This news item which popped out today suggests the average American has been subsidizing gas and oil production even more than I thought.
I still don’t understand where you are getting this idea that American taxpayers are subsidizing the oil and gas industry.
“Subsidizing” is not the same thing as “not collecting as much taxes and royalties as you could, or as much as they do in Europe.”
If the government didn’t give R&D money to the oil and gas industry, it would look alot like the prescription drug industry where the price you pay now is paying for the drugs you will pay through the nose for next year. As a country, we cannot afford that. You would be paying much more for all transportation, goods, and services. You couldn’t afford to heat and cool your home. There would not be a steady supply of oil-based products which would lead to rationing and shortages of transportation, goods, and services. Your doctor would like to prescribe some penicillin to combat the raging infection you have, but the truck is late because it got stuck in traffic and ran out of gas. The government has decided that it is good for the general public to assure certain things, like health, energy and food. Therefore, they grant money to farmers, researchers, and even gasp oil companies.
Which really has nothing at all to do with NASCAR because the only thing NASCAR does is makes money go 'round, which makes the government profit. Every t-shirt and beer sold pays taxes. Drivers pay taxes on their winnings, crews pay taxes on their incomes, tracks pay taxes on their ticket sales, etc.
Regarding the fuel shortage Richird, the reason you are experiencing this anxiety over the supposed shortage and choose to target NASCAR is simply explained. You are watching the wrong type of racing. If you spent a bit of time in front of an F1 or CHAMP car race, I’m almost certain that you would find yourself entertained enough to realize that the amount of fuel used in auto racing is minimal compared to the likes of commuters worldwide (like yourself) sitting at red lights battling their way to work.
From the fact that American taxpayers pay large subsidies to the oil and gas industry.
Actually we also pay for quite a bit of the R&D and international market promotion in that industry as well.
The oil industry has been making record profits in recent years as the price of gas and oil have gone higher and their subsidies have grown (the collection of my previous links in this thread should serve as citation for that statement). I see no reason to believe that public subsidy has resulted in a net consumer price break.
Yet…you admit in this very thread that prices at the pump are lower in the US than in most of the rest of the world. Hmmm…interesting. :dubious:
Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m watching NASCAR. Then I will go out and drive laps around town since NASCAR encourages excessive driving. :rolleyes:
“At the pump” is key. Taxation through other means makes up the difference. Keep in mind also that means people who don’t have cars at all are contributing to the total cost of gas. Just because you pay in an overt sense at point of sale less than someone in, say, Europe, it doesn’t mean that you and others don’t make up the difference.
Even people who don’t have cars benefit from the taxes collected on gas, too. Gas buyers pay for roads, roads provide you with goods and services. Would you like to be responsible for building a road to your home for police, EMS and fire? How about clearing the snow from said road? Do you want to build the road your bus or bike travels on? How about a surcharge on goods that come from more that 50 miles away? How about $3.00 per letter so the USPS can buy SUV’s or ATV’s to travel dirt paths to deliver the mail?
Taxes and grants and prices and fees are all so interrelated that people who don’t drive can’t stand by and say “I don’t benefit from lower gas price” because you do in ways you don’t seen to be able to fathom.
I don’t recall coming out against roads. I’m not a fan of overreliance on gas and of waste. Subsidizing gas encourages waste.
Take another look at the links I posted; in the US the tax collected at the pump on gasoline isn’t offsetting the subsidized reduction in price of that gas. It does pay for roads (which of course enables the use of more gas…).
At the end of the day, though, people who walk, bike and use public transport pay for gas out of proportion to their usage of it via general taxation. xbuckeye seems to be flipping that into an argument that that portion of the population should be thankful that people buying gas at the pump pay any tax on it at all, even though it’s earmarked for the roads the cars need to travel!
Obviously other industrialized societies have opted for greater point of sale taxation in order to shift that burden more to the heaviest consumers of the product and away from people who use less energy to get around. As Europe also has functional roads and people also eat food from more than 50 miles away I think it’s safe to assume that also works.