[ojbyrne]

Sometimes I'm amazed by the innumeracy (or perhaps it's just being US-centric) of people who seem to be in positions of importance.

"Everybody pays more, but the U.S. pays more in absolute terms," said Lee Shipper, a visiting scholar at the University of California Berkeley's Transportation Center. If you're already paying $4 in taxes, said Schipper, then an extra $2 a gallon isn't that big of a deal."

From some random cruising around wikipedia, there's an obvious flaw with that logic. Most fuel taxes around the world are sales taxes, and either based on a percent of the underlying price, or if they are an absolute price per gallon, they are adjusted periodically based on inflation.

So any price increase is going to be magnified by the increase in taxes - people in countries with higher taxes will see the same proportional increase, and a larger absolute increase.

In addition, in that quote above, he seems to have meant to say "relative" where he said "absolute."

[r7000]

I got the impression that the main point was that higher prices in various non-US countries has led to societies that are structured less around the availability of cheap gasoline: denser cities, a greater variety of transportation options and so forth. Thus paying more for gasoline isn't as big of a "lifestyle" hit whether it is "absolute" or "relative".

[ojbyrne]

I just found the part of the article I highlighted to be kind of stupid, especially coming from a Berkeley "visiting scholar." Though I'm not quite sure how important that title is (random guess - not very), it's important enough to be mentioned in the article.

[ojbyrne]

After reading over it again, I wonder if he was misquoted. Because, if you take into account exchange rates, then the US probably is probably paying more on an absolute basis. But it doesn't say anything about exchange rates.