Why Do We Complain About Gas?

Gas has been an issue off and on ever since the fuel rationing imposed by President Carter. Today it is one of the biggest topics out there. Everywhere I go I hear my parents, my friends, people talking about how much gas costs. The "huge" gas prices has spurred on a whole market of gas efficient cars and electric cars. however, when I looked up global gas prices, prices astounded me. Some are extremely low, like in Venezuela, and most countries in Europe were extremely high. I looked around and found out that it was because of taxes. A few examples of high prices were Canada and Germany. But why Canada? Canada is one of our biggest suppliers of natural gas along with Mexico. Canada taxes the bajeesus on gas, a whooping 38% of their total price are taxes. Germany has a fuel tax and a value tax on gas as well. So why do we complain? I think we complain because we have been spoiled by our ability to get cheap gas from Saudi Arabia. Cheap gas we got from the Persian Gulf War for kicking the Iraqis out of Kuwait. However, the Saudi Arabian government now feels that they have paid us back in full now and are raising gas prices. When we went into Iraq with Bush people brought it up saying that Bush was crazy and going in for the oil. Well, I guess that oil does not look too bad now does it when you think about it. We, today, have relatively low gas prices. The news that gas is high is not a new topic. But what I found new and interesting was how little we actually tax on gas and how lucky we are compared to others in Europe. Imagine how much more revenue our government could make off the gas market. It could even spur on another real estate frenzy because people would want to live closer to work. It would change things economically for the country if we followed in the footsteps of Europe but I don't think we need that. I think that if one complains, they should take the train, ride a bike, go green for goodness sake, just stop complaining.