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Geez, you expect them to work for a living??? |
Posted on 05/09/2006 3:46:32 PM PDT by RWR8189
Amid all the hysteria among politicians and in the media over rising gasoline prices, and all the outraged indignation about oil company profits and their executives' high pay and lavish perks, has anybody bothered to even estimate how much effect any of this actually has on the price we pay at the pump?
If the profit per gallon of gas were reduced to zero, would that be enough to reduce the price by even a dime? If the oil company executives were to work free of charge, would that be enough to reduce the price of gasoline by even a penny a gallon?
Surely media loudmouths making millions of dollars a year and the multibillion dollar TV networks they work for can afford to get some statistics and buy a pocket calculator to do the arithmetic before spouting off nationwide.
But this is the age of emotion, not analysis.
Politicians are even more hypocritical. The government collects far more in taxes on every gallon of gasoline than the oil companies collect in profits. If oil company profits are "obscene," as some politicians claim, are the government's taxes PG-13?
The very politicians who have piled tax after tax on gasoline over the years, and voted to prohibit oil drilling offshore or in Alaska, and who have made it impossible to build a single oil refinery in decades, are all over the television screens denouncing the oil companies. In other words, those who supply oil are being denounced and demonized by those who have been blocking the supply of oil.
Given the vast amounts of gasoline sold across the length and breadth of this nation, and given the mega-billion dollars involved, whether or not some corporate executive has an inflated pay scale is unlikely to explain the price of gasoline.
It may allow some people in the media to vent their emotions and some politicians to create a bogeyman, since they can't play St. George without a dragon. But cheap demagoguery cannot explain expensive gas.
When the two most heavily populated nations on earth -- China and India -- have rapidly growing economies and rapidly escalating importations of oil, how could that not affect the world price of oil? After all, the price of oil is determined in the international markets, contrary to conspiracy theories that keep turning up whenever gas prices rise.
Those conspiracy theories have been investigated time and again, without uncovering anything. But it is still a clever political ploy to ask for more investigations when gas prices rise. If nothing else, it distracts attention from those who have been blocking all attempts to enable us to use our own oil.
Nothing is easier, or more emotionally satisfying, than blaming high prices on those who charge them, rather than on those who cause them. The same thing happens when stores in high-crime neighborhoods charge higher prices than stores in safer neighborhoods.
Both crime and precautions against crime add to the cost of doing business and this adds to the prices. But seldom, if ever, do those who decry the high prices blame those prices on the crime, vandalism, and violence committed by local inhabitants.
Where the stores are owned by a different ethnic group, such as Asians in black ghettoes, it is virtually guaranteed that the store owners will be denounced for "gouging," "discrimination" and whatever other political rhetoric will rouse the emotions.
People with no experience in business, no knowledge of history, and utterly ignorant of economics do not hesitate to leap from high prices to greedy profit-makers. Many of these ignorant people are on nationwide television and some are in Congress.
Many, if not most, of the great American fortunes -- Rockefeller, Carnegie, Ford -- have been made by finding ways to charge lower prices, not higher.
In the early 20th century, the A & P grocery chain became renowned for both its low prices and its high quality. Its profit rate never fell below 20 percent during the decade of the 1920s. That's a higher rate of profit than the oil companies make.
The relationship between prices and profit rates is not as simple as media hype or political demagoguery claims.
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Geez, you expect them to work for a living??? |
Sowell... gotta love the guy.
Ping for later.
Please, please, please, somebody... Make Bill O'Reilly read this article over and over and over until a nanowatt light bulb attached to his two ear lobes flickers.
Sowell is a floodlight. O'Reilly, a LED.
"But this is the age of emotion, not analysis."
So true.
Sowell is very, very good. Why don't we have more thinkers like him?
Why are the so called Democrats incapable of thinking?
If politicians REALLY want to investigate soaring gas prices, they ought to look in the mirror.
FRmail me if you want on or off the Thomas Sowell Ping List.
Sowell pings are cool. :)
Lol, a nanowatt LED!
They sure are.
It's enough to make a person grumpy!
10% X $45 a barrel = $4.50
10% X $70 a barrel = $7.00
wahlah more profit
What don't people understand here?
A must read BTTT!
Thanks for posting this.
I'm a pasty white guy, but I'd swear Sowell and Walter Williams are distant relatives of mine! :)
Thinking? What dat?
Me no under.. understa... um, what me am be talking about?
Droooool.
(typical mental conversation of the current crop of Republican and Democrap Congressmen)
"If oil company profits are "obscene," as some politicians claim, are the government's taxes PG-13?"
The man can turn a phrase. LOL.
Another great analysis ... loved the dragon and St George analogy. With democrap manipulators, belief in dragons lives! Sad that so many voters remain so terribly ignorant when they are in fact the sovereigns of this Republic. But the political parties like it that way.
Oh, how I love this man! If we as a country do not (a) insist the politicians lower this confiscatory gas tax, and (b) insist that more refineries be built, and more drilling be allowed, nothing will happen to keep gas prices affordable.
Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said a windfall profits tax, along with measures to stem concentration of market power among a few select oil companies, could offer eventual relief to consumers hurting at the gas pump.
Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., said he believes gas prices "would come down within a matter of days" if President Bush told oil companies that he was going to support a windfall profits tax.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1620555/posts
At the least it has become very unpopular.
Please add me. Thanks!
It is such a pleasure to read (watch or listen) to columnists, etc. that actually add content, ideas and value to the debate. Too many simply parrot partisan viewpoints.
Agree or not, Dr. Sowell adds to the national discourse. On this topic, he really sheds light on the hypocrisy of the politicians.
How simpering a fool does Spector seem in comparison? "We should look into a windfall profit tax." Putz...
No the price of oil is determined by OPEC. The only thing the market has to say about it, is whether we buy it or not.
What happens to the OPEC price if we don't buy the oil?
Thanks, clyde. Brilliant, as usual.
These folks control the price.
Added is you!
Well .. I don't like to brag. ;)
Same beliefs/conclusions as Thomas and Walter, though they are admittedly MUCH more eloquent in the communication of the ideas. :)
"If the profit per gallon of gas were reduced to zero, would that be enough to reduce the price by even a dime? If the oil company executives were to work free of charge, would that be enough to reduce the price of gasoline by even a penny a gallon?
"Surely media loudmouths making millions of dollars a year and the multibillion dollar TV networks they work for can afford to get some statistics and buy a pocket calculator to do the arithmetic before spouting off nationwide.
"But this is the age of emotion, not analysis.
"Politicians are even more hypocritical. The government collects far more in taxes on every gallon of gasoline than the oil companies collect in profits. If oil company profits are "obscene," as some politicians claim, are the government's taxes PG-13?"
Are you listening, OReilly?
BTTT
'Twould be wonderful to have him on OReilly, but then his intellect and logical debate style don't fit in with the shouting, overtalking style of Cable TV shows!
"No the price of oil is determined by OPEC."
Add to that commodity speculators. And who might one of these speculators be? That's right, the self admitted limousine liberal, George Soros!
Hi... I don't remember if I'm already on your ping list. However, if I'm not, would you please add me to it? Thanks!
Let's see... yep, you're on it! Have you not been getting pings lately or something? The one in this thread should have fired off to you.
Sowell BTT. Always.
Thinking hasn't been required for most people in the media... They just wait for their news to be delivered, and then present it to an adoring public who treat it as gospel.
Mark
The very existence of flamethrowers proves that some time, somewhere, someone said to themselves, "You know, I want to set those people over there on fire, but I'm just not close enough to get the job done." - Too long for a tagline, but I saw it, stole it, and needed to publish it here!
I still haven't figured out what they're complaining about... Most leftists in politics WANTED higher energy prices, to force demand down. The problem they're having is that they don't approve of who's actually getting the additional money, i.e. NOT THEM!
They're all in favor of higher prices, as long as they're getting the "windfall profits," since they're the ones who know best how to spend it.
Mark
I'd love to see Dr Sowell on Neal Cavuto's show, or have him interviewed by Neal Boortz!
Mark
Please add me to the ping list.
Added!
good article!
Thanks! Thomas Sowell is always a must read.
Damn, Sowell's good.
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