The price of the gas in your car, the electricity on the grid, and the water flowing through your pipes is not the result of a laissez-fair free market. Each of those industries have massive ... I don't know what to call them, subsidies, welfare, hand-outs, entitlements, tax credits... They're all the same thing, tax payer's dollars in the hands of individuals/companies. Yes, that does include money you own in taxes, but the government, for whatever reason, decides to not charge you, like the 47% of Americans that don't get charged any income taxes, and everyone that has a mortgage, low income families, elderly and disabled, people saving for retirement, people that have children, people that care for children, people that adopt children, people seeking higher education, people buying their first house, people that make their businesses and/or residences more energy efficient, businesses that use alternative fuel sources for their transportation fleets, businesses that donate (time, money, product, or other support) to disaster relief, businesses doing research, .... Trying to list the number of ways that businesses can reduce their taxes would take a library.
If a middle class person wants to complain about all those "welfare queens", it would be a good idea to make sure that the tax credit from their mortgage alone isn't larger than the average welfare benefit. In fact, they really shouldn't complain about it at all. Overall, they benefit far more by not paying their fair share of taxes. If you don't pay 100% of your taxes, taking no exemptions, then you're not really paying your share; you're accepting a government handout. As you move up the economic scale, the difference between taxes owed and taxes paid quickly exceeds the average welfare check.
On top of that, they are the beneficiary of businesses not paying taxes, and other, "essential" industries being paid to be in business (although it is clear that the super-rich are benefiting the absolute most of anyone, none of them will likely read this). Ultimately, there is no difference. We just like to add a flair for the ridiculous and overly dramatic by using coded words to describe the government either granting money, or excusing taxes a person or company owes for some political reason. And they are political.
For example, married people get tax breaks because the state actively engages in moralism. It would be better for everyone if a large portion/vast majority (far greater than 50%) of the world stopped having kids (for economic and environmental reasons), but we put a higher price, as in a dollar amount, to bribe people to get married and have children (it is generally assumed that people are going to have "immoral" sex out of the "sacred marriage bed" unless they can be coaxed into being married). The tax breaks for parents that are married are significantly higher than those for parents that are single, and noticeably higher for married or single non-parents. See, the government is incentivising your sex life.
For a less charged issue, check out Thomas Hanchett's 1996 article “U.S. Tax Policy and the Shopping-Center Boom of the 1950s and 1960s.” American Historical Review. Ever wonder why we have so many strip malls, or what is actually causing suburban sprawl? SPOILER: Long term tax breaks for land development (but not continuing management--after 10 years let the buildings rot).
They do this in all kinds of fields, especially power and water. So when you go to the pump and you see the price, that is not just a reflection of supply and demand (and the weird voodoo that companies do when trying to figure out what price the market will bear), that is also a reflection of politics du jour. By the way, when the major consideration of retail prices is not what is the break-even point, but how much will people pay, that is a clear sign that people have lost the ability to see the actual cost and value of everyday objects. For capitalism to work, the buyer has to try to negotiate the lowest possible price while the seller tries to get the highest price, but when is the last time you haggled over a hamburger with McDonald's? As consumers, we're so stuck on the fixed price of economic objects that we've started to think that things like gasoline have some sort of intrinsic value, which is just fucktarded (technical term).
Anything that has the same price, opportunity cost, and use-value of gas has the same value of gas. If driving around the corner to the next station is too much bother to save $0.01 per gallon, then the two chemically identical gallons of gas at different stations do no have the same value. If electricity will make your car go, then why the hell would you think that it has a different value than gas?
It is good business to get as much as possible for every trade, that is part of the nature of capitalism, but it requires negotiation. The system was invented during a time where most daily-use objects were purchased out of mere convenience, and not necessity. Home industry was a major market factor. People not only made their own clothing, but they made their own cloth from raising their own livestock that also gave them most of their food (given that previous to 1900 a majority of the population of the world was rural). Their neighbors produced most of the rest.
The consumption pattern for most Americans left them producing more than they used. Population Growth = economic growth. That is not the case any more. Each person born into the modern infrastructure is another mouth that needs to be fed, another back that needs to be clothed, another future family that will need a two cars, a house, a new cellphone ever year, the latest appliances, and so on. When is the last time you made anything you use? When is the last time you harvested resources to make something?
Most people will survive this world by selling products made in mass by machines far, far away to someone else that sells other products to someone else. Unlike our rural past, the economic benefit doesn't go to the person doing the work, but to the company that owns the means of production. When it comes to gas, electricity, and water, the government is willing to pay billions of dollars annually to keep them flowing at a price point you are willing to pay.... but it is not like you have that many options for most of your utilities. How many power companies exist in your town? Have you ever generated even one kWh of the power you used? I know I haven't.
It really comes down to how an increase in these necessities affects the cost of other goods which you do have the power to do without. If transportation costs go up because fuel prices increase, a host of other industries start to have serious issues. The only solution is to control the prices of necessities (preferably in confusing ways that are hard to see) so that people will continue to buy junk they don't need, with money they haven't earned yet. Consumption = economic growth.
If you're reading this in the US, then congratulations, you are a direct and indirect beneficiary of welfare, and are a participant in a planned and managed economy.
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