1 Liters of Petrol in Sri Lanka costs about Rs.157 (Ceylon Petroleum Corporation prices)
1 gallon of Petrol (gasoline) in the U.S. costs about $4 (average price everywhere)
1 gallon (U.S.) = 3.785 Liters (ref.)
So 1 Liter of Petrol in the U.S. would cost : $4/3.785 = $1.057
in Sri Lankan rupees that would be : Rs.113 (at 1 LKR = 107.85 USD)

In other words petrol costs nearly 40% more in Sri Lanka than in the U.S. for a country where gasoline prices are set more or less by the state. The important question is why?

Well, for starters taxes seem to be lower in the U.S. averaging 47 cents to the gallon. This includes both sales and federal taxes, which comes to about a bit less than 12% of the total selling price whereas in Sri Lanka, total tax apparently comes to around 37% of the total price. (I'd be much obliged if anyone could confirm that figure).

The tax burden says nothing of that 7 Billion rupee loss incurred by the state-run CPC this year, which will inevitably have to be financed by the tax payer.

Another reason could be that while the U.S. gasoline market is dominated by privately owned firms which responds to market incentives, to invest in efficiencies whereas Sri Lanka market is state-dominated. This makes changing prices a politically motivated exercise, where as in the U.S. this happens daily (or very often) according to market conditions. Messing up with market signals, especially holding down prices artificially while incuring losses, like the practice in Sri Lanka makes necessary long-term investments on efficiency, etc. improbable. The result is at the end of the day they have lower prices, while we have higher ones.

In short, Sri Lankan policymakers can't escape the mess they have made in policy, however much the world crude oil prices have gone up. In economic development, that's what matters most — policy. Not Oil prices, George W Bush, or some secret neoliberal plan to take over the world. Just how you work shit at home. Our policies suck at that and that's why we are poor.

Women are more decent than men.

Fewer women than men itch to lord it over others. Also, women are less willing than men to perform the countless asinine stunts and soul-shriveling pandering necessary to win political office. [link]

Hmm. It's a question I've often thought about, why is it that men vastly outnumber women in politics almost everywhere in the world? frankly, I don't know for sure. But I'll try..

It could be that the conventional wisdom is right. The world is less cosmopolitan than we comspolitians think and women in most societies are expected to stay at home, and therefore there's less of them in most professions. Political representation works on a regional basis, where there's a greater likelihood of people getting into the politics (running for public office) from non-urbanized, more traditional areas than any other profession. More traditional means, there's more of a chance that women are expected to stay home or be in more “acceptable” women-roles rather than running for public office. This results in fewer women getting into politics overall, lowering aggregates significantly.

Note that Hillary Clinton is a senator from New York, not Texas. Although Mayawati, the Chief Minister of India's Uttar Pradesh, who is also from a lower caste, is probably a counter example.

I guess it's a question for the freakonomists.

In addition to being an ethnic conflict, the Sri Lankan civil war is a religious one: most Sinhalese are Buddhist, while most Tamils are Hindu. [link]

Obviously Obama reads the Newsweek. Heh. But seriously, let's rest it. Sri Lankan conflict is many things, what it's not is a religious conflict. The fact that most Sinhalese are Buddhist and most Tamils are Hindu (and all Mulims are well, muslims) doesn't mean that the conflict is drawn along those lines. That's like saying that in a war with say, the Americans and Japanese was a conflict between short people and tall people.

Other than that, the article is well worth a read.