Driving is expensive. Government, and not some Exxon turkey getting an obscene retirement package, is a main reason for the high costs. The average price per gallon stands at $2.78. About 40 cents per gallon goes to government, with state and federal roughly splitting the take. At least ExxonMobil's Lee Raymond actually worked for an oil company before getting his millions.

Tolls are a ripoff too. A recent DC-Boston-DC trip extracted more than $40 in tolls. Every state on that journey save Connecticut gets its piece. In fact, 31 states have toll plazas. Drive through Alabama, Arizona, Connecticut, Hawaii, Idaho, Iowa, Minnesota, Mississippi, Montana, New Mexico, North Carolina, North Dakota, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah, Vermont, Washington, Wisconsin, and Wyoming, and the paper in your wallet remains there. Drive a few miles in Delaware, and pay $6 in tolls. A lot has changed since the 1960s, when Delaware tolls charged 10 cents, or the 1970s, when the state relied on an honor system at certain toll plazas.

Now states work on a dishonor system. The EZ Pass/Fast Lane system, which is a lot like withholding in that it lulls payers into forgetting that they are paying, is used to nab drivers who go through the tolls too quickly. In Massachusetts, where they have affixed (for a price) corporate logos on speed-limit signs at toll booths, this is an inconvenience for many drivers. But that's what toll booths are, an inconvenience. They cause traffic jams, accidents, and thinning-wallet syndrome.

Apart from tolls and taxes, cities extort money from drivers through increasingly invasive fines. Washington, DC, which is inept at plowing snow-covered streets, educating children, and policing the streets, issues parking tickets with Prussian efficiency. The city employs a robotic paparazzi to catch speeders and motorists who fail to beat the change from yellow to red. The cameras have raised more than $30 million for DC's government (and millions more for a private company), but have actually coincided with an increase in accidents at intersections with the camers. So much for the idea that the cameras make us safer! And now the city has auctioned off public parking spaces to private companies. Do you have Zipcar or Flexcar in your city? They rent cars, which isn't such a novelty that they deserve their own public parking spaces. Avis and Hertz have been successful in the car-rental business for quite a long time, but not so successful that they got cities to hand over public-parking spaces to them. Because these private companies--Flexcar and Zipcar--don't use private lots to store their cars, private citizens--who now have even fewer on-street parking spots--will increasingly have to.

And don't get me started on insurance, emissions inspections, cars with plastic bumpers that fall off on contact, the army of stickers necessary to make your auto street legal, that state trooper hiding with a radar gun just below the crest of the hill...

Sure, driving would be a whole lot cheaper if greedy dictators--of the Latin American, Arabian, and ex-KGB variety--dropped prices. And it would be cheaper if retiring oil executives weren't so greedy in looting their stockholders' investments. But it would be a whole lot cheaper if our own elected officials weren't so greedy. Americans can't control foreign dictators or multinational-corporation heads. Americans can control who they vote into office.

You covered a lot without even having to touch on the idiotic prohibitions against drilling in ANWAR, off the California and Florida coasts, etc! Great blog.

"And don't get me started on insurance, emissions inspections, cars with plastic bumpers that fall off on contact, the army of stickers necessary to make your auto street legal, that state trooper hiding with a radar gun just below the crest of the hill..."

Insurance: You can thank the Illegal Aliens for rising insurance costs...because they have none every time they hit your car.

Emissions: Like my Old man says, "It was hot outside a million years ago, 300 years ago and its still hot outside today. Just another Big government scam to get more money out of the taxpayer."

Plastic Bumpers: You can again thank the Federal Government for that crap. Back in 75 they thought it would be "safer" for cars to have the Endura bumpers.

Another thing Dan is the Advalorum tax or Personal property tax that you have to pay EVERY YEAR for the car you own that you already paid taxes on when you purchased it!

You own NOTHING. Try not paying your property tax, the government will take your house. Try not paying the car tax, and they'll take your car. Private ownership of anything is a lie. I can't believe we allow this to continue...

Relative to the World, we enjoy the most freedoms. But what is really free? Nothing! If you understand that, then you can grin, bare and tolerate the fact that we have enpowered elites who, at their whim, continue to dictate the ebb and flow of our alleged freedoms.

Junk Mail is free, so are phone calls from solicitors at around dinner time.

Bravo! As you said, the biggest factor contributing to pump price is the cost of crude. Second biggest factor?--state and federal taxes. It's outrageous, especially with members of Congress yelling "price gouging!" We're getting gougeg all right, but it ain't by big oil!

You are right. it is not big oil putting the screws to us. It is the federal and state gov't putting so many taxes right on the gas and indirectly on the oil companies that drive costs to such high levels. We need to work on this before we can start complaining about big companies.

Well said! If you don't like the laws, elect someone who will change them.

We can't keep turning to government to solve our problems, but we can ask government to get out of the way and let us solve our problems ourselves. Less taxes on gas and fewer regulations on exploration, refining, and alternative energy would go a long way towards creating solutions.

Wouldn't that be nice for our government to do something to solve our energy problems? Oh wait...when they tax the oil/gas industry to death they (government) make ENORMOUS amounts of money. Doing something to alleviate our problems would mean less revenue for them. No wonder they just sit back and do nothing.

exxon's profits for the 2005 fiscal year 37 billion dollars!

Sure, that's a lot of money, but did you know they earned less than ten cents per dollar of sales?

Plus the fact that Exxon simply sells a massive volume of product! The world uses so much oil that companies like that are bound to make high profits. But, an interesting thing to note is that most of Exxon's profits come from outside the U.S.-- meaning they aren't just making profits by screwing American consumers.

Reserved and Smith are right...when you compare ExxonMobile's profits to each dollar of revenue, they are in line with other industries. Huge profits aren't necessarily nefarious; in this case, it's about the enormous scale of the oil industry.

Kind of late here, but boy, I sure would like to be making 10% on each dollar of sales, especially my stock investments. Sweet.