Well, I provided an article proving that California won't allow new drilling. Florida fought Bush on new drilling off their coast as well. Here is that article ... Florida Offshore Drilling Is that not government limiting our supply?
Chet Morrison? When I spent time in that area, he was the guy doing all that, and ovesaw the rig I mentioned.
I don't really want them in my backyard either. Nor do I want chemical plants, nuclear plants, power plants, etc. But that's not the real issue. We are many, many years away from alternative fuels. We need oil. What do we do in the meantime?
I said the government, by way of their policies, have been cutting off our ability to drill for new oil for the last 30 years. Not only drilling for oil. they have been limiting our ability to add refinery capacities to process oil into gasoline as well as TigerWins showed. It is so hard to drill for new oil in this country because our government, over the last 30 years, has been slowly influenced by enviromental groups to stop drilling in this country. They succeeded and now it is one of the mechanisms by which we have shortages and are dependent on our enemies for supplies. That's the bottomline.
Bottomline is this: There are about 1000 reasons why gas prices are higher than they were. For Red to mention corporate profits as one of those reasons is ridiculous. Exxon pumps about 3% of the world's oil each day and has no effect on the market price of oil. The main players are state run oil companies in the middle east. Saudi-Aramco for instance says they are pumping as much oil as they can at this time and they blame refining capacity, which is one of the many issues driving the price up. To me and many others, much of the problem has been caused by us limiting our own oil production and refining capacity over the years through governmental regulation. Is that the only cause for today's higher prices? no. But it has made us more dependent on our enemies for oil and they can easily reduce production of oil for a day and it drives the price up. Simple economics of supply and demand still are pervasive in the oil market and drives the price. For anyone, and I mean anyone, to blame a company for the price of oil and gas, when they have NO effect on the market anyway, is ridiculous. To say that a windfall profits tax will do anything for the consumer is ridiculous. People need to wake up and read history when we did that in the late 70's. So we can jump back and forth on each issue causing the prices to go up, that's fine. They are numerous and not one them are corporate profits. If someone wants to be mad at oil company profits, go ahead that it isn't your business. But that has no effect on gas prices.
And not a shred of evidence to back up your fourth repeat of the same statement that has been shot down several times already.
On coporate exec compensation, I heard on the radio this morning that in 1980, CEO's made about $10 for every $1 that the average worker earned. Today, that figure is $400 for every $1 the average worker makes (not quite sure what they defined as 'average worker'). Pretty impressive. 'All Things Considered' also did a show about this last week. They were saying that problem isn't that CEO's make ungodly amounts of money, it's that their compensation rates increase quite disproportionately to that of the ordinary worker in their respective companies from year to year. I would dispute the idea that gratuitous compensation packages don't have an effect on the price of gasoline. I'm not suggesting that we should be able to dictate what those values are, but it's simple business, really. If you want to make more money (especially on an inelastic product), you simply jack up your price. If you don't want to lose business, you may consider colluding with others in your industry to fix market prices, which would benefit them proportionately.
I think it's a supply and demand type deal. people are still out on the road in full force even after the prices go up. I also think the gov't taxes to much. we pay $.38 per gallon in just taxes in Louisiana i think. but, when something happens in the middle east, futures go up on oil, thus gas prices. its the damn saudi's and gov't.
Futures trading is the biggest scam ever dreamed up. It is like shooting craps. It creates an artificial market.
