The International House of Bacon

A quickie today for reasons you might see later.

Related to yesterday: essentially, one of Obama’s more recent proposals is not only to run with a windfall profit tax on the oil companies, but to provide another rebate with those windfall profit taxes. Windfall profit taxes are a bad idea anyway, but especially in the context of the oil companies, the question has to be asked - what windfall profits?

I’ve seen this image plastered everywhere, and the numbers are buried in this CNN piece on Exxon profits, to use an example oil company. “But Jeff,” you cry - “Look how much money they made! That’s obscene!” Business doesn’t generally work in real dollar values, and a 7.6% profit margin is not anything to write home about, especially when you factor in how much they have to spend on exploration, land leases, etc. The Apple iPhone, as an extreme counterexample, has a 50%+ profit margin, and Apple does quite well for itself as a company margin-wise. you’ll also note in the Political Punch piece above, Obama can’t even define “windfall profit.” Telling, perhaps?

If Obama’s really concerned with helping working folk deal with the gas price increases as he claims, you’d think he’d take a more intelligent route. Maybe, for instance, not pushing for more taxes on a set of companies that is already extremely highly taxed and who already passes those costs onto us when we fill our tanks. I’d say that maybe it’s time to start rethinking these massive costs on the price of gas entirely, but…