Text 8675, 39 rader
Skriven 2007-12-23 09:15:28 av Robert Bashe (2:2448/44)
   Kommentar till text 8649 av Björn Felten (2:203/2)
Ärende: Gas prices (was: Euro values)
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Björn Felten wrote to Ward Dossche on Sunday December 23 2007 at 01:19:

JB>>> Gee, I guess inflation in 4 times as rampant in Be

WD>> Taxes at the pump, that's all there is to it.

BF> Really? You mean that the fact that oil prices has gone from $4/brl in
BF> the early 70's to $70-80 today has anything to do with it?

Less than you would think, apparently. For one thing, you have to quote prices
on a current dollar basis - those $4 in the early 70s are a good deal more
nowadays (remember the stagflation of the 70s?). And another factor is
presumably technical improvement in the refining process over the years - more
gallons of gas per barrel of oil.

It's pretty obvious that the price development of oil is not identical to that
of refined products such as gas, since otherwise the price of gas nowadays
(EXCLUDING tax) would be 15-20 times what it was in the 70s, and that's not
even close to the truth.

What _has_ changed since the 70s - in Germany and presumably elsewhere in the
EU - are the taxes on fuels, which have skyrocketed.

Did you know that DM 0.10 per liter of the gas tax in Germany is earmarked for
payment of the German Federal Railway debts? That was tacked on in the early
90s. And of course there's the "environment tax" the Greens pushed through in
the late 90s, which increased the price of gas at the pump another approx. EUR
0.10 a liter - but has nothing to do with the environment except for the name.

All that on top of the "normal" mineral oil tax, on which value added tax is
also charged - tax on tax.

Ward is right on this one: gas is cheap, even nowadays. Look at the States,
where the tax on gas is low.

Cheers, Bob

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