Originally Posted by
genec
BTW those gas taxes you mention are not taxes that the oil industry pays to the government, those are taxes the gas user pays.
The claim was, and I quote, "gasoline is HUGELY subsidized". My point is that it (or the industry, to be more precise) does get some subsidies (mostly in the form of tax breaks), but the taxes applied to it and the industry behind it is massively bigger.
It is the end customer that forks out the .60 to .70 per gallon, not Exxon.
OK, are we talking about gasoline or the industry behind it? Because if we're talking only about gasoline (the product, not the industry behind it) -- it's not subsidized in the US at all. Just taxed.
Again, in the US, gasoline (mostly the industry behind it, to be more precise) does gets some subsidies, mostly in the form of tax breaks, but the taxes on fossil fuels directly and on the industries behind it are far, far larger than any subsidies -- so one can not accurately claim that it "gasoline is HUGELY subsidized".
And really, I should have commented on the rest of that sentence too --
Originally Posted by DX-MAN
Gasoline is HUGELY subsidized, being otherwise a loss leader for the entire energy industry
... really? DX-MAN thinks that if it wasn't for these tax-breaks that gasoline production wouldn't be profitable? Citations are needed for this as well.