gouging them.
So much whining here in the States about the price of gas and yet it is so cheap compared to Europe. Yes, oil wars should be paid for by raising the federal tax on gas. And yes, we need to develop good public transportation.
I believe that number is now more like 20 cents per gallon. Even so, that's still less than the tax on that gallon of gas.
When you think about it, it is amazing that a crude product that is pulled from the ground 10,000 miles away, put on a ship and transported to America, then refined into gasoline, put on tanker trucks and distributed to individual filling stations around the country costs less per gallon than city water that is pulled from a local river, filtered, and sold as bottled water.
Alaskans are local conservatives but national communists. Alaska has never come close to paying its own freight, always sucking tax dollars from the lower 48.
Yes and they have very efficient public and inexpensive public transportation. You can go to any village, regardless of how small, from and other village or city. Yes, there is a higher tax, but it is also not necessary to own an automobile. Americans are spoiled. I am not sure what part the oil companies played in destroying public transportation in the US, but the auto industry played a large role in that destruction. Until after WW II Los Angeles had a great public transportation system. After the war GM bought it and systematically destroyed it. It is not an isolated story.
I've been to several Euroweenie countries, and they can keep their buses & trains. Public transportation here will always suck tax $, and will never be efficient, due to the size of the country. You are talking about several countries that are together smaller than Montana. I don't know how you came to hate Americans, I don't hear ANYONE complaining about the price of gas. Discussing it. You should learn the difference.
You view is much too narrow. I have traveled within countries in Europe on very efficient public transportation. But I have also engaged in international travel on public transportation systems, rail and bus at very low prices and in very efficient times. To say we are too large is simply a ruse and is not true.
Oh, I don't hate Americans. I do think that most of us are spoiled when it comes to automobiles. We do have a very inefficient transportation system. If I drive to DC or Baltimore I pass thousands of cars with only one person in them. That is extremely inefficient and a very poor use of our petroleum resources. Let's say that the average for all cars is 30 miles per gallon. Lets say I pass 6000 cars with one person in them as I drive 30 miles to DC or Baltimore. This is not an unreasonable number during rush hour. It actually would be more, 3 lanes of bumper to bumper traffic in both directions is easily more than 6000 cars in 30 miles.
That means those 6000 cars use 6000 gallons of gasoline to cover that distance. Now if we had good public transpiration systems, say trams, that carry 200 people per tram we could move that same number of people, 6000, for only 30 gallons of gas given the assumption that the distance per mile is the same. Actually it probably would be less than 30 mpg on the tram and less on commuter trains. We would saves tons of money on petroleum, less on road repairs, less on road construction ... construction and repair really sucks tax money. Our current system is very wasteful.
Will someone please point out to Crabby the hypocrisy of his complaining about the number of people that he sees driving with one person in the car while he is driving?
Also I note that he says "as I drive" and not "as I carpool".
This sort of reminds me of the days when he critcized people for not caring about global warming while he flies on jets between Europe and the U.S.
The U.S. is too large for public transportation to work everywhere. Europe has been settled for centuries and is densely populated. Transportation routes are well established. The U.S. interstate highway system is only about 50 years old. Get west of the Mississippi River and there are wide open spaces.
<sigh> Yes, we are spoiled by FREEDOM, which allows us to drive wherever we want to go in vehicles that we OWN.
Yes, it is an inefficient use of resources. People are free to carpool or use public transportation. They have choices.