nessuno@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx <nessuno@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> espoused:
>
>>
>> As critical as I am of the US, the UK is in many respects much, much
>> worse, especially when it comes to taxation.
>>
>
> No place is perfect, and bureaucrats are the same everywhere, and
> everywhen....I'm sure they were just as bad in ancient Rome or China.
> I'm not critical of the UK in spite of the high prices, I just don't
> understand why they went along with Bush's war, such an intelligent
> people following such an idiot, and lending legitimacy to him. I know
> there's a "special relationship" but honestly there are times when
> your best friends say no.
There's more to this story than just Customs and Excise, though. Many
"brand owners" work very hard, including abusing the legal system, in
order to maintain this amazing state of affairs. The Tesco versus Levi
Jeans was a very good example of this, but most major manufacturers take
part in this particularly nasty game.
Still, though, it's not quite as simple as it looks. VAT in the UK is
quoted as part of the price, whereas in the US and Canada it's added (or
the equivalent is added) at point of sale. This means that the
proportion is more like 1.5:1 than 2:1, as it appears to be at first
sight. Secondly, a lot of things are actually quite expensive in the US
and Canada, too, when compared with the UK. This is particularly
noticable for EU produced wines, beers and spirits, where the prices
seem to sit around 3x to 4x what we'd pay in the UK for the same thing,
but for some more specialist items, such as vintage Whisky, say, I've
seen 8x or worse.
Other things which confuse the issue sit around quantity of liquids.
Comparing a per gallon price being very difficult since the US gallon is
much smaller than the Imperial one (as used in UK and Canada, although
not so much these days as we've mostly gone metric), plus the way tax is
applied up-front in the UK whereas it's a point of sale in the US, means
comparison is very hard.
DVD, CD and general small electrical goods seem to be reasonably
comparable in price between the UK and the US and Canada. There are
major gaps in computing and large black goods though. White goods
prices seemed to be similar when I last looked (at xmas a few weeks back
in Canada).
--
| Mark Kent -- mark at ellandroad dot demon dot co dot uk |
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| My (new) blog: http://www.thereisnomagic.org |
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