House of Eratosthenes

Katy Grimes, who is sidebar resource Fetching Jen…miss her, you’re missing more than you think you are. Wonderful blogger, especially since she’s local — she and I share an area code, but not a zip. Blogging on Townhall, she writes:

While the Senate lost just this morning (51-43) on their attempt to tax “windfall oil profits,” Democrat Rep. Maxine Waters already threatened to “socialize” the oil industry (I think she meant to say “nationalized”). Watch the Fox news clip of Waters actually threatening to take over oil companies (sounds like hugo Chavez) here.

Then there is Dick Durbin demonizing profits: “The oil companies need to know that there is a limit on how much profit they can take in this economy,” said Sen. Richard Durbin of Illinois, the Senate’s No. 2 Democrat, warning that if energy prices are not reined in “we’re going to find ourselves in a deep recession.”

Thank God they lost this vote. What industry will be their target next? Farming is already heavily subsidized, but not yet nationalized. Look out Apple and Microsoft: your “obs[c]ene profits” are a big target.

Brings to mind an old family argument within the generation more senior that I used to witness from the sidelines: The uncle that just died, I vividly remember him asking me in exasperation “What in the world is the matter with your father? Doesn’t he understand that he’s poor?” The incredulous reaction was inspired by my Dad, actually his entire half of the family tree, showing reluctance to support these Roosevelt-progressive “gettin’-even-with’em-ism” programs and policies.

I’ve never exactly been in high cotton, myself; things are a little leaner now, than they have been before. But to me, it seems natural the oil companies should be making higher profits, now, when gasoline is more expensive. Isn’t this to be expected? They’re providing us with a commodity that, both before & after we get our claws on it, we prize more highly than we did before. While they’re bringing it up out of the ground, while they’re trucking it around, during the refinement of it, more things can go wrong when it’s worth more money. By “more” things, I mean a higher dollars’-worth of things…which is the only measurement that really matters.

To say nothing of the fact that when they’re moving it around, they’re burning their very own product. Look closely at a gas tanker sometime. There’s some littler tanks on the side, up by the cab, right? That’s where the diesel fuel goes. The gas in the big tank survives the trip, but the diesel gets burned up moving the gas around. Said diesel gets more expensive when the gas gets more expensive. Duh.

So if things happen to go peachy and there’s a profit to be made…yeah, I expect that would go up. This is why kids put up lemonade stands when it gets hotter outside. When there’s a profit to be made from the selling of it — when we value it more.

One other thing: We’ve quibbled about gas prices and “windfall profits” pretty much every Memorial Day, when there’s a new ceiling being ruptured in the average per-gallon self-serve gas price in the country. We’ve always done this — but not, in my memory, to this kind of intensity. Not this kind of viciousness.

Before Labor Day, I expect the crude oil price might come down again…the gas price probably will not. The snarking from the socialists who call themselves democrats, probably won’t die down even as it overheats the very machinery that is tasked with spewing it at us.

I think we’ll see a meltdown. And that is why I watch this with intense interest.

I mean, how much longer can this go on, where the man in the street is NOT yet saying “waitaminnit…duh…these ‘conservative’ guys, er, that’s a good point. You charge them evil awful oil guys more tax money and this somehow results in me paying a lower price at the pump, how does that work again??”

At some point, that question has to get answered. When enough people are asking about it.

Some clever satire would get that first domino tipping over, wouldn’t it? Like a late night comedy show where some evil oil executive is reviewing the corporate tax bill and saying “Good God! We’d better cut our prices in half so Congress stops making our lives more miserable!” I think that, with a heavy coating of sarcasm, might be all it takes to get the gears turning.

Companies do not reduce prices of their products when their costs go up. And you don’t need an advanced economics degree to get that. Third-grade math is enough.

Thing I Know #230. We’d call them “rationalists” if they thought things through rationally; that’s why they’re called “socialists.”

“The oil companies need to know that there is a limit on how much profit they can take in this economy,” said Sen. Richard Durbin of Illinois.

We have a little saying here at my company when a customer has suffered a loss because of perceived wrong on our part and/or a vendor, “Sorry, but when you start sharing your profits with us then we’ll share in your losses”.

If Durbin & the rest of his commie friends think that oil companies make too much profit will they make sure to bail them out when things go bad? Actually, they probably would, but you get my point.
- tim | 06/11/2008 @ 08:54
Yeah. Once upon a time, the word “profit” was found to draw an inflammatory reaction in focus groups. And so an industry was born…so political consultants could start making…profit.

The American Government that was envisioned by the Founding Fathers would have ground to a halt the instant this information came to light. We’d have an emergency Constitutional Convention exploring what to do about The Problem that threatened to derail the American Experiment, and we would not have opened up shop again until The Problem was solved.

And the solution probably would have involved taking the voting rights away from anyone who thought profits were dirty. In fact, we would have presumed them to be hypocrites who think profits are just wonderful until they’re earned by someone else…and we’d have been right about that.
- mkfreeberg | 06/11/2008 @ 09:23

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On the Windfall Profits Tax
Tuesday, June 10th, 2008