26 replies to this topic

[yuri]

sorry if this is in the wrong section ...

guys what the fuel prices like down under ?
in the uk we are paying around on average

unleaded £1.32 - £1.45 per liter
diesel £1.35 - £1.49
super unleaded £1.35- £1.52
lpg £0.70 - £0.80

its getting crazy over here .......

[Gozza]

Change the sign to $ and it's about spot on.

Prices are stupidly cheap and subsidised here, I think the US is even cheaper still (must be in the bill of rights - the right to afford to run a 3 tonne V8 pickup truck as a daily ve-hick-le)

[yuri]

Gozza, on 06 June 2011 - 12:27 PM, said:

Change the sign to $ and it's about spot on.

Prices are stupidly cheap and subsidised here, I think the US is even cheaper still (must be in the bill of rights - the right to afford to run a 3 tonne V8 pickup truck as a daily ve-hick-le)

we don't call it ripoff Britain for nothing ... £1 = $1.53

[aar0n_91]

guess we got nothing to complain about then!!!!

[Mr. Drifter]

So yeah, what is he on? like $3 a litre? damn son, if coffee's weren't $5 a cup, I'd say you were getting ripped off..

[Luke352]

About 8c a litre in Venezula

This report is interesting reading. http://www.gtz.de/de...ull-version.pdf

[Big_Valven]

I think we do have something to complain about. The pointless weekly price-cycling is a joke. And we hear over the last 2 weeks the wholesale price of fuel has fallen, and yet we are still paying $1.50 at the pump. It will fall about half a week before oil prices rise again, then it will rise immediately.

Call me uninformed as to how the system works but that's just stupid. And if I am somehow wrong and all of that happens for a reason, petrol companies are not doing themselves any favours by staying tight-lipped as to why.

[Sigmeister]

It's all supply and demand and what the population is preparedd to pay for it.

I like to think about it this way:

Fuel - to get it you need to drill a hole in the ground, 5 companies get involved in that, oil comes out, is refinced (More companies) and sent all over the world in tankers and trucks (More companies), and for that we (Aussies) pay $1.40\L

Water - some company gets plain water, filters it and adds some additives. $4 for 500ml

People will pay for both at that price??

[Gozza]

I think fuel is a bargain in Australia! But I do agree with Big_V that the fluctuating prices are very stupid.

A minimum price should be set for example at $2/L for unleaded (petrol stations can go above this price, but if they want to remain competitive they won't). The government should tax the extra revenue (the difference between what the price would have been [$1.50] and the floor price [$2] ) and then redistribute that to lower income households through other means like welfare payments so the tax isn't regressive.

This means the richer half of the country will be paying more for petrol which shouldn't matter all that much anyway as richer people can generally afford to live closer to their work (in CBD's or satellite CBD's) and also to other infrastructure like public transport.

Pretty much, I am trying to say that we need to discourage the richer part of Australia's population, and if the higher fuel prices that are incurred don't scare them off, use the income raised to even the distribution of income

[Big_Valven]

Consider fluctuating fuel prices alone and you can tell why it wouldn't work in the first place... that's why the gov't already takes a fixed (large) amount from our petrol money.

Edited by Big_Valven, 07 June 2011 - 12:21 AM.

[Luke352]

Gozza, on 06 June 2011 - 09:35 PM, said:

This means the richer half of the country will be paying more for petrol which shouldn't matter all that much anyway as richer people can generally afford to live closer to their work (in CBD's or satellite CBD's) and also to other infrastructure like public transport.

Pretty much, I am trying to say that we need to discourage the richer part of Australia's population, and if the higher fuel prices that are incurred don't scare them off, use the income raised to even the distribution of income

Yeah they can afford to live closer but as a result they're paying a considerable sum more in House repayment as well as paying 2-3x the tax of an average income earner of say 50-60k and that's if the "rich" person is earning around 150-200k they have probably also chosen to send there children to a Private School so after all this they don't actually have as much disposable income as you like to think.

I just don't get this viewpoint that because someone earns more they owe more, and there opinion is worth less.

p.s. I don't earn over a 150k not even over 100k so i'm not just defending my personal position.

[hsvmonarogen3]

diesel up here has been 162.5 for 2 months now. no weekly cycles. no other servo. but i still consider this good considering where i am and what people in the city are paying.

[hsvmonarogen3]

Gozza, on 06 June 2011 - 09:35 PM, said:

I think fuel is a bargain in Australia! But I do agree with Big_V that the fluctuating prices are very stupid.

A minimum price should be set for example at $2/L for unleaded (petrol stations can go above this price, but if they want to remain competitive they won't). The government should tax the extra revenue (the difference between what the price would have been [$1.50] and the floor price [$2] ) and then redistribute that to lower income households through other means like welfare payments so the tax isn't regressive.

This means the richer half of the country will be paying more for petrol which shouldn't matter all that much anyway as richer people can generally afford to live closer to their work (in CBD's or satellite CBD's) and also to other infrastructure like public transport.

Pretty much, I am trying to say that we need to discourage the richer part of Australia's population, and if the higher fuel prices that are incurred don't scare them off, use the income raised to even the distribution of income

would be nice but would never work.




TAXATION EXPLAINED TO THE MASSES
Suppose that every evening, 10 men go out for beer and the bill for all ten comes to $100. If they paid their bill the way we pay our taxes, it would go something like this:
The first four men (the poorest) would pay nothing.
The fifth would pay $1.
The sixth would pay $3.
The seventh would pay $7.
The eighth would pay $12.
The ninth would pay $18.
The tenth man (the richest) would pay $59.
So, that's what they decided to do. The 10 men drank in the bar every evening and were quite happy with the arrangement, until one day, the owner said "Since you are all such good customers, I'm going to reduce the cost of your daily beer by $20". Drinks for the 10 men would now cost just $80.
The group still wanted to pay their bill the way we pay our taxes. So the first four men were unaffected. They would still drink for free. But what about the other six men? The paying customers? How could they divide the $20 windfall so that everyone would get his fair share? They realised that $20 divided by six is $3.33. But if they subtracted that from everybody's share, then the fifth man and the sixth man would each end up being paid to drink his beer.
So, the bar owner suggested that it would be fair to reduce each man's bill by a higher percentage the poorer he was, to follow the principle of the tax system they had been using, and he proceeded to work out the amounts he suggested that each should now pay.
Therefore, the fifth man, like the first four, now paid nothing.
The sixth now paid $2 instead of $3 (33% saving).
The seventh now paid $5 instead of $7 (28% saving).
The eighth now paid $9 instead of $12 (25% saving).
The ninth now paid $14 instead of $18 (22% saving).
The tenth now paid $49 instead of $59 (16% saving).
Each of the six was better off than before. And the first four continued to drink for free. But, once outside the bar, the men began to compare their savings.
"I only got a dollar out of the $20 saving," declared the sixth man. He pointed to the tenth man, "But he got $10!"
"Yeah, that's right," exclaimed the fifth man. "I only saved a buck too. It's unfair - he got 10 times more benefit than me!"
"That's true!" shouted the seventh man. "Why should he get $10 back, when I got only $2? The wealthy always win!"
"Wait a minute," yelled the first four men in unison, "we didn't get anything at all. This new tax system exploits the poor!"
The nine men surrounded the tenth and beat him up.
The next night the tenth man didn't show up for drinks, so the nine sat down and had their beers without him. But when it came time to pay the bill, they discovered something important. They didn't have enough money between all of them for even half of the bill!
And that, boys and girls, journalists, labour unions and government ministers, is how the tax system works. The people who pay the highest taxes will naturally get the most benefit from a tax reduction. Tax them too much, attack them for being wealthy, and they just may not show up anymore. In fact, they might start drinking overseas, where the atmosphere is somewhat friendlier.

[Gozza]

I'm not going to contribute further to this (at least not until next week when exams are over). Otherwise I'll waste too much time writing an essay on the income distribution in Australia.

What higher income earner pays the correct tax rate on their income anyway? I guarantee you that 90%+ of people that are in the top taxable income bracket have accountants which are very good as reducing tax paid by that person

I will also guarantee you that for every tax bracket below that top bracket, the percentage of people that use accountants diminishes at an increasing rate because the amount they can save decreases with every decrease in yearly income, until it would reach an equilibrium level where the cost of the accountant = the savings they create, making the process pointless.

Australian's may be taxed highly on income, but in many other cases we have it pretty easy (such as in the example - petrol, as we don't have an emissions trading scheme like the UK). Australia is very far behind in regards to emissions reduction! Denmark started a carbon tax in the early 90's!

Anyone that wants to read my literature review on 'investigating the possible effects of a carbon tax on the distribution of income on Australians', feel free to let me know and I'll email it to you

(My view is basically, a carbon tax is a regressive form of tax - i.e. it taxes lower income households in a greater proportion to higher income households), and that a carbon tax isn't a very good environmental reform anyway when trying to reduce greenhouse gases as it doesn't set a limit on how much our economy can pollute (and emissions trading scheme with a 'cap and trade' type reform does do this). The only reason we don't have an ETS, is that our political system is rubbish and it's too hard to get approval from both political parties to pass it through the senate.

See you next week when I have more time for a better response.

[Mr. Drifter]

It has to be questioned (as to whether or not anybody has actually explained this and i've missed their post, iunno) If the price of oil/fuel in america is like $1.40 a barrel or whatever, and the australian currency is higher now, why are we still on $1.39 a litre?