The price per litre in the USA has averaged 77 cents per litre for the last six months.

The price per litre in the UK has averages 163.3 cents per litre. Don't complain.

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Wyrd bið ful aræd - bull!

In all fairness, the title of the thread is "Price of gasoline".

Now, THAT discussion belongs in 'Politics'. I don't disagree with what you said, but I wasn't looking at politics.
The discussion about the price of petrol belongs here.

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Wyrd bið ful aræd - bull!

That's the first time I've ever seen an American actually openly say that US military operations are directly designed to assist the oil industry.
Thanks, that explains why petrol seems so ridiculously cheap in the USA - it's half paid for in taxes.

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Wyrd bið ful aræd - bull!

Direct subsidies.

http://priceofoil.org/fossil-fuel-subsidies/
As of October 2017, Oil Change International estimates United States fossil fuel exploration and production subsidies at $20.5 billion annually. Other credible estimates of annual United States fossil fuel subsidies range from $10 billion to $52 billion annually – yet none of these include costs borne by taxpayers related to the climate, local environmental, and health impacts of the fossil fuel industry.

Fossil fuel subsidies in the United States also include massive military expenditures to acquire and defend fossil fuel interests around the globe, and infrastructure spending and related maintenance based on an antiquated energy system built on large, remote power plants and cheap electricity

Military indirect subsidies.
http://www.dollarsandsense.org/archives/2010/0510dancs.html


Here's another that shows a range of other incentives that equate monetarily into subsidies.
https://grist.org/energy-policy/2011-10-26-direct-subsidies-to-fossil-fuels-are-tip-of-melting-iceburg/


https://www.taxpayer.net/energy-natural-resources/federal-subsidies-corn-ethanol-corn-based-biofuels/
Direct subsidies for corn-based ethanol are actually poorly hidden indirect subsidies for the petroleum industry because they have artificially increased the use of petroleum products (fuel and pesticides/herbicides) for a product that is the most inefficient source of ethanol that could have been chosen because it is the only source that requires an extensive use of petroleum products to create the ethanol. The only reason that the US has allowed corn based ethanol to become the standard is because of a teamup of the farm lobby and the oil industry lobby.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/fossil-fuel-subsidies-cost-5-trillion-annually-and-worsen-pollution/
The world’s largest energy subsidizers are also its largest energy consumers, led by the China and the United States, which together account for a projected $3 trillion in 2015 energy subsidies...



One thing that I've not even approached in this list is the subsidized cost to taxpayer health and to the environment.

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Nolite te bastardes carborundorum

Progpen, thank you for explaining this for the folks. It’s so much more than I could ever do and you explained it so they could see what I was trying to say. Like you said we don’t talk about it here. It is not talked about and most of don’t even know it. Most of us think it’s the poor and lazy that are draining our taxes but, no it’s us and our big pickups and SUV’s and all the plastic. We are sacrificing our soldiers, our health and mental health in the very things that are killing us and the whole planet. But don’t forget that the rest of the world needs energy too. You have been using us too. We keep the oil flowing for you, too. Why else have we been the “leader of the free world” and your ally. Your governments know this. It isn’t because we are the most democratic.

Thank you Mr Progpen for your answer to my question. I was unaware of the numbers. However, under the table you provided with the link https://grist.org/energy-policy/2011-10-26-direct-subsidies-to-fossil-fuels-are-tip-of-melting-iceburg/ there is a paragraph which states the following:

Obviously fossil fuels have gotten the bulk of government help — 70 percent to renewables’ 10 percent, for a total of $594 billion in fossil-fuel subsidies over the last 60 years.

$594 billion divided by 60 years gives us an average of $9.9 billion/year, very far from $500 billion/year advanced in your letter. These subsidies applied to fossil fuels, not only to petrol/gasoline. Would it be possible that you made a miscalculation ? Or maybe I misunderstood ?

I remember when gas was more than $4/gallon and that was almost all you heard politicians or political wonks talk about. It was quite similar to the talk about real estate prices. How high will it go? Who's to blame? Why are "they" doing this to us? That was really all you heard on the radio and TV. But then there were some of us who understood that $4/gallon was closer to "normal" than any politician would ever admit to. Just like there were people who fully understood that real estate prices were nowhere near realistic or sustainable. But the only ones getting air time were those shrieking that no one could possibly know who was causing it or why and that we all just needed to ride it out...

And keep buying Hummers and McMansions.

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Nolite te bastardes carborundorum

Progpen -

your words "Many Americans (me included) have been very uncomfortable talking about military activity in the middle east being tied directly to control of oil resources. When I was in the military it was never mentioned (only liberation and democracy). " were yet another knot undone in the tangle of problematic issues that have been brought to the fore by recent events. For me, and for many, it provides an answer as to why - in the light of the above - the American people themselves didn't show enough outrage about this?

The trouble with the isolationist bubble in which the majority of ordinary Americans lives is that it's not one-way. While not every American is able to look out of that protectionist film; we, outside, can see in. Especially now. For years, with America's military aggression on constant display, the "ordinary" people everywhere have viewed events with all the the above facts and figures and reactions in the forefront of the mind. And all the countries that have been invaded and/or devastated by the USA have watched in horror as it continues: - with no apparent thought as to the millions upon millions of men, women & children who have died for greed. Because this has always been the elephant in the room in any discussion on America with the rest of the world:"How come a whole population is complicit in this?"

Now I've seen - helped a lot by Foundit's posts - how propaganda and jingoism have produced a society in which a certain distortion of "patriotism" is inculcated in some children at school. And that made things clearer.

Yet I still couldn't equate the fact that the "ordinary" person with kids and grandkids and family, could know about all this and not consider those other human beings (far, far away, in a country that no-one has ever heard of in Flint, Michigin?)People just like us are watching their mothers, babies, grandchildren killed in grotesque ways in their own homes because of...well, a bunch of 'old, white men', in a white house, in a country as remote from them as the moon.

If only those who aren't ignorant of the real world, and who acknowledge the word "sentient" preceding 'beings' is there as a descriptor, had spoken up a little louder? If only we outside had known for sure that there were actually two voices to listen to instead of only the might-is-right meme passed out to the rest of the world.

Because the people of many countries have good reason not to be fans: it's simply mind-boggling to know that no-one alive in the world to-day, has ever known a time when America was not at war. So all of this plays into the current situation and is an integral part of how the rest of the world views the Current Administration in the USA.As a further progression of the military-industrial alliance that rules policy.

I find it comfortably reassuring now to know that many "ordinary" people there do see why America is considered one of the greatest threats to the planet.

As you can see - this isn't a political point of view: it's a humanist one. I'm not rubbishing any particular party or leader - I'm trying to equate the sweet, kindly, "ordinary" person with the chisel-jawed, narrow-eyed soldier who represent America to so many people in any discussion of Trump et.al.


I brought up this elephant-in-the-room once before but FD's was the dominant political voice there - and he was outraged (or course), and went down the "you're insulting me" route, while leaving the general impression that I was a dribbling (female?) imbecile. I took that, at the time, as "America's" response. It really has helped my understanding that your country is indeed full of diverse thoughts and attitudes and that not everyone has blind faith in the way the USA spreads democracy.

So thank you for taking the time to post what you did.

What can I say to try to explain this diversness that is America. It seems easier when I think of it as how the invaded have felt living among the invaders. We all shop at Walmart. Shaquille O’Neal said he spent $70,000 and furnished his own house. Now, Trump or Pruitt don’t. But, even Michelle Obama shopped at Target. We enjoy it. The garbage we bring home ends up in landfills. You wouldn’t believe how much easier and cheaper it is to buy a shirt than to make one. It tears up sometimes the first wash when the seams come apart. Our landfills are overflowing with cheap clothes. You can’t give it away. My mother has been dead 15 years and I still have a beautiful blue wool jacket she made me and I always get compliments. Everything has a cost and nothing has value anymore.

I don’t mean to sound so pessimistic. Donald Trump has just about done me in. I love my country. I love law. That all men are equal before the law. It hasn’t always been so, I can prove that. But the idea that was supposed is noble. I believe in nobility. Solomon said he had seen princes walk. The law is imposed on the powerful as well as the weak. That is noble and Trump is the opposite of that.

DragO, thanks for breaking down the issues of governments and economies being different. I think we have more corporatism than most realize and how they are having a direct effect on our whole government. So many examples. We went into Iraq with our military but supported by private security corporations, all the food service corporations, and followed by oil corporations. At the border right now those are children are being held in private corporations facilities supervised by paid guards. Who is responsible for the corporations? In some of the little towns here in south Texas there are lots of jobs opening. It’s going to be a money-making machine. And of course south Texas needs jobs. The poorest people in the state. Have you ever seen what happens when you give oppressed people a little power over other oppressed people?

I read today the US may pull out of UN committee on human rights. Hum?

Sorry, I got off track.

How about how public schools are being bought out by corporations. One in particular here in south Texas and San Antonio. Studies show the population of private schools publicly funded are predominantly white. You can drive your child to one of the better private schools if you can afford it.

We fight. Not with guns, but with words and social and political action.

Elie Wiesel - Romanian-born American Jewish writer, professor, political activist, Nobel Laureate, and Holocaust survivor.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elie_Wiesel

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Nolite te bastardes carborundorum