carlo.comments: carlo.log → Oct 19th 2004, 10:29 GMT
Lupus
· 5 years ago
Those prices are pretty equivalent to UK prices there - surprising as I thought we had a history of high prices.
Guess you need to be riding pillion on Dana's scooter instead eh? ;-)
Carlo Zottmann
· 5 years ago
Riding pillow, haha :) Great idea. *g*
Really, your prices are equally high? Our fuel prices are like 15-20% actual price and 80-85% taxes. Same in the UK?
terpsichoros
· 5 years ago
Your prices aren't that much tax anymore - there are probably per-liter taxes. In California, the price is about $2.40/gallon. Fixed, per-gallon taxes account for about $0.40 of that, which is a lot when gas is $1.40, but not so much when it's $2.40.
Interesting, the spread between diesel and regular gas; here it's almost never more than 20c/gallon either way. Probably a tax break for the truckers. Do lots of people have diesel cars in Germany?
Two-side
· 5 years ago
Count your blessings, prices are higher over here :(
Xyleth
· 5 years ago
This is all to the best of my knowledge as I am not a tax accountant.
Fuel tax in the UK comprises of two components, Fuel duty and VAT.
Duty is (I think, I'm not clear on this point) fixed per litre by the goverment each budget and used to go up by about 3% above the rate of inflation a year under the fuel esclator introduced by the tories. This was scrapped in 2000 by Labour and duty is now set depending on what Mr Brown calls 'due budget process'.
VAT is charged on the combined price of fuel + duty at 17.5%
A typical litre of unleaded fuel in the UK will cost, on average, about 81p ish.
Of that 59.3p is tax (duty + VAT), about 18p goes to the refinery and the rest goes to the retailer.
Looking at it in gallons the cost is 371.9p per gallon which at current prices is roughly $6.70 USD. Of that $4.86 is tax which is by no means insignificant.
Here in the UK Diesel is usually around 2-3p more expensive than petrol per litre. However Diesel cars are becomming more and more common due to the introduction of new high performance turbo diesels that still return better mileage than petrol cars. However you need to be doing around 15,000 miles p.a. for the better mileage to even out the higher cost of Diesel vs Petrol.
terpsichoros
· 5 years ago
There are gas stations in the US which don't mark up the gasoline at all - they make all their profit from the convenience store and occasional rebates from the distributor.
Over the life of a car, the price difference between diesel and regular gas here in the US is too volatile to count on one being cheaper than the other.
(oh - and based on today's exchange of almost exactly 1E = $1.25, $2.40/gal is about 0.51E/l)
Lupus
· 5 years ago
A related story from 2000, quoting the tax rate as over 75% of the petrol price.
Looking back at the budgets over the last four years: 2000: +2.12p/litre 2001: -2p/litre 2002: no change 2003: +1.28p/litre 2004: +1.42p/litre
So tax wise, we're only a little better off than we were 4 years ago (accounting for inflation), and the recent rises in the price of petrol are at worst 4% (or 2% after accounting for inflation) over the entire four years (so half a per cent over inflation each year).
Things haven't changed as much as it might seem, no matter how much the newspapers might dress it up as a catastrophy.
Zhaneel
· 5 years ago
So, for clarification:
1 gal (US) = 3.79 l
US: $2.40/gal = 1.92E/gal or 0.51E/l = 1.33 lb/gal [lb = British pound, right?] or 35 p/l [p = pence, 100p per lb, right?] UK: 81p/l [from Xyleth] = 1.16 E/l or 4.39E/gal = $1.45/l or $5.48/gal Germany: 1.20E/l or 4.54E/l = $1.50/l or $5.68/gal = 83p/l or 314p/gal
Therefore: Germany has the most expensive gas, then the UK then the US on the basis of pure cash.
Using today's rates. This way we are all talking about the same general thing as I can't readily convert between Euros, USD and pounds and Terp's post in Euros made me confused about comparing to Xyleth's.
Zhaneel
Xyleth
· 5 years ago
lb is only for weight Zhan. The symbol is £ and the letters are GBP.
Zhaneel
· 5 years ago
Okay. I don't know how to make that symbol on my keyboard. I'll use GBP from now.
I was pretty sure lb was for weight only, but it conveyed what I needed.
Zhaneel
enid
· 5 years ago
So minus a few technicalities such as PRT, ACT, CT (I was a tax accountant - for an oil company!) and the difference between an Imperial and US gallons... whats the point?
Are these prices expensive, or are they cheap?
Edited on Oct 20th 2004, 07:55 by enid
Carlo Zottmann
· 5 years ago
[Quote] Are these prices expensive, or are they cheap? [Quote]
Too damn expensive. I have to drive 40-50km every day, that's 200-250km every week, roughly 1000km every month, draw your own conclusions.
The sad thing is, I clearly remember fuel prices being 50% of what we have now -- and that was ~11 years ago.
enid
· 5 years ago
My own conclusions?
Telecommute, buy a more effecient car, use public transport, find a job closer to home.
Or choose to work where you do and pay the price.
Just because something was cheap 10 years ago does not mean it has to be cheap today... 10 years ago I was working on North Sea oil rigs. Now, because of stupidly short sighted British Government policy its all gone.
Believe me - oil will get no cheaper. Oil shortages are here and they are here to stay. Despite George W. and his hordes of Haliburtion buddies.
Seriously, the sooner you manage your dependence on oil the better off you will be.
Edited on Oct 20th 2004, 10:52 by enid
Carlo Zottmann
· 5 years ago
I actually do think about getting a monthly public transportation ticket by now. I'm well aware oil won't get cheaper. Heck, I'd buy a hybrid car in a blink if I could afford a new car.
Anyways, my biggest grief about the fuel prices is that the tax money isn't used for the German environment research/maintenance, it's used to fill holes in our health system. It's less "we want people to think about the efficiency of their cars to reduce our dependency on fossil fuels" but more "we're short on money for non-transportation-related project XYZ, and taxing fuel will rake in the most money". (It's working nonetheless.) Last year they raised taxes for tobacco again, which is okay with me, even tho I enjoy the occasional smoke, and then the government was complaining (off the record) because many people just gave up smoking, didn't buy cigarettes anymore, and the tax income was significantly smaller than they had hoped.
(I for one think it's a great thing people give up smoking. It's more healthy. So when you tax tobacco higher than you did in the past, you somehow encourage people to quit smoking -- especially when you print on every box of smokes everyone will die soon if they don't stop right fucking now. Don't be be upset if they do.)
I probably should've put my post into (my personal) context. Sorry 'bout that.
Edited on Oct 20th 2004, 13:15 by Carlo
enid
· 5 years ago
The idea that tax is put into buckets and assigned specific roles is attractive, but simply dosen't work in a complex, modern economy... Currently my Guinness habit (Guinness costs £18.40 per Imperial Gallon - about USD 24/US gallon- and its is a renewable commodity!) is subsidising a war in Iraq, the NHS, nasty motorways, pensions and subsidies... all sorts of stuff which I may or may not agree with.
All you can do is look at the bigger picture. Your government (like ours) is penalising us for consuming oil. Whether deliberately or not, this encourages us to use less. OPEC want the price much lower to sustain our dependance. The US government seem to believe cheap oil is some kind of right, or that increasing the oil price would make them unelectable (which may be true).
Personally I don't think our governments go way far enough... but if you are at least thinking of using public transport then I guess we are on the way.
Edited on Oct 20th 2004, 14:31 by enid
Zhaneel
· 5 years ago
Telecommute, buy a more effecient car, use public transport, find a job closer to home.
Or choose to work where you do and pay the price.
Not everyone has a choice. I cannot telecommute. Ever. Not as a chemist. My car is effecient and I plan to buy a hybrid [which I hear aren't all that much more effecient] next time I buy a car. I cannot use public transit to get work without it taking me 2-3 hours instead of 40 minutes, which would severly impact my quality of life in a negative fashion. When the economy is bad, you can't just "find a job closer to home" easily. I looked. There are no jobs much closer to my home. So I find a new job that is closer to FanBoy, uproot us from our apartment and move to a more expensive apartment and save on gas.
Therefore, I have to eat the costs. I do the best I can. I carpool. I use mass transit to places other than work. I drew the line at how far away I would work for gas & time reasons. I tried to find somewhere that I could do mass transit first. This job was my 5th interview and 5th choice, but I'd already been refused.
Of course, I could get drastic and quit the job I paid to train for and work somewhere that doesn't earn me as much money but I could walk to.
Zhaneel
enid
· 5 years ago
All good points, Zhan, but remember the question.
Gossip started his blog shocked at the cost of petrol in Germany. I asked him why he thought that the price he paid was expensive, and pointed out that just because something cost a certain price 10 years ago was no good reason for it to cost the same today.
The bottom line is you get to travel 40 minutes... that must be what 30 miles each way. 60 miles in a car that gets... 40 mpg should be about benchmark is 1.5 gallons a day. At $2.40 a gallon thats $3.10.
250 working days a year means thats $775 per annum for travelling expenses.
Sounds like a bargain to me.
My point is what is a FAIR price to pay for your travelling. Its not free. Its not a right. If you burn oil today it will not be about tomorrow.
Are you prepared to continue to shore up a collapsing system with short sightedly low oil prices and put your kids in a far worse position when the oil finally does run out?
Are you prepared to take that risk, or will we dig a little deeper and see if we can solve the problem instead of deferring it?
Edited on Oct 20th 2004, 18:06 by enid
Xyleth
· 5 years ago
We'll do what we always do. We'll keep putting it off until a crisis happens then we'll have a jolly big war over it.
Oh...wait, we've already started doing that :p
Zhaneel
· 5 years ago
[Quote] The bottom line is you get to travel 40 minutes... that must be what 30 miles each way. 60 miles in a car that gets... 40 mpg should be about benchmark is 1.5 gallons a day. At $2.40 a gallon thats $3.10. [Quote]
Well... it is more like 35 mpg as there is slow traffif so that is 1.7 gal/day = $4.11/day [not counting wear & tear on car, oil changes, and the $3 toll/day that I sometimes have to pay].
Which is more like $1027.50/annum for work alone. Doesn't include the travels after work and on weekends, so I'm sure I spend more on gas than that.
I don't like it. I do believe I have done the majority of the reasonable things availible to me. By carpooling at least 75% of the time, my carpool mate spilits the costs with me so it is really about $1027.50 on gas for the both of us [he does mass transit if I'm not taking him, as he's more willing to deal with the timing problems].
For a price, I think that is a FAIR price, given today's economy in terms of monetary value alone. In terms of philosophical price, I think on the one hand it is too cheap [as a lot people will burn oil without thinking instead of trying to carpool or mass transit if possible] and on the other too expensive [I'm still spending that oil].
I do believe in fixing the problem. As I said, hybrid or fuel cell car will be my next purchase to give a message. I support the mass transit system by using it and by voting to increase my own taxes for allotted money to mass transit [hence, why I raised my own bridge toll this past March]. I know that if I had money I was going to invest, I'd look into alternative energy resources. Beyond the motor gas, I try to reduce my energy expenditures at home and at the office by turning off monitors/lights/etc.
But I won't kill my financial sercurity to do more. Because the net effect would be less, as I would have less funds to support mass transit or other projects.
Zhaneel
enid
· 5 years ago
No probs...
Do you think you are spending enough to fix the problem?
Carlo Zottmann
· 5 years ago
[Quote] Gossip started his blog shocked at the cost of petrol in Germany. I asked him why he thought that the price he paid was expensive, and pointed out that just because something cost a certain price 10 years ago was no good reason for it to cost the same today. [Quote]
I'm well aware of that. :) But within those 10 years, our taxes have been raised to a great deal, and that's what's bothering me. As I've said, I already think about mass transit. Switching jobs is something I think about anyways. But all your points aren't applicable everywhere; my family lives in a different part of Germany where they are dependent on cars. You can consider yourself frickin' lucky if you happen to have an employment, and switching to mass transit simply doesn't work there because, well, there isn't much of mass transit.
It's different in the urban areas, true.
Still, we picked the car we picked for its good mileage. I do 100km (62miles) on 5.3l (1.4gal) -- that's 44.3mpg, if I'm not wrong. It's not bad, or is it?
Doesn't change the fact that we're among the countries with the highest fuel prices in the world, which for the moment is starting to rip a hole in my pocket.
Can't wait for affordable hybrids or alternate types of fuel. There's a good number of hydrogen-powered busses in Munich, did you know? We're getting there. But it'll take some time, I think. Still, we're on our way.
enid
· 5 years ago
I agree, Gossip - I think we are on our way.
I seem to be stuck in two conversations here... I paraphrased my earlier comments for Zhaneel and I am sure you were quite aware of what we had said :)
But lets do your maths...12,000km per annum at an impressive 5.3l/100km is 636 litres per annum. At EUR1.2/litre thats still just Eur 763 per annum.... curiously almost exactly the same cost as Zhaneel... Her car's relative ineffeciency is completely cancelled out by cheap US petrol prices.
Now I still reckon thats a bargain! Full mobility for EUR 2 per day... put it in perspective - for less than the cost of a pint of beer you get to live anywhere within a 50 km radius of your work.
But the bottom line is, as you say, we ARE getting there - and I think thats mainly 'cos the price of petrol is so expensive we are chosing to change... and thats my point :)
Zhaneel
· 5 years ago
Not completely my car's fault. I can get better mileage when I'm not stuck in "stop and go" traffic.
All Comments
Guess you need to be riding pillion on Dana's scooter instead eh? ;-)
Really, your prices are equally high? Our fuel prices are like 15-20% actual price and 80-85% taxes. Same in the UK?
Interesting, the spread between diesel and regular gas; here it's almost never more than 20c/gallon either way. Probably a tax break for the truckers. Do lots of people have diesel cars in Germany?
Fuel tax in the UK comprises of two components, Fuel duty and VAT.
Duty is (I think, I'm not clear on this point) fixed per litre by the goverment each budget and used to go up by about 3% above the rate of inflation a year under the fuel esclator introduced by the tories. This was scrapped in 2000 by Labour and duty is now set depending on what Mr Brown calls 'due budget process'.
VAT is charged on the combined price of fuel + duty at 17.5%
A typical litre of unleaded fuel in the UK will cost, on average, about 81p ish.
Of that 59.3p is tax (duty + VAT), about 18p goes to the refinery and the rest goes to the retailer.
Looking at it in gallons the cost is 371.9p per gallon which at current prices is roughly $6.70 USD. Of that $4.86 is tax which is by no means insignificant.
Here in the UK Diesel is usually around 2-3p more expensive than petrol per litre. However Diesel cars are becomming more and more common due to the introduction of new high performance turbo diesels that still return better mileage than petrol cars. However you need to be doing around 15,000 miles p.a. for the better mileage to even out the higher cost of Diesel vs Petrol.
Over the life of a car, the price difference between diesel and regular gas here in the US is too volatile to count on one being cheaper than the other.
(oh - and based on today's exchange of almost exactly 1E = $1.25, $2.40/gal is about 0.51E/l)
A more useful graph of recent prices
Looking back at the budgets over the last four years:
2000: +2.12p/litre
2001: -2p/litre
2002: no change
2003: +1.28p/litre
2004: +1.42p/litre
So tax wise, we're only a little better off than we were 4 years ago (accounting for inflation), and the recent rises in the price of petrol are at worst 4% (or 2% after accounting for inflation) over the entire four years (so half a per cent over inflation each year).
Things haven't changed as much as it might seem, no matter how much the newspapers might dress it up as a catastrophy.
1 gal (US) = 3.79 l
US: $2.40/gal = 1.92E/gal or 0.51E/l = 1.33 lb/gal [lb = British pound, right?] or 35 p/l [p = pence, 100p per lb, right?]
UK: 81p/l [from Xyleth] = 1.16 E/l or 4.39E/gal = $1.45/l or $5.48/gal
Germany: 1.20E/l or 4.54E/l = $1.50/l or $5.68/gal = 83p/l or 314p/gal
Therefore: Germany has the most expensive gas, then the UK then the US on the basis of pure cash.
Using today's rates. This way we are all talking about the same general thing as I can't readily convert between Euros, USD and pounds and Terp's post in Euros made me confused about comparing to Xyleth's.
Zhaneel
I was pretty sure lb was for weight only, but it conveyed what I needed.
Zhaneel
Are these prices expensive, or are they cheap?
Edited on Oct 20th 2004, 07:55 by enid
Too damn expensive. I have to drive 40-50km every day, that's 200-250km every week, roughly 1000km every month, draw your own conclusions.
The sad thing is, I clearly remember fuel prices being 50% of what we have now -- and that was ~11 years ago.
Telecommute, buy a more effecient car, use public transport, find a job closer to home.
Or choose to work where you do and pay the price.
Just because something was cheap 10 years ago does not mean it has to be cheap today... 10 years ago I was working on North Sea oil rigs. Now, because of stupidly short sighted British Government policy its all gone.
Believe me - oil will get no cheaper. Oil shortages are here and they are here to stay. Despite George W. and his hordes of Haliburtion buddies.
Seriously, the sooner you manage your dependence on oil the better off you will be.
Edited on Oct 20th 2004, 10:52 by enid
Anyways, my biggest grief about the fuel prices is that the tax money isn't used for the German environment research/maintenance, it's used to fill holes in our health system. It's less "we want people to think about the efficiency of their cars to reduce our dependency on fossil fuels" but more "we're short on money for non-transportation-related project XYZ, and taxing fuel will rake in the most money". (It's working nonetheless.) Last year they raised taxes for tobacco again, which is okay with me, even tho I enjoy the occasional smoke, and then the government was complaining (off the record) because many people just gave up smoking, didn't buy cigarettes anymore, and the tax income was significantly smaller than they had hoped.
(I for one think it's a great thing people give up smoking. It's more healthy. So when you tax tobacco higher than you did in the past, you somehow encourage people to quit smoking -- especially when you print on every box of smokes everyone will die soon if they don't stop right fucking now. Don't be be upset if they do.)
I probably should've put my post into (my personal) context. Sorry 'bout that.
Edited on Oct 20th 2004, 13:15 by Carlo
All you can do is look at the bigger picture. Your government (like ours) is penalising us for consuming oil. Whether deliberately or not, this encourages us to use less. OPEC want the price much lower to sustain our dependance. The US government seem to believe cheap oil is some kind of right, or that increasing the oil price would make them unelectable (which may be true).
Personally I don't think our governments go way far enough... but if you are at least thinking of using public transport then I guess we are on the way.
Edited on Oct 20th 2004, 14:31 by enid
Or choose to work where you do and pay the price.
Not everyone has a choice. I cannot telecommute. Ever. Not as a chemist. My car is effecient and I plan to buy a hybrid [which I hear aren't all that much more effecient] next time I buy a car. I cannot use public transit to get work without it taking me 2-3 hours instead of 40 minutes, which would severly impact my quality of life in a negative fashion. When the economy is bad, you can't just "find a job closer to home" easily. I looked. There are no jobs much closer to my home. So I find a new job that is closer to FanBoy, uproot us from our apartment and move to a more expensive apartment and save on gas.
Therefore, I have to eat the costs. I do the best I can. I carpool. I use mass transit to places other than work. I drew the line at how far away I would work for gas & time reasons. I tried to find somewhere that I could do mass transit first. This job was my 5th interview and 5th choice, but I'd already been refused.
Of course, I could get drastic and quit the job I paid to train for and work somewhere that doesn't earn me as much money but I could walk to.
Zhaneel
Gossip started his blog shocked at the cost of petrol in Germany. I asked him why he thought that the price he paid was expensive, and pointed out that just because something cost a certain price 10 years ago was no good reason for it to cost the same today.
The bottom line is you get to travel 40 minutes... that must be what 30 miles each way. 60 miles in a car that gets... 40 mpg should be about benchmark is 1.5 gallons a day. At $2.40 a gallon thats $3.10.
250 working days a year means thats $775 per annum for travelling expenses.
Sounds like a bargain to me.
My point is what is a FAIR price to pay for your travelling. Its not free. Its not a right. If you burn oil today it will not be about tomorrow.
Are you prepared to continue to shore up a collapsing system with short sightedly low oil prices and put your kids in a far worse position when the oil finally does run out?
Are you prepared to take that risk, or will we dig a little deeper and see if we can solve the problem instead of deferring it?
Edited on Oct 20th 2004, 18:06 by enid
Oh...wait, we've already started doing that :p
Well... it is more like 35 mpg as there is slow traffif so that is 1.7 gal/day = $4.11/day [not counting wear & tear on car, oil changes, and the $3 toll/day that I sometimes have to pay].
Which is more like $1027.50/annum for work alone. Doesn't include the travels after work and on weekends, so I'm sure I spend more on gas than that.
I don't like it. I do believe I have done the majority of the reasonable things availible to me. By carpooling at least 75% of the time, my carpool mate spilits the costs with me so it is really about $1027.50 on gas for the both of us [he does mass transit if I'm not taking him, as he's more willing to deal with the timing problems].
For a price, I think that is a FAIR price, given today's economy in terms of monetary value alone. In terms of philosophical price, I think on the one hand it is too cheap [as a lot people will burn oil without thinking instead of trying to carpool or mass transit if possible] and on the other too expensive [I'm still spending that oil].
I do believe in fixing the problem. As I said, hybrid or fuel cell car will be my next purchase to give a message. I support the mass transit system by using it and by voting to increase my own taxes for allotted money to mass transit [hence, why I raised my own bridge toll this past March]. I know that if I had money I was going to invest, I'd look into alternative energy resources. Beyond the motor gas, I try to reduce my energy expenditures at home and at the office by turning off monitors/lights/etc.
But I won't kill my financial sercurity to do more. Because the net effect would be less, as I would have less funds to support mass transit or other projects.
Zhaneel
Do you think you are spending enough to fix the problem?
I'm well aware of that. :) But within those 10 years, our taxes have been raised to a great deal, and that's what's bothering me. As I've said, I already think about mass transit. Switching jobs is something I think about anyways. But all your points aren't applicable everywhere; my family lives in a different part of Germany where they are dependent on cars. You can consider yourself frickin' lucky if you happen to have an employment, and switching to mass transit simply doesn't work there because, well, there isn't much of mass transit.
It's different in the urban areas, true.
Still, we picked the car we picked for its good mileage. I do 100km (62miles) on 5.3l (1.4gal) -- that's 44.3mpg, if I'm not wrong. It's not bad, or is it?
Doesn't change the fact that we're among the countries with the highest fuel prices in the world, which for the moment is starting to rip a hole in my pocket.
Can't wait for affordable hybrids or alternate types of fuel. There's a good number of hydrogen-powered busses in Munich, did you know? We're getting there. But it'll take some time, I think. Still, we're on our way.
I seem to be stuck in two conversations here... I paraphrased my earlier comments for Zhaneel and I am sure you were quite aware of what we had said :)
But lets do your maths...12,000km per annum at an impressive 5.3l/100km is 636 litres per annum. At EUR1.2/litre thats still just Eur 763 per annum.... curiously almost exactly the same cost as Zhaneel... Her car's relative ineffeciency is completely cancelled out by cheap US petrol prices.
Now I still reckon thats a bargain! Full mobility for EUR 2 per day... put it in perspective - for less than the cost of a pint of beer you get to live anywhere within a 50 km radius of your work.
But the bottom line is, as you say, we ARE getting there - and I think thats mainly 'cos the price of petrol is so expensive we are chosing to change... and thats my point :)
Zhaneel