Power Line: Oil Executives Try to Educate Senate Democrats, But Democrats Appear Hopeless
The one little tidbit in this excellent coverage that is especially apt is the following:
How Democrats look at the world is pretty amazing. Profits = Bad, Taxes = Good. We hear endlessly about the size of oil company profits and are constantly told how "they are the problem". The MSM virtually NEVER reports that simple number that taxes average 15% of the cost of fuel, and the profits are only 4%. Even more strange, the idea that a "tax moratorium" is a stupid idea is claimed to be foolish (I guess because BO doesn't like it), where we CONSTANTLY hear that oil company profits are "way too high". How can that be? 15% off would be completely worthless to consumers, but 4% off would be a huge help?
The fact is that Democrats don't like business, executives, and especially not the oil industry. They have been working to restrict them for 50+ years, and it is pretty obvious they have been very successful. Our oil industry is anemic by world standards ... accounting for single digit percentages of reserves and refining capacity. Largely due to government decisions that we have made to restrict exploration, drilling and refineries, we have arrived where Europe arrived decades ago as likely going to always be a high cost oil market. Congratulations Democrats and MSM! You have successfully put the US in a hole that hurts the lowest income people the worst and is likely to be a drag on the economy for decades to come.
Will US Business and Technology find some innovative way to dig us out? Hydrogen, better electric cars, fusion, solar, coal gassification, or some way that I have no clue about? I sure hope so. No doubt BO will do all he can do to make that less likely by restricting capital flows through higher taxes, but the innovation momentum kicked off by Reagan won't wind down immediately (well, unless BO takes even worse actions than I expect to stop it). I like to think there is always hope. Investors, innovators and producers always fight against long odds, it is just that at some points they get a lot longer.
The one little tidbit in this excellent coverage that is especially apt is the following:
Another theme of the day's testimony was that, if anyone is "gouging"
consumers through the high price of gasoline, it is federal and state
governments, not American oil companies. On the average, 15% percent of
the cost of gasoline at the pump goes for taxes, while only 4%
represents oil company profits. These figures were repeated several
times, but, strangely, not a single Democratic Senator proposed
relieving consumers' anxieties about gas prices by reducing taxes.
How Democrats look at the world is pretty amazing. Profits = Bad, Taxes = Good. We hear endlessly about the size of oil company profits and are constantly told how "they are the problem". The MSM virtually NEVER reports that simple number that taxes average 15% of the cost of fuel, and the profits are only 4%. Even more strange, the idea that a "tax moratorium" is a stupid idea is claimed to be foolish (I guess because BO doesn't like it), where we CONSTANTLY hear that oil company profits are "way too high". How can that be? 15% off would be completely worthless to consumers, but 4% off would be a huge help?
The fact is that Democrats don't like business, executives, and especially not the oil industry. They have been working to restrict them for 50+ years, and it is pretty obvious they have been very successful. Our oil industry is anemic by world standards ... accounting for single digit percentages of reserves and refining capacity. Largely due to government decisions that we have made to restrict exploration, drilling and refineries, we have arrived where Europe arrived decades ago as likely going to always be a high cost oil market. Congratulations Democrats and MSM! You have successfully put the US in a hole that hurts the lowest income people the worst and is likely to be a drag on the economy for decades to come.
Will US Business and Technology find some innovative way to dig us out? Hydrogen, better electric cars, fusion, solar, coal gassification, or some way that I have no clue about? I sure hope so. No doubt BO will do all he can do to make that less likely by restricting capital flows through higher taxes, but the innovation momentum kicked off by Reagan won't wind down immediately (well, unless BO takes even worse actions than I expect to stop it). I like to think there is always hope. Investors, innovators and producers always fight against long odds, it is just that at some points they get a lot longer.
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