Apparently, the petrol you buy is around 35p a litre. All the rest is tax. It’s fuel duty, and then VAT on top of that. I gather that VAT is added to the fuel+fuel duty total, not the base price of the fuel either (is this correct?). So the people winning here is the government.

Don't forget the coast of living for many other things in the USA are much higher.

Telephone, TV and mobile phone won't get you much change out of $300 every month.

That's really dependant on where you live and how cleverly you shop around, I was paying $20 per month for my mobile and we had an internet/phone deal which was $50 per month including long-distance calls to the UK once a week and the TV was no more expensive than than. If you live in a state without sales tax then in actual fact it's much cheaper to live in the US.

Interesting, all the people I hear talking say that a smartphone contract runs at around $100 a month and they are paying around $100 a month for cable TV.

Edit: it seems to be a bit cheaper than it was last time I checked, $60 for a Verizon single line plan and $145 for a multi-device (4 devices). Cable seems to run to £80 with the TV package ($60 with just HBO)

America seems very expensive for comms seeing as everything else there seems cheaper.
I pay £11, 40 for line rental, £19.49 for calls package (all calls free to landlines) and £13 mobile sim only line rental including calls and data. TV is free. So that's just over £70 for everything. Sounds like they'd pay hundreds for the same services.