Posted on 04/13/2008 10:37:29 AM PDT by Osage Orange
Sun April 13, 2008
Dry hole:
Tax would needle average Americans
The Oklahoman Editorial
WITH apologies to Upton Sinclair and Paul Anderson, when Big Oil is making record profits and gasoline prices are at historic levels, there will be blood.
Sinclair authored "Oil!” in 1927. Eighty years later, Anderson released a movie loosely based on the novel. Sinclair's Joe Ross became Anderson's Daniel Plainview, a ruthless wildcatter who'll stop at nothing to bring oil to market.
Big Oil's critics, including a slew of Democrats in Washington, will stop at nothing to demonize an industry whose executives are said to be making blood money at the expense of consumers.
"There Will Be Blood” resulted in a Best Actor Oscar for Daniel Day-Lewis as Plainview. Anderson was nominated for his adaptation of Sinclair's muckraking book.
The notion that the health and wealth of the energy industry benefits only a few is an adaptation of reality. For every Daniel Plainview who hiked the back country looking for oil, thousands of middle-class Americans now benefit from Big Oil's prosperity.
They, not oil kingpins, would be the biggest losers if a Congress intent on blood-letting Big Oil sticks the industry with a punitive tax policy.
Last September, the same month "There Will Be Blood” was first screened (at a Texas film festival), economists Robert J. Shapiro and Nam D. Pham went drilling for energy company ownership data. They discovered that executives and board members have only a 1.5 percent stake.
The other 98.5 percent? Institutional investors (nearly 70 percent) and individuals (nearly 30 percent). The former group includes asset managers working on behalf of middle-class Americans who own shares through mutual funds, pension funds and retirement accounts. The latter group has energy company investments through IRAs and other personal retirement accounts.
While ownership shares are somewhat different among integrated energy firms, service firms and operations sub-industries, Shapiro and Pham found that in all three groups company insiders have a "very small portion” of the ownership.
Andrew Moylan of the National Taxpayers Union drew on this data to conclude that drawing blood from Big Oil would force anemia on the middle class. Congress is mulling legislation to impose $17 billion in punitive taxes on the energy, supposedly to advance the cause of alternative energy sources. Thus, two dry holes from the past would be rediscovered.
One is the windfall profits tax of the 1980s, which reduced domestic production and increased oil imports. The other is the boondoggle of alternative energy failures such as the Carter-era Synfuels Corp., which Moylan says "swallowed billions in tax dollars without producing a drop of commercially viable fuel.”
The plain view is that turning a boom town into a boondoggle is poor public policy. Any attempt to stick a needle in Big Oil would result in squeezing blood from millions of middle-class Americans.
You are speaking to a mostly deaf audience. It is so much easier to blame “BIG OIL” than to look at facts.
As long as they aren't blind...I think I'm okay. : )
Let’s see. “Big” oil is making and outrageous amount of money these days, roughly 8 cents a gallon from what I hear. That would be about 2.5% per gallon of gas.. And they have to make the investment to get it out of the ground, refine it, market it and deliver it. But “Big” gubmint is making about 50 cents per gallon or about 15% of a gallon of gas with no investment whatsoever.
Now, tell me again who is making obscene profit?
(Starbucks better hope congress doesn’t find out about their profit margins.)
Oil
There is no other commodity that gov’t makes so much off of for doing virtually nothing...... not even tobacco compares to the revenues (windfall) that gov’t recieves. As a matter off fact, gov’t gets a bigger tax margin than the oil companies do in profit margins and they have to produce it.
I 2nd that..!!
--it usually ends the converstion--
algore will save us......
“One is the windfall profits tax of the 1980s, which reduced domestic production and increased oil imports.”
Carter should be put in jail for fraud for naming it that, it’s a wellhead tax and is collected even if the well is operating at a loss!
How about cutting off ALL oil to the elected royals. After all they use automobiles, fly in aircraft, probably have gas stoves and fireplaces. Just make sure these people are not entitled to the products necessary to make their lives comfortable also to move them from home to job, job to constituents etc. Same with members of EPA who have cost Americans much anguish and money with their rules. (and these epa employees are not elected, yet make laws)
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