No-Energy Minister Megan Woods claims "the petrol market is not working for motorists" and remains convinced "that people are quite possibly paying over the odds for their petrol when they go to the pump."
This is proof that it is possible to get a true conclusion from wildly idiotic premises.
Because motorists are paying well over the odds for their petrol -- but it's not because the oil companies are gouging. Not a chance. No, it's because this ignorant woman and her colleagues are complete and utter thieves.
Here below is the price breakdown for a litre of petrol as at February this year, showing where the money for every litre goes. The local oil company gets just 21% of that. The government: they take a full 47%! Forty-seven percent! -- and for doing nothing more than putting the handbrakes on!
And this is before their new 'regional' petrol taxes are whacked right on top.
This does not stop her however for calling for "more power to the Commerce Commission" to make it even harder for petrol companies to make a dollar.
It's quite incredible.
That this ignorant woman can stand up in public and blithely whinge about "people paying over the odds for their petrol when they go to the pump" while knowing (or should know) that she and her colleagues are the very ones with their grubby hands out is ... well, you see if you can put a name to it.
And where are the opposition to call her out? Well clearly they can't, because they've always been part of this rort themselves.
But what about the journalists who allow her to spout this trash unchallenged? Why don't the journalists who ask Woods simpering questions stop passing on her lies, and ask her instead about this double dealing?
About the new petrol taxes to come on top of the taxes they already take?
And about the GST levied on all those taxes, making that particular tax a tax on many other taxes?
There certainly is someone taking us all for fools.
But it's not BP.
She looks like this:
[Prices pic from AA's post 'How petrol prices are calculated']
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6 comments:
In Thailand the raw price of petrol is similar, about a dollar, and then tax to about $1.40 [30 bahts] From the airport BKK to home is about 50 kms, 40 minutes, and 400 to 500 bahts. = about $20.
So I do taxis everywhere, but you never know where, because taxi drivers just go somewhere, and then ask you where we are supposed to be. Can you drive me to the moon?, yes yes, we go the moon now.
I think I spend about $40
And the policy to oppose new exploration implicitly approves of the supply reducing over time and the price increasing further (after all, it's mainly virtue signalling to encourage other countries to do it too - which most wont), because of what THEY do.
Something not right with above chart. I see a 21% importer margin, but there is no mention of wholesaler and retailer margins. Are they giving it away?
I think the issue was about what one might call "price discovery"..??
BP putting up the price of petrol to the same as in Otaki, and then watching to see if Z and others followed suit.
Nothing wrong with that.... but I can see that it is a delicate and fine line, kinda thing, when a particular mkt has only a few players.
A "free market" functions best when there a many players, that are truly competing for customers.
The other extreme is a market that only has a few players (oligopoly) or even a monopoly.
In a Monopoly of Oligopoly , history shows that there can be incentives to maximise profits by NOT playing by "free market" principles..
Bottom line is, of course, that the grand ambitions of politicians to build roads and railways and tramlines are not matched by the willingness of those USING them to actually pay for them directly. If the tram ideas of Goff and Twyford were to be paid for by users, they would run empty. If the grand motorway ideas of the Nats were to be paid for directly by users, few would get built.
No. A "free market" is not determined by a consumer-centric view of what combination of competition and regulation results in the lowest retail price. A free market is whatever natural order prevails when free of government interference, and free of government induced barriers to entry. Sometimes, particularly where the costs of entering the market are high, that will be an oligarchy, or perhaps even a monopoly. Even a company that is currently a monopolist in a free market can't get too complacent, or have overly high profit margins; because that would encourage someone else to enter the market, or for consumers to find alternatives. This is not just theory, economic history has plenty of examples. No such moderation exists on the taxes government charge us however.
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