Oil Profit Inquiry?

In a culture of corporate welfare, do we really need to have an inquiry on profit? Americans think that big bad oil was gouging them at the pumps during hurricanes Katrina and Rita? I only had to look around my office to see why the price went up. It is a little concept called supply and demand. I literally watched people top off their gas tanks daily. By the time I got to Costco to fill my empty tank, there was no gas. And this was not in a coastal city dealing with evacuation- this was Dallas. Do you know what I didn’t see? I did not see any complainers modifying their own fuel consumption.

We all have choices. I have three cars in my garage. My favorite gets about 14 mpg. If there is a cell phone yapping ass in the left lane doing 50, and I have to pass him angrily at 100 to make a point, I might get 8 mpg. I choose to drive that car daily and therefore choose to fill up at Costco twice weekly. And I pay what the market dictates. No inquiry needed.

posted Nov 10th, 2005 by michelleshinghal
  • Stephen Gordon

    Considering that I live in Alabama, we are required by tradition to have as many old cars in the front yard as we have teeth remaining. Three of them actually run, still.

    However, I’m fortunate, as the best car for zipping around traffic is the Mustang, which gets pretty good gas mileage at high speed. Unfortunately, my wife normally gets that car, so I’m stuck slugging through the gas lines in the Grand Cherokee, or worse still, filling both tanks on the F-150.

    I demand, they supply, and I could have probably bought a house with what I pay in petrol prices, but freedom does not come without a pricetag.

  • http://www.opentorrent.org OpenTorrent

    I modified my fuel consumption by roughly 50%. I still make a few points on the highway… but now… I get an added snicker to know that my car does it with less gas. ;-)

    After market parts are not just for racers… “stock” cars are not optimized they are default and baseline. In my opinion you sometimes have to spend a little up front (or shortly after) to see a residual savings…

    I think the funny part is the need for an “inquiry” as if it is not plainly obvious the grose amount of revenue generated since this sham of a war began… in 2001!

  • disinter

    Shame on them for making money! Time to intervene…

  • Mike R

    “Before rushing to create a new federal tax, lawmakers should ask two questions:

    (1) Do oil companies currently pay too little in taxes compared to profits?
    (2) What was the effect of the last windfall profits tax enacted in 1980?

    The answer to the first question is that over the past 25 years, oil companies directly paid or remitted more than $2.2 trillion in taxes, after adjusting for inflation, to federal and state governments—including excise taxes, royalty payments and state and federal corporate income taxes. That amounts to more than three times what they earned in profits during the same period, according to the latest numbers from the Bureau of Economic Analysis and U.S. Department of Energy.

    These figures do not include local property taxes, state sales and severance taxes and on-shore royalty payments.

    The answer to the second question, according to the Congressional Research Service (CRS), is that the 1980s windfall profits tax depressed the domestic production and extraction industry and furthered our dependence on foreign sources of oil.
    ”

    http://www.taxfoundation.org/publications/show/1168.html

    In California, I pay 36.4c a gallon in taxes. On top of that, sales tax tacks on an additional 7%. That’s over 50c a gallon and that doesn’t include the additional hidden tax on the profits of the oil companies. There is a windfall being made by the government – more money than the oil companies are making per gallon. Not that I support using these taxes to help the poor pay their energy bills, but if they must, they already have all the money they need to help, partially as a result of the high prices. Even better, if they want to help the poor, they could lower the taxes. The only problem with that is everybody would save at the pump, rich and poor alike, which doesn’t support the Govt. goal of class warfare.

  • http://goldenliberty.blogspot.com AB

    But the big bad oil companies, there cheating us. Mommy gov’t, please help me. It’s all taxes BTW. Taxes AND regualtions. Not only 50c a gallon of taxes, plus they’re regulated to death causing evern more to be passed on to the consumer.