Don W wrote in news:ScJZh.2579
:

We just got back from the UK, where we were paying
0.92 UKP per liter for "petrol". That is the
equivalent of almost $8 per gallon. Whenever we
travel outside the USA, I like to check out real
estate, grocery, transportation, fuel etc prices
to get a feel for the cost of living. On this
trip my wife and I both came back with the
distinct feeling that we in the USA still have
things very good compared to the UK, but most of
us don't know it.


Yeah, but you have to factor in other costs in both places....

In the UK, you don't have to pay $850/month for health insurance. You
pay for it at that gas pump, $8/gallon....and everyplace else as VAT.
Visiting a doctor doesn't require $500 plus $56/pill (including the
doctor's kickback for writing the prescription), like it does in the USA.

The price of fuel is, therefore, tied to the price of medical health.
You'd have to look at the whole cost of living in the US and UK for X
months under the SAME conditions to compare these prices. Looking at the
bigger picture, I don't think it costs more to live in the UK than the
USA, especially if you get sick! A friend of mine spent a week, just one
week, at Roper Hospital in Charleston, SC, after a minor heart attack.
They inserted a stint. SO FAR, and the billing is not complete, just the
HOSPITAL bill is over $US70,000! He hasn't said what the staff of
mostly-unnecessary doctors various bills comes to. People outside the
USA don't get to see the "visit scam", as I call it, where every doctor
associated with the hospital comes to your room to "say hi" every day
putting $250-500 onto your medical bill EVERY visit. I sat in my dying
father's room and every one of them poking his head through that door was
told, "No visit scams. You're not going to be paid just sticking your
head in here." I put a stop to it, that time.

$8/gallon looks awful. But, most of that is the taxes used (skimmed?)
and SOME tiny bit actually goes to provide socialist services Americans
have been brainwashed to abhor. If it were $8/gallon and no services,
like we Americans get from our Illuminati government, I'd say that
sucked.

Larry
--