Shell, the Anglo-Dutch oil company, is reporting very healthy profits which the Daily Express sensationally reported as £300 per second and there has been a chorus decrying this as ‘obscene’ (sundry Labour MPs) and according to Martin O’Neill (chairman of the trade and industry select committee) ‘beyond the dreams of avarice’.
So let me make sure I understand this… of the approximately 80p per litre (about $5.70 per US gallon) charged for gasoline at the pump in Britain, only about 16p is what the oil company charges: the rest is all tax.
And the politicians, who are responsible for four fifths of what is paid by British motorists to fill up their fuel tanks, are stamping their feet and threatening additional ‘windfall’ taxes on the companies responsible for the remaining one fifth of what is paid.
These politicians and their baying supporters are so wrapped up in a culture of value destroying appropriation and predation that they cannot see the true obscenity. To see that they need do nothing more than look in a mirror.
The company should have a large sign on the forecourt of every single petrol station they own in Britain with the following message:
Dear Motorists,
Do you think you are paying too much for your petrol? Well about 80% of what you are paying is tax, so if you want to pay less, do not come to us, go to your MP and ask him why you have to pay so much… and remember his answer next time you get the urge to vote.
Have a nice day.
Royal Dutch Shell
The problem is not Big Oil, the problem is Big Government.
Aren’t you missing something?
You seem to have left out the cost.
cost + profit + taxes = final sale price.
No argument with the basic premise, though: it is obscene that anyone would call profit-making obscene.
The OIL companies are providing a service and increasing the general overall well being of the citizens (whoopsie….subjects), which is why they get such a miniscule part of the swag.
On the other hand, the Government promotes fear and lothing, makes sure that the subjects have to cower in the homes in fear of inturders assaulting and robbing them and provide terrible service. Surly they deserve the lions share of the loot? Read your Orwell. Some pigs are more equal then others.
Surely you don’t expect the government to make less than the company who’s done all the work, do you? ;^)
We get the same whining in Canada every year when the banks announce their profits. Given that I and just about everybody I know has investment funds, almost all of which include many banks, you’d think people would be doing cartwheels to celebrate the fact that an important part of their financial portfolio is doing well. Yet all we hear is complaints about how obscene it is. Perhaps people just feel the need to toe the anti-capitalist line in public due to the intolerant leftist culture.
This really gets old. We have been going through this in the US for years now.
When the price is down, oil companies are shedding employees and independents are telling black jokes about the way to get a geologist out of a tree (answer: cut the rope), the rest of the country is singing ‘Happy Days are Here Again’ and the politicians are breaking their arms patting themselves on the back.
When the price is up, we hear about ‘Obscene profits’ and there is a hue and cry for an investigation that inariably begins with much fanfare and will end several years later with a discreet article on a back page of the financial section quietly mentioning that there was, actually, nothing wrong. The indictments are always trumpeted and the exoneration is always muted.
Perry’s idea of a listing of taxes on the gas pump is a fantasy that every persecuted oilman enjoys from time to time. Unfortunately, the corporations that own the pumps are extremely solicitous of the feelings of the politicans who do the persecuting. The last thing they want to do is to rile them by pointing out their frauds.
The only exception I can think of was the late lamented Mobil Oil Corporation – now a part of Exxon-Mobil. Mobil had a rebellious streak in their corporate culture and at one time -wonder of wonders- stood up to Jimmy Carter when he was making political points by bashing us in the late 1970’s. I realize that this only puts them on a par with drowning rabbits in the courage catagory, but this was so much more courageous than any of the other majors that they are still the subject of late evening toasts in the industry. They were rewarded, as I recall, by being the butt of a special televised Oval Office speech on evil oil companies and the “moral equivalent of war’. THAT was the last time any of the majors stuck their heads above the parapet.
So, Perry, it is a great idea, and I thank you for the sentiment. But it isn’t going to happen.
Andrew writes “Perhaps people just feel the need to toe the anti-capitalist line in public due to the intolerant leftist culture.”
Nope – never have, never will… Funnily enough, none of my colleagues this morning were much perturbed by the Shell news this morning, but then, I don’t work at the Guardian! I think you’d find that the avarage ‘man in the street’ isn’t much bothered, either. It’s yet another ‘news’ story wholly manufactured by the media and/or pressure groups
It attracted a little more attention here in the People’s Republic of Scotland – land of the inventor of capitalism, yet home to the politics of greed, envy and complaint.
Of course, one needs to bear in mind that the government’s budget (run by a Scot, oddly enough) has a multi-billion hole in it and we probably have an election in the next couple of months. Three guesses what’s top of the post-election fiscal agenda if Labour wins.
EG
TJIC writes:
“Aren’t you missing something?
You seem to have left out the cost.
cost + profit + taxes = final sale price.”
Shouldn’t underpants be in that equation somewhere?
At one time here in North Carolina, the amount of Federal and State taxes per gallon was indeed printed on the pump. I’ll have to look the next time I’m filling up.
It’s a tried and true formula: pick an ‘obscenely’ profitable industry, fund pressure groups to conduct studies that demonize said industry and guilt-trip its patrons, and then ramp up the charges. Happened with alcohol, happened with tobacco, happened with oil.
David Beatty has given me a great idea: wouldn’t it be nice to require labels on everything that showed how much of the actual cost was taxes? Imagine the politicians having a stroke over that idea….. it makes me smile just to think about it.
So, do you guys really believe that we should get rid of tax on oil entirely? I’m not convinced that that would be the mecca you seem to think that it would be.
So, imagine the situation. Britain, as run by a suddenly pro-oil government, decides to scrap tax on oil. So, all of a sudden, Britain has the cheapest oil in the EU (and yes, I realise that virtually nobody who reads this website will like the EU at all). So, the whole of Calais comes over to Kent to buy their petrol, because it would almost certainly be cheaper to do that. Also, a huge number of companies see that Britain is cheaper, and so they all come in here. But they need some cheap labour…hmm, wonder where they’ll get that…hmm…imigrants perhaps, except that I guess you guys oppose that (correct me if i’m wrong).
I can see that destabilising the world economy quite rapidly myself.
And yes, I realise that this post will almost certainly be deleted and classified as a flame because it puts forward a non-ASI viewpoint.
BTW, your buttons do not work in Mozila because of one of the your capitalist’s rollmodel: Microsoft. To try and screw Netscape over, they invented HTML and Javascript extensions which are not compatilbe with NS or web standards. It was a not-for-profit oganisation (yes, I realise you might find that concept hard to understand) that made microsoft sort some it out. And Firefox (that bastion of communism) is by far the best browser nowadys anyway, but i guess you guyd are all still on Internet Explorer, the product of capitalism, with all its viruses and spyware. Enjoy!
I’m pretty sure South Carolina puts the price of taxes on the gas pumps as well.
John:
You have CAPITALISM to thank for the fact that you have a computer at all. But I guess that point would be lost on you, since you’re too busy worshiping the state.
Amen to that, Perry.
Yes, Richard, most would have a heart attack and the next things that would happen would likely be a tax revolt.
Then again, if the National Sales Tax replaces the Federal Income Tax in the United States, we would indeed see the exact tax on a product.
We discussed something similar around a year ago. It baffles me that oil companies do not have LARGE signs on all their pumps all over the country noting:
COST OF OUR OIL – 5P a litre
GOVERNMENT TAX 25P a litre
YOU PAY: 30P a litre.
(Don’t know actual cost of gas in Britain, but along this formula.)
Stehpinkeln – I for one would be obliged if you would stop referring to British citizens as “subjects”. I think someone corrected you on this before.
John wrote:
So, imagine the situation. Britain, as run by a suddenly pro-oil government, decides to scrap tax on oil. So, all of a sudden, Britain has the cheapest oil in the EU (and yes, I realise that virtually nobody who reads this website will like the EU at all). So, the whole of Calais comes over to Kent to buy their petrol, because it would almost certainly be cheaper to do that. Also, a huge number of companies see that Britain is cheaper, and so they all come in here.
Sounds good to me.. all the makings of a nice little boom.
John also wrote:
BTW, your buttons do not work in Mozila because of one of the your capitalist’s rollmodel: Microsoft. To try and screw Netscape over, they invented HTML and Javascript extensions which are not compatilbe with NS or web standards.
Since at the time, NS was a commercial organisation as well and guilty of a number of its own ‘non-standard extensions’ it scarcely seems fair to blame Microsoft for similar behaviour. That said – there’s no doubt that Mozilla Firefox is better in almost every other respect. Hope they manage to catch up and exceed MS in the HTML editing stakes as well.
John Stossel recently expoused the myth that gas prices are high.
He showed that bottled water is far more expensive, per gallon, than petroleum. A very good point.
Also, the suggestion of displaying tax on fuel pumps is a great one. In the USA the sales tax is added at the till. This makes it difficult to shop, since you don’t know the actual price to pay, but it makes people acutely aware of the tax. In the UK, the VAT is embedded within the price tag, and less noticeable.
AJE
Andy Dwelly – I just installed Firefox and I think it is very difficult to use. I would uninstall it, but my Explorer got About: Blank installed itself into it, making itself my homepage, and I can’t get rid of it.
Hallelooyah, I’m not the only one spitting and cursing each time I fill up. The moment I heard the news of Shell’s profits I was just waiting for the usual suspects to pipe. I did not have long to wait. To think, these buffoons legislate over us.
According to Sky News (so make of it what you will) Shell will this year pay £8billion in taxes to the Treasury. Sorry, Shell will have £8billion taken from them. That’s one week’s worth of public sector spending and the equivalent of 4 pence in the pound on tax.
Verity:
Surprised to hear that you are having problems with Firefox. However, if you could send me a more detailed description of what happened when you tried to uninstall it I’ll see what I can suggest.
Verity:
Go to Tools/Internet Options and type in the start page you want.
EG
Yup, the tax is 80% of the total cost at the pumps.
Starting at the other end it’s around a 600% on the oil companys delivered and pumped price.
600%!
The city of London may have citizens, but monarchs (our sovereign Lady ELIZABETH, as the prayer saith) have subjects. Is there any reason to refer to Her Britannic Majesty’s subjects as “citizens” other than to spare their feelings? Isn’t the diplomatic phrase “citizen or national” likewise intended to finesse the term “subject?”
Her Majesty has millions of subjects, not least in our neighbor Canada, where the armed forces require this oath*, not to the Canadian Constitution, but to the Queen (and her kids, etc.)
The Dutch, Swedes, Norwegians, and Danes are subjects (but not the French or Italians). Is this so hard?
I sympathize with Libertarians in Britain, not least because they are (currently) subjects.
Grateful to live in a republic,
Bind-their-kings-in-chains Lanley
*I, _________, do swear (solemnly declare) that I will be faithful and bear true allegiance to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth the Second, her heirs and successors according to law. SO HELP ME GOD (delete if declaration)
;^)
So our multiplier to show how much obscene profit the government makes each second from Shell’s oil is….?
.
Euan, I’m not being sarcastic when I say thank you but I already knew that. But I do thank you. The point is – it does not work. You click on home page, click on apply, click on OK, and guess what! – the next time you start up your computer, it is not the home page you commanded, but Home Search! My computer technician said he has never heard of anyone being able to disinstall it. You can go to Install/Disinstall programmes, and it doesn’t even appear on the list, except as HomeSearch Assistant, and if you click on it, it says it is impossible to open.
Andy, thank you, too. I’m finding Firefox difficult probably because I’ve been using Explorer for so long. But I can’t return to Explorer because it has been colonised by this Home Search – what appears in the address bar is: About Blank. This has also happened to a friend of mine and she is also climbing the wall and calling her technician begging for a solution. The technician says it is not a virus. He thinks it is a hacker and says it’s very widespread. It destabilises Explorer.
The petrol pumps [I like the sound of that!] here in Kentucky do show the federal and state taxes included per gallon of petrol (that’s cool!) dispensed.
I still want a figure in pounds per second for the state share of Shell’s sales.
.
Verity:
If you haven’t tried it already, I suggest downloading Microsoft AntiSpyware and running it over your machine. In my day job I get to see a lot of these browser hijackers, and that’s the most effective tool I’ve found yet for wiping them out.
Once it’s done its stuff, you should be able to reset your home page.
Regards,
Alistair
I have the same problem with IE that Verity has. For the most part, I don’t care because I like Firefox.
There is a problem with websites that only work with IE however. I recently tried to pay for another year of my anti-virus software and ran into an IE-only problem with the credit card page. This is ironic, in that a company whose business is protecting me from hacking is insisting I use a hack-friendly browser.
Also re: taxes posted on the pump- as I said earlier, it is a very excellent idea, but the owners of the pumps (who are generally large corporations whose managers live in fear of the politicians and of ‘public opinion’) are not about to do this. Their timidity is interpreted by the public as guilt, compounding the problem. In a perfect world this would be different, but alas we don’t live there.
Finally, AntiCaptalist John, read the damn article. It never said anything about eliminating all taxes on oil. It said that the lion’s share of the cost of gas was tax (very true) and that the politicians are hypocrites for sobbing about the price of gas (also true and self evident if one is not blinded by socialist idiocy).
Alistair-
I went to the page you indicated and checking into the system requirements saw that I needed an internet connection to use something called ‘SpyNet’. Does that mean Microsoft is going into the antivirus software business?
This makes me a little uneasy since their porous OSs are the major reason we are having so many virus problems. A major attraction of Firefox is the announcement that Microsoft will stop all security updates for non XP systems and browsers. I thought this was becauses they had given up on securing them, but now I am beginning to get other ideas.
Buy arguing for cheaper oil prices you are trying to kill Gaia!
Think of all the fish that will drown due to higher sea levels, think of the penguins…the penguins! Don’t you realize that if we keep going on using fossil fuels the average summer day in Iceland it’ll be hot enough to melt lead, and the average African will be on fire!
Doug:
an internet connection to use something called ‘SpyNet’
It’s optional – that’s just if you want to share spyware information with other users and use what they gather. It’s had that since it was GIANT AntiSpyware (which it was before Microsoft bought the company).
Does that mean Microsoft is going into the antivirus software business?
Just anti-spyware, so far as I know.
This makes me a little uneasy since their porous OSs are the major reason we are having so many virus problems.
Not to put too fine a point on it: that’s a myth. We have as many virus problems as we do because the average user is an idiot, and the average programmer isn’t much better. So we end up with people who run anything they’re sent, and let it take effect because they a) never apply security patches, even if it’s done entirely automatically for them, and b) run as administrator all the time, because it’s easier on the rare occasion they need to install something – usually some badly-written can-only-run-as-administrator junkware they downloaded from a dodgy web site. And bitch mightily if you try and tell them not to, let alone require it.
And, believe me, as soon as any of those other OSen pick up market share, they’ll be just as bad. We’ll have virus/spyware/trojan/etc. infected Linux boxes by the million because the same people are going to run stuff with the same lack of caution, and they’re going to do it as root because “it saves them time”. I have some Linux-using customers, and I know what they do.
A Windows box on which the user actually makes use of the system’s built-in, free, security features is as secure as anything else on or off the market; it’s just that the average user can’t be bothered. And that problem isn’t one that can be solved technically, alas.
And now I’m ranting on the subject, and getting off-topic for this thread. Sorry, everyone. I’ll shut up now.
Regards,
Alistair
(Twelve years a system administrator. Lord, have mercy.)
Because that’s what we’ve been legally called since ’81, not that it’s made any great difference.
I don’t mind the Queen. The arbitrary placement of one (harmless) family at the top of the totem pole has in it a certain honesty to it that is lacking in nations that try to deny that’s what happens in their countries. It also leads to a certain awareness of the issue which discourages it in other areas.
Nations always seem to have their pomp and pagentry with some figure at the head, I actually find it far less obnoxious that the fuss be round her Maj, rather than to puff up the ego of some damn politician with power whose ego is too big already. I see her around sometimes, sometimes she’s has had about 50 motorcycle outriders blocking traffic for miles ahead of her, usually it’s a rather more humble 6-10, I think the upper limit for a top politician should be 2. I was revolted by the fuss made for Goerge Bush’s visit a few years ago, he may be Blair’s King, he’s not mine.
Royalty is also, I feel, a safe outlet for nationalist sentiment, if a country has no safe outlet for nationalist sentiment unfortunate consequences arise.
Yeah, no problems with patrimony or rule by clique in America, no sir.
Well, Alastair, I typed a response to your first post above, and Firefox indicated it had gone through, but it didn’t. Then it said my document was empty. So Firefox is no good, either.
Thank you for the link you posted and I will run it, but I think this HomeSearch deal has completely screwed up my computer. At exactly the same minute it took over my home page, My Doom and Trojan also got in. And I have always been totally cautious and deleted emails from people I don’t know immediately, plus never open attachments unless I know and trust the sender. I’ve never had a virus, and now suddenly Home Search? And Norton let it through! My computer technician says it’s fixed.
Doug – for the second time as my previous post was sent into cyberspace never to return, your point about oil company executives fearing government and therefore fearing to annoy them by posting taxes at the pumps is good, but don’t they know this government of lightweight twerps can be faced down about absolutely anything? As long as they don’t do so, you are right: they will look complicit and guilty.
Let me see:
Actually I would rather like to see a 10% sales tax on everything and… that’s about it.
Great.
Excellent. I might even go into the independent petrol station biz in Kent if that happened.
And more economic activity is, er, bad?
Great. Yes, you are quite wrong, as in pretty much all your assumptions so far. I have nothing against immigration at all: it is welfare *when in combination with immigration* I have a problem with.
How exactly? England becomes an economic magnet and… that is… bad?
What very strange ideas you have. To get deleted you pretty much have to be a relentless racist or a tedious arsehole. Just being wrong does not get you deleted.
Why are you mentioning that when is says as much under the comment posting form?
Wrong again. We are pro-market, not pro-business. Quite a different thing.
Umm, you mean a non-profit organisation like, say, Samizdata.net? Yeah, very hard for us to understand 🙂
The fact is most people use IE (like it or not) and so we design toe blog to work for… most people. If we find buttons which work with the minority browsers too, we will probably use them. Not a big deal really. In any case,what do you figure Firefox is the product of? Commend economics? Nope. It is the product of laissez faire. Sorry but you do not make much sense and you clearly think you know what our views are but the evidence suggests otherwise.
-John
The majority of Firefox and the Gecko technology has been produced by the Netscape corporation and AOL. And I’m glad that it was, as a Linux user, I hardly want to use a browser like Amaya. People who think that IE provides the security holes that viruses exploit, and are too dumb to realize that the Mozilla browsers have their own security holes, are retarded.
Commend economics
The system that rewards hard work with praise rather than money?
Funnily enough, a year or so ago, none other than Shell service stations in Perth, Australia (and perhaps elsewhere in Oz?), had small signs hanging above their bowsers graphically displaying the breakdown of price components in a litre of petrol. It was a little misleading – good for displaying how much tax the government takes on fuel (ie. a shitload) but somewhat understating the profit the company makes. They reckon that only 0.1% of the cost of each litre is profit. I believe the nominal margin on fuel – which retails at about $0.90-0.95 – is two or three cents a litre?
Hey everyone,
Right, firstly I’d like to apologise for being rather agressive. I’m used to reading stuff that agrees with my own viewpoint, and your site comes as a slight shock to the old system. BTW, I would encourage you guys to go and read some well-written anti-capitalist sites, if you don’t already do so; I’m not thinking it will convert you, but just it is good to hear what the “opposition” are saying, and has helped me sort out what I believe.
Now, I admit I was wrong about various things. 🙂
However, I have various questions I would like to ask you guys. I realise that I could probably find the answers here if i searched long enough, but I am a busy guy and so would appreciate if you answered here 😀
(1) Do you think that the government should not be trying to discourage people from using oil-based products? If you do, how else apart from tax are you going to do that? If not, do you not think comsumption will soar, and send the oil price rocketing, if taxs are cut to 10%?
(2) What do you think that the government shouldn’t be doing? ie what is the “big government” waste? Please don’t say beaurocrary, or I will be forced to lol.
(3) Do you believe in markets for traditionally non-market based things, like schools, buses, hospitals, royal mail? eg, if you believe truely in markets, then do you think that the universal postage price should be scrapped; ie make it cheaper to send from london to kent than london to shetland? Do you think that would be fair? Would that not make the problems of the north-south divide stronger? Also, if you believe in a market for buses, what about bus services that make a loss? ie, where I come from, most of the buses are subsidised by the Council? Should these services be scrapped? Should users be made to pay more?
In reply to various messages, to me, I realise much of what I said before was flawed, at least in the way I argued it, if not in the content.
However, on the topic of Firefox, I think you will find that Netscape played little or no part in it. Netscape messed around all its developers, and created monsters like Netscape 6 and is still going to create more now (see upcoming Netscape 7 update…ew!) It was when the marketing people stopped faffing about, and the developers who wanted to make a browser for the people, and not for the purpose of pushing people to netscape.com to make money from advertising that m/b –> Firebird –> Firefox was created. To say that Firefox is just old Netscape code is an wrong insult to the Firefox people. However, I agree that it isn’t exactly a Capitalist free product.
However, I’m not saying I don’t use products of capitalism. I’m not saying that capitalism doesn’t have its benifits, just I don’t think it is neccessarily the be-all-and-end-all of models. Yes, my computer was made by a capitalist company; however, at least some credit has to go to the Government, who funded Alan Turing. Yes, I realise that it might well have happened anyway, and Turing’s computer couldn’t exactly go on the web, but many big advances have been government funded (think the fact that academia is government funded).
Once again, I apologise again for the tone of my previous comment.
Thanks,
John
John, just something that jumped at me in your comment: academia is NOT a good example. Come to think of it, most enterprises funded by the government (any government) are not good examples…I’ll let the experts take it from here:-)
No.
Collective defence (i.e. keeping put the barbarian hordes, maintaining law courts and preventing plagues) is the only legitimate role of the state… and even much of the law and order issue can be ‘private'(Link).
Most of the rest of the world does not have an NHS, so the idea that ‘hospitals’ are a ‘traditional’ area of government is not right at all. Likewise buses and schools work just fine without the state. State mail services are totally obsolete given the rise of vastly more effective private courier companies like FedEx or UPS. As for ‘fairness’, why does Shetland Islanders have the right to force me to subsidise them? If living on a Scottish island causes them to incur costs, well I got news for them, living in London is causes me to incur costs too and I do not expect them to subsidised me because property is so damn expensive here. Let ‘nature’ take its course and if some communities are not viable without state help, let them fade away. Oh and education(Link)? I am a great believer in home schooling and other forms of private education. No state required.
The essential immorality of force imposed state control is really the issue at the heart of it all but even on the basis of utilitarian arguments; the state is rarely the best way to get the best results.
There is a case for scrapping income tax and replacing it by a higher tax on petrol & diesel (and jetfuel). Indirect taxes are harder to avoid and are progressive (the unemployed don’t have jobs to drive to) at the bottom, while being unlikely to inhibit entrepreneurs at the top. And they make undeniably obvious the great truth about taxes, that it’s the poor bleeders in the middle who pay most.
Cheers Perry for your reply. I can see your point of view, but I don’t agree with it on the point of the whole “fairness” thing.
One point I have for now: you say you don’t think the government should be trying to stop people using oil. So, do you have any sympathy towards “environmental” concerns? Do you not believe in Golbal Warming, Ozone layer etc etc? Do you not have concerns about air quality? If you do, (I’m not a massive history expert; correct me if i’m wrong) do you think the attrocious air quality of the early 1900s would have been sorted without governement intervention? What incentive would industry have to reduce emmisions without any kind of tax system that taxes like that? Would so-called green energy have got anywhere if petrol was 20p or whatever it would be without tax?
Also, another interesting aspect is fishing. What are your views on government fishing quotas? Do you think they should exist, or should industry (ie fishmen) be allow to do what they like? (BTW, I know that the EU fishing policy of making them throw back small fish causes at least part of the problem.)
Cheers!
John, “do you think the attrocious air quality of the early 1900s would have been sorted without governement intervention?” I’m sure there must be cases where government action against pollution would be justified, but I’m not sure that it worked in this case. Lomborg’s book (The Skeptical Environmentalist) actually cites the famous British “Clean Air Act” of the 50s as a law that achieved nothing, as judged by the unchanging rate of decline of pollution before and afterwards. (Air pollution went down as oil, then gas, replaced coal.)
“(1) Do you think that the government should not be trying to discourage people from using oil-based products? If you do, how else apart from tax are you going to do that? If not, do you not think comsumption will soar, and send the oil price rocketing, if taxs are cut to 10%?”
The ONLY ligitimate function of government is protecting it’s citizens from other governments. The free Market will deal with any OIL issues much faster and more efficently then the government. Price goes down, demand goes up, supply goes down, price goes up, demand goes down. It will reach a natural point and stay around there.
“2) What do you think that the government shouldn’t be doing? ie what is the “big government” waste? Please don’t say beaurocrary, or I will be forced to lol.”
Is this a question? I see all those question marks, but I don’t see what you are asking? Lets 51-51. That is a method of making sure two people aren’t talking past one another. It works by the person being asked the question restating that question to the person asking it. Are you asking what the government should be prevented from doing?
Bureaucracy means ‘government by desk’. Maybe ‘rule by desk’ would be more accurate. I am not sure what you mean by ‘waste’. Like beauty, waste is in the eye of the beholder. The on going UN scandal is considered waste and fraud by most, but to the UN bereaucrats involved, it is a profitable and highly organized business arrangement.
“3) Do you believe in markets for traditionally non-market based things, like schools, buses, hospitals, royal mail? eg, if you believe truely in markets, then do you think that the universal postage price should be scrapped; ie make it cheaper to send from london to kent than london to shetland? Do you think that would be fair? Would that not make the problems of the north-south divide stronger? Also, if you believe in a market for buses, what about bus services that make a loss? ie, where I come from, most of the buses are subsidised by the Council? Should these services be scrapped? Should users be made to pay more?”
Socialist nonsense. EVERYTHING IS A MARKET. The reason why ALL forms of Socialism fail is the Socialists lack the intellect to see this simple little fact. Schoolbuses don’t grow on trees and if they did we would have to pay someone to harvest them. Education is a business. As is Religion, Defense, Law, Public health, etc., etc., etc.
I’m sure you can get different answers from different people. I’m not a liberterian. I’m a neo-anarchist. We have a slightly different POV on things.
BTW, Microsucks had nothing much to do with HTML. Tim Berners-Lee claims to have invented HTML and the Internet in 1992.
http://www.w3.org/People/Raggett/book4/ch02.html
He is about as believable as Al Gore, so take that URL with a very large salt container. The Internet is the product of decades of labor by millions of people. HTML, looks a lot like the page formating use by ARPNET, which was the daddy of the internet. Page formatting was needed when we moved from punch tape to tele-type.
Well I’ll just toss it in here, at many of the gas stations here in Ontario(Canada) you’ll find that Esso and Petro-Canada put stickers on the sides of their pumps with pie-graph breakdowns of how much you pay in taxes, by federal, provincal, then federal again, then excise. With percentages and monetary breakdowns.
Verity —
This is a common “virus” like problem.
Google is your friend Link..
BTW: I vastly prefer Firefox but have added at least 10 extensions to improve usability.
Good luck.
Uncle Bill
TANSTAAFL.
I can’t imagine that you don’t have ink jet labels in the UK. A quick call to the relevant PR office of an oil company should get you the relevant information (complete with legal cite). You print it on an ink jet label, slap it on the pump when you fill up, and keep your actions discreet. If you are feeling especially daring, provide an URL to a website that explains such things in great detail (ideally one with which you have zero affiliation).
Certainly the pump inspectors and other agents of the state will not be amused but I rather think that an awful lot of those signs will remain up for longer than you think as grateful station attendants are happy to be defended.
John,
the mozilla project was started by Netscape, and most of it was created by Netscape- Netscape 6 and 7 were simply rebranded versions of the Mozilla suite, with a few extra features added in. The Phoenix project was started because some felt that the Mozilla suite was too monolithic and should be split up into seperate components. It is a user interface on top of the core Mozilla technology- ‘old Netscape code’ created by Netscape employees working on the Mozilla project.
http://forums.spywareinfo.com/index.php?b=1
I cant recommend this message board enough for dealing with spyware and about:blank issues.
Ah, “hidden” taxes. From my flawed memory bank, I recall a Reader’s Digest article about them back in the Fifties: what I remember is the statement that of the 22cents for a loaf of bread (yeah, twenty-two) 20 cents were various forms of tax. VAT is nothing new…
Just couldn’t resist griping about OS vulnerabilities…..
Winderz is now on its umpteenth popular generation ( 3, wfwg, 95, 98, ME, NT, 2K, XP) and is the culmination of the experience of the biggest richest software company on the planet. And still, apps, MICROSOFT APPS, must be run as root when they didn’t need to be written this way. The exploits of windows are not the result of windows being the biggest target and so any weakness being found, they are the result of poor security planning. This is not to criticise M$, they are just churning out a product that will part as many people from their cash as possible, yay capitalism, the fault is with the customers who erroneously believe that M$ give two hoots about how secure the OS is.
At one of the few BAT Industries AGM’s I have ever attended, in 2003, there was one of the “one share, one gripe” merchants who demanded their 5 minutes to demonstrate their [lack of] oratory skills.
It seemed that this fool had a big gripe about how much money that BAT made from tobacco sales in the UK. He lambasted the board for their payrises (in this case the board of executive and non-executive directors had actually called for a crossboard freeze on director’s bonuses, but he didn’t want to know about that I guess) and called for BAT to reduce the price of a packet of those cigarettes manufactured by them to within the standard EU price.
Predictably it was left to a board member to explain to him that over 80% of the retail cost of a packet of cigarettes in the UK is taxation and that BAT’s subsidiaries charge the same amount throughout the UK and Europe. What I did find interesting was an aside made by a board member that the British government’s intransigence on the tobacco taxation rates was likely costing it well over £3 billion a year a lost tax revenue, as a consequence of people buying cigarettes on the continent and bring them back into the UK.
Obviously it is not at all practical to smuggle petrol into the UK but I wonder if it is at all more worthwhile to buy things like tyres, engine oil etc., in France than in the UK?
It was probably 16 years or so ago now but I do recall one UK chain having a stand of small cards at their checkout that you could take which explained the breakdown of the cost of petrol in terms of tax. It was where I first learned of how egregious the tax on petrol was. Can’t remember the chain though. BP or maybe shell?
Rich
I am not in favour of high taxes in general. However, the point about fuel taxes is that they are a pretty good way of paying for the construction/upkeep of the roads and all the other costs associated with motoring. The more you use the roads, the more you pay.
Indeed, there is a case for saying that the government has a duty to generate an income from an asset in order to cut taxes elesewhere (although there’s not much chance of this government cutting taxes elsewhere).
Independent studies have shown that the fuel taxes that cars pay roughly equate to all the costs generated by car use (road construction, maintenance, policing, etc. etc.). Similar studies show that lorries are actually undertaxed largely due to the huge damage they do to the roads.
To cut taxes would be to subsidise transport – making it artificially attractive to transport people and goods further rather than source locally.
I am not in favour of high taxes in general. However, the point about fuel taxes is that they are a pretty good way of paying for the construction/upkeep of the roads and all the other costs associated with motoring. The more you use the roads, the more you pay.
Indeed, there is a case for saying that the government has a duty to generate an income from an asset in order to cut taxes elesewhere (although there’s not much chance of this government cutting taxes elsewhere).
Independent studies have shown that the fuel taxes that cars pay roughly equate to all the costs generated by car use (road construction, maintenance, policing, etc. etc.). Similar studies show that lorries are actually undertaxed largely due to the huge damage they do to the roads.
To cut taxes would be to subsidise transport – making it artificially attractive to transport people and goods further rather than source locally.
That would be a sound argument if it were not for the fact that we already have a specific Road Tax where the funds generated are supposedly intended to be used for the maintenance of roads and motorways. This is another tax akin to the infamous National Insurance Contribution, which is a 26% tax payable, in addition to VAT and Income Tax, in almost equal proportions by both employer and employee and supposedly intended to bear the costs of the state health (NHS) and “pension” system (haha).
“To cut taxes would be to subsidise transport – making it artificially attractive to transport people and goods further rather than source locally.”
To suggest that a reduction in the abyssmally high fuel tax rate could be seen as ‘subsidising’ transport is something I would expect to read as a missive dotted with profanity from Alastair Campbell, not on a Libertarian blog like Samizdata. I am sure you must be aware that one of the purposes of any government is to keep the money supply in healthy circulation. By cutting fuel taxes you encourage a reduction in freight costs and thus a drop in the charge to the enduser of a product.