you dont even know what fraud is. fraud is when they secretly overcharge you, or sell you a lower quality gas than they advertise. not when they have higher prices than you like. why the price is high is none of your concern. as long as you are free to not buy or not buy, and they are free to sell or not sell, the market is free. i dunno how many time i have to say it. you dont like the price, DONT BUY. "i cant not buy, i am hopeless addicted!" - whiners whose fault is that? who should solve that problem?
Windfall taxes give the companies an incentive to keep profits reasonable. When the windfall taxes kicked in, prices started moving down. Are you sure? The Tax Foundation site you cited never saw a tax that it liked. And their chart conveniently ends in 2003 and doesn't depict the huge profits being posted today. Yet Big Oil lobbyists still try to get tax breaks. Big Oil Lobbying Pays Off Big Oil lobbyists stall bills in Legislature that industry opposes House Energy Bill Increases Tax Breaks
I didn't see any articles in favor of the 1980 windfall tax on the first few pages when I googled it. Maybe one is there, but I saw countless articles on how it failed. Why did Congress, controlled by Dems, vote to abolish the windfall tax if it was so effective? Is lobbying now illegal? Is it only republicans getting money from oil companies? Nothing you mentioned would lower gas prices at the pumps. It would only transfer money from oil companies to the government. No help for the consumers.
what is reasonable is not even slightly your responsibility to determine. red determines profit margins on the items that red sells, but not anyone else.
Of course I do. Do you? Read it carefully. fraud –noun deceit, trickery, sharp practice, or breach of confidence, perpetrated for profit or to gain some unfair or dishonest advantage. Or lied, or colluded, or breached our confidence, or tricked us for profit. Putting words in my mouth, trying to change the subject, repeating old mantras. Patently ridiculous. If price fixing is happening, the market is not free. I can see that you're about done here, you are just repeating old arguments, getting on your soapbox about your pet philosphies/perverse logic, and trying to distract us from the issues. Brother, Tigerwins is scoring a few points here for Big Oil and making me work by posting some corroborating evidence, finding weak points in my evidence, and continuing to find new arguments for me to accept or debate. You are now simply preaching.
they may have tricked you, but nobody tricked me, i was able to clearly see the price posted at the gas station. if i wondered why it was what it was, i presumed that it had to do with the fact that almost everyone who has ever sold anything in the history of earth has wanted to make a profit. next time you have a question about a price, ask me. i can help you avoid being tricked. i have a theory that people actually want to make profits. when i let you know about this, you will not have to feel silly about being tricked anymore. companies want profits. there, problem solved, you will no longer be tricked about why things cost what they do. if you ask, and they say capacity problems, or weather, ignore them, and remember what i told you about profits, because they want to make profits, i guarantee it. no more fooling red. only the government has coercive power. you are always free unless they are involved. maybe not free to take thing as you please, not free to steal from others, not free to tell somebody what they can sell something for, not free to determine the selling price of other people's things, but free.
Another non-answer, non sequitor response. My statement was about price fixing. Did you address that? Noooooo . . . . You make my point for me. You've abandoned discussion and are witnessing for the Church of Libertaria. Instead of a riposte, we are read, yet again, this chapter from the gospel of martin. Amen.
Hey, I got an idea!! Since some seem to be against a free market system including Fox News and other private companies lets have everything under government control!:hihi: That way the government gets more money and can do whatever they want with it! I'll say it again, the gas tax is not used for fixing roads only! I love how efficient our government is and would love to see it work under government rule!
price fixing is a term used by socialists. go to the gas station. look at the price. decide if you can afford it. buy or do not. it does not matter who colluded, or who "fixed" the price. it does not matter if all the oil producers got together to raise prices. if they raise them too high, nobody will buy, because they do not have to buy anything. people are "free" to not buy. and sellers are "free" to set he price hey choose. everyone is "free". thats a "free market". when you whine and bitch about price fixing and have the goverment "force" their will on sellers, that is not "free". i understand your whole argument is based on the premise that you absolutely must have cheap oil. that is not true. if the prices are "fixed", dont buy. an oil corporation does not have coercive power. read that twice. if neither party in an exchange has the power to force their will on the other, the exchange is a free market exchange. you cant seem to grok this one point, that everyone is always free to choose to buy or not buy for prices determined by the buyer and seller until the government is involved. i repeat it over and over, but you do not get it. all you know is that you want to take something that isnt yours, for your price. i understand that corporations work together, i understand that cartels exist. the key is that you can not be tricked into thinking you absolutelu must have the product. if you are addicted to something, like in this case you think you are addicted to oil, who needs the treatment, the correction? the seller, or the addict? if i cannot stop drinkin should we manipulate budweiser, or should i learn to not consume so much? isnt it my responsibility to fix myself when i am addicted to something? arent you claiming we are addicted to oil?
