Why Gas in the U.S. Is So Cheap

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

and Europeans have better public transport -- in the 200 miles it would take me to get a major city from where I live, even driving a 20 mpg car by myself, it'd be cheaper than public transport by a few dollars.<p>and with myself + n, it becomes increasingly cheaper to drive than public transportation, where n equals traveling companions<p>for another example, for thanksgiving I traveled to Chicago in a group of four. for about $180 of gasoline in said horrible gas-guzzling vehicle. price per train ticket was $150, and the train takes 6 hours longer.<p>with public transport being so horrible, and this country being so spread apart (obviously great masses of people live on both coasts, but even then north/south travel is a long ways) it would take a lot more $/gallon for it to make more economical sense to take bus/train vs. car.

People don't realize it is cheap here, mainly because it was SUPER cheap before. I remember in high school paying a dollar or something for a gallon. 107 octane race gas was $3.50 a gallon and we thought that was outrageous. Now we are paying more then that for 87 octane crap.<p>also, where is the rest of the list? I know by me gas is 3.75 a gallon now. I know the US is 111 on the list but I'd like to see what a 30 cent increase makes it.

Should be "Why gas everywhere but the US is so expensive". The base price is set organically in the market, the price including tax is a result of external government meddling.

The US was the largest oil producer in the world for half a century. Things evolved under the assumption of readily available oil, and that's why policy is what it is. The rest of the industrialized world historically had no good sources of domestic oil and always remained wary of becoming too dependent on imports. The North Sea fields largely didn't come online in Europe until the early 90s.

Let's put this in straight, un-spun English: gas in other countries is taxed heavily, and it is not in the US. Therefore, the US deserves for the multi-national oil conglomerates to artificially jack up prices.<p>Yeah, that's logical.