Liberals don't see it like that.  They think taxing an industry they have demonized will get them votes, and to a point it will.

"Windfall profits" implies an unusual event such as we have now in the gasoline crisis. In these times it is not asking too much for the profiteers to give back some of the spoils.

Why should they? Say for example you're a small gold mining company (i.e. you're a price taker not a price maker), and the price of gold suddenly shoots up as people are worried about how reliable the currency is, and various other reasons, meaning you then make more money. Should you then be expected to give away your company's profits simply because the price of the commodity you deal with has gone up? Equally, if the price of gold was to fall, should the government be expected to give money to that same gold company?

It's effectively the same with oil; the price of oil goes up, meaning that for US oil producing companies (which I think account for 7% of world production) they make more money from the oil they're selling, why should they then give that money to the government? The government is hardly going to step in and give them a ton of money if the oil price was to plummet and they made losses. So if those companies are expected to bear the full brunt of any downsides, why can't they benefit from the upsides? (and that's without even taking into account the negative impact such a tax would have on investments as I touched on in my previous post)

"Windfall profits"
"Profiteers"
"Spoils"

Certainly applicable to fraud and to thieves and their loot but that's not what we're talking about here.

The term 'windfall profit' is simply bogus, nothing more than demagoguery at its finest. The fundamental notion underlying the use of the term is flawed - that the economy is a zero-sum game, that deprivation is the flip side of the profit coin. There is of course a corollary - that the deprived should have a say in what to do with those profits. Those 'windfall profits' have no meaning or use unless they are 'spent' and no company exists for the singular purpose of accumulating & hoarding 'profits'. A buck never spent is just a piece of paper. That money will return to further grow the economy from the 'black hole' where some people (mostly those with an agenda) claim it goes, and those thousands of folks smart enough to invest in oil stocks benefited handsomely from the run-up in profits (sadly, they didn't include me, at least not directly).

The inconvenient truth is that the more a government redistributes the wealth of an economy, the smaller the total pie of the economy becomes.

In other words, rather than fight inequality the US has thrived by growing the pie larger and larger, so that even the poor are relatively well-off (ie those in poverty with color television, etc.). Bigger pie means everyone gets a larger piece!





It's the old joke, in Soviet Russia, everyone is equal, equally poor! Sad but true...

But it will be interesting to see how many votes  "the promise" (not guarantee) of $1000 will buy.

When you sell your home (hoping to make a little money I assume) to retire or find a smaller place, Obama wants to tax your windfall profits too. Bust your hump for so many years, paying 4 times the cost of the home (interest) then the government takes 38% (the new rate) of the sale price? Sounds like robbery to me.

Yeah, like the black hole of more modernized, adaptable refineries--where are they?



I suspect you're implying that let alone can humanity afford a global middle class, it's not even possible in the wealthiest[thanks to debt]nation on earth.

Goodpoint! It seems those screaming for the windfall profit taxes are also the ones that figure the oil companies "got what they deserved" when the price was $20/barrel.

Awaiting the feds & states to make bothering to build them feasible.

Oh, the old NIMBY syndrome, eh?--what a crock.

Indeed, because I filled up my old Buick for $4 out of my pay envelope of $35 even when oil was $3 per barrel. I'm appalled that so many of you sound like the dialect of the millionaires' country club. Get real.

Excuse me? IN 1999, gas was about 80 cents a gallon (and over 25% of that was taxes)! After going to a dollar back in the mid 70s (we had deflation between 74 and 99? Gee, imagine that!). DO you think the oil companies were making record profits then? Did you hear a great hue and cry for "oil welfare" because the oil companies were sucking air? And that the largest capitalized companies no longer included ANY oil companies? I was filling up for about $8/tank, and my paycheck was a lot larger than $70!

Sure, 50 years ago, you may have been filling up a gas guzzler for $4 and taking home $35, but then your taxes were a lot lower since you were living in what at the time was poverty. If you applied, I bet you got assistance. Did the oil companies in 99? Want to buy a bridge in Brooklyn?

Go ahead, and "hurt" the oil companies. And then complain because they cant do anything to solve the energy crises. rely on congress! Sure! They have fixed so many things. Like......name one that has not fattened their coffers!

Selective memory may work when telling stories to grand kids. It does not work in the real world.

Go ahead, try to build one, see how far you get.

So you're saying that oil companies should pay when the price drops (via less money for the oil they sell), and pay when the price rises (via windfall taxes), because you don't like paying more for oil when the price of oil rises? You know the end result of that? You can end up paying more for the oil than before the tax! After all companies won't be as keen to invest in new oil production to increase supply (e.g. in areas where there is a low likelihood of finding oil, and also in other areas where you know there is oil, but it is so costly to obtain it that you need high prices to make it worthwhile), so supply will be lower, meaning higher prices. That's even assuming the companies don't respond to any tax by passing at least some of it onto the consumer (which they might well do) in the form of higher prices.

Also, you seem to think it's wrong for all these companies to make all this money, but who is actually getting the money? A lot of the time it can actually be poor people! The reason is those (post-tax) profits will either be given to shareholders, or reinvested back into the business. Some of those shareholders are likely to include pension funds (unless the US has restrictions on what they can+can't invest and oil companies are prohibited), which in turn will often hold the pensions of countless people on low incomes.

Typical trickle down "theory" which only works if the government does the trickling. Look I have nothing but respect for big oil as responsible suppliers of an essential commodity that makes this country work. But when they went the way of Arabian oil in the thirties and forties at the expense of domestic drilling, they had done the same thing that American companies do now by uncontrolled outsourcing at the expense of national security and a thriving middle class.
We're talking seventy years ago and $35 per week was not poverty nor eligible for welfare.

You know Steve, when things like iPhones, PS3's, xbox 360's, blackberrys, starbucks, ebay, amazon.com, etc are still showing profits and large numbers in sales in a country where the economy is suppose to be bad, where the poor are hurting and where jobs are being lost left and right, I think the ones that need to get real are the ones who keep thinking the poor people of this country are living like poor people in Africa, Venezuela, Cuba or even Mexico. People risk their lives crossing the border, making boats are of junk and stacking themselves inside containers to cross the Atlantic or Pacific just to be poor in this country, cause rest a sure they will not become rich 5 minutes after reaching land. But compared to their country, they will think they are.

I am one of those people considered poor by many. Yea, I am poor, I have TV's, laptops, game consoles, a new car, a nice apartment good food in my fridge and pantry, cable, Internet and I even get to eat out from time to time. Why? Because I work for it, because I strive to be more than I am and more than others think I can be and because in this country, anyone can be rich. Just ask Levan Hernandez, Chris Gardner an William Hung.

I look forward to being rich someday, being a Democrat or Liberal will not accomplish that for me.