Hidden taxes to fund the parasitic state

If you want to understand why the UK and Europe are in industrial decline there is no better chart than looking at the comparison of electricity prices by country. Is it any wonder the UK will soon no longer have a steel industry and Germany’s de-industrialisation is not far behind? Of course this competitive disadvantage is not limited to electricity or indeed natural gas prices, with the latter also providing the base feedstock for the chemical industry and also agriculture (fertiliser), but also extends to the overall tax burden in these regions. Indeed, these energy premiums either represent a colossal failure of competition and therefore regulatory protections, or reveal what they really are, a hidden tax to fund the political agendas of the administrations and their donors!

If UK industry (what’s left of it) is already paying around 8 times more than China and 5 times more than the US for its electricity, the same is the case for natural gas prices, where a similar disparity has been evident since at least 2020. As the core feedstock chemical, these price increases and disparities cascaded thru to virtually every other industry, including agriculture (fertiliser). In addition to the estimated £310-410bn cost of its Covid response in just the UK alone, Europe is paying around 5 times the price in the US for natural gas. That means domestic prices will have to be that much higher if similar margins are to be made by manufacturers, or else tariffs and subsidies will be needed to artificially skew the the competitive landscape.

So as well as paying almost 5 times that the US for both electricity and natural gas, the UK and the EU also have governments extracting and spending an additional 10-20ppts of GDP. Is it any wonder GDP growth is stagnating in these countries?