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kjbathe · 05-07-2008, 11:32 AM

The Genie's out of the bottle, so let's do this and then get back to gas price updates around the lake....

My point is this: Folks like to pile on the oil companies for making huge profits. Now some folks think we should be taxing those "excess" profits. But these folks weren't rushing to bail out oil companies when they were losing money, bleeding jobs, and being forced to consolidate. So if we start down the slippery slope of taxing excess profits, where does it end? Disney just reported a 22% pop in Q1 results and over $1B in profit. Is it time for the government to crack down on gate fees and start taxing the mouse?

Oil companies are making money, and a lot of it. But that's why many companies go into business in this country -- to make money. It's easy to think they should just give some of that money back because it costs us more to buy their product, but that's not how the free market works. We also have to put the discussion in the proper context. These are not oil companies as much as they are energy companies. And If we think that taxing the energy companies more is going to help gas prices, you need to think again. In reality, companies don't pay taxes, CUSTOMERS of companies pay taxes. Slap a windfall profits tax on these energy companies and they'll just pass that additional cost right through to the pump. Washington taking their cut of the action, of course.

So taxing these supposed excess profits isn't the solution. Especially when certain folks want to start by taxing energy companies with profit margins well below that of many other companies. So what is the solution?

We have a worldwide population that is consuming gads and gads of oil-based products and looking for more. India, China, Europe, and the US are all competing for the same oil coming out of the same limited number of holes poked in the earth. OPEC has no interest in increasing production to ease demand and in this country no one wants to poke more holes off our coast, drill in Alaska, put a wind farm off the Cape, streamline the permitting process to increase refining capacity or approve more Nuclear Power plants. So here we are at $4.09 and climbing. And short of reducing demand, producing more of our own and actively engaging to develop new technologies, there is no current solution.

And we did it to ourselves...

05-07-2008, 11:32 AM	#40
kjbathe Senior Member Join Date: Jul 2006 Posts: 281 Thanks: 3 Thanked 21 Times in 11 Posts	The Genie's out of the bottle, so let's do this and then get back to gas price updates around the lake.... My point is this: Folks like to pile on the oil companies for making huge profits. Now some folks think we should be taxing those "excess" profits. But these folks weren't rushing to bail out oil companies when they were losing money, bleeding jobs, and being forced to consolidate. So if we start down the slippery slope of taxing excess profits, where does it end? Disney just reported a 22% pop in Q1 results and over $1B in profit. Is it time for the government to crack down on gate fees and start taxing the mouse? Oil companies are making money, and a lot of it. But that's why many companies go into business in this country -- to make money. It's easy to think they should just give some of that money back because it costs us more to buy their product, but that's not how the free market works. We also have to put the discussion in the proper context. These are not oil companies as much as they are energy companies. And If we think that taxing the energy companies more is going to help gas prices, you need to think again. In reality, companies don't pay taxes, CUSTOMERS of companies pay taxes. Slap a windfall profits tax on these energy companies and they'll just pass that additional cost right through to the pump. Washington taking their cut of the action, of course. So taxing these supposed excess profits isn't the solution. Especially when certain folks want to start by taxing energy companies with profit margins well below that of many other companies. So what is the solution? We have a worldwide population that is consuming gads and gads of oil-based products and looking for more. India, China, Europe, and the US are all competing for the same oil coming out of the same limited number of holes poked in the earth. OPEC has no interest in increasing production to ease demand and in this country no one wants to poke more holes off our coast, drill in Alaska, put a wind farm off the Cape, streamline the permitting process to increase refining capacity or approve more Nuclear Power plants. So here we are at $4.09 and climbing. And short of reducing demand, producing more of our own and actively engaging to develop new technologies, there is no current solution. And we did it to ourselves...