Jeff Jacoby on the Senate Democrats proposal to tax oil companies:
There is something seriously wrong, all right - the economic shallowness of politicians who believe that when oil companies prosper they should be penalized. Or who imagine that the way to bring gasoline prices down is to jack the oil industry’s taxes up.
A note to those opposed to profiteering: people are in business to make a profit - not for our good, not for the good of the country, but to make a profit. More importantly, companies assume the risks of loss as well as of profits. Until we think we ought to limit losses (with the corresponding perverse incentive to run a bloated and inefficient business), we ought not limit profits. Until we are ready for a regulated, socialistic economy - letting go of the capitalist ideal that made America the wealthiest nation in the world - we ought to encourage profit. The desire to make a profit has driven America forward - skyscrapers, airplanes, automobiles, pharmaceuticals, modern medicine - which has resulted in far more health, freedom, and prosperity than “from each according to his ability, to each according to his means.”
Speaking of America as a shining nation - what’s up with offering people euthanasia but not medical care? This is the twenty-first century; this is America. This is not a third-world country where people die because, well, life is expensive and there isn’t money to go around. Killing people is cheap (unless they are on Death Row). It is also the easy solution to a problem that has vexed physicians, psychiatrists, and caregivers from the beginning of time: how to deal with a sick, hopeless patient who is in horrible pain. This blogger fears that the advent of euthanasia will remove the nascant incentive to provide terminal patients with pain relief, mental health care, and pallative treatment until natural death. There is little reason to do that when the patient can just die, much as there is little reason to provide pregnant university students with resources, support, and an education when they can just get an abortion. We have the chance to not make the mistakes made in the 1960s - taking the second-place option in leiu of the best and most humane - and, in this blogger’s opinion, the battle against euthanasia ought to be fought now, before the premise of euthanasia becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
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Your points are clear and seem to make sense… therefore they do not fit the hope for change! I think there must be some level of narcissism required to vote for the Socialist garbage the Dems (and sometimes Repubs) too often propose. Oil men shouldn’t be rich if I’m not, never mind that I don’t do anything to create wealth!
Sam Pierce’s last blog post..The Democrats Have Won the 2008 Presidential Election
Actually, you do make a good point, although I would then say that the oil and gas industry should be responsible for raising their own millitary in order to prop up the cooperative regimes that they do business with, rather than having the government do it for them. Also, the govenment aid given to those regimes to ensure their stability and cooperation should come from the oil and gas industry instead of the government. Also they should maintain their own diplomatice corp to negotiate the trade agreements.
Teresa’s last blog post..Tired, oh so tired.
Thank you, Sam Pierce.
Teresa - as for your point re: oil industries paying for the military, etc., consider this:
I don’t think that American oil and gas ought to be paying for their own military, simply because I think that the military is one of the few things that is best under government control. Like it or not, if a private military screws up, the opponents may attack America. I would prefer to avoid the situation in which there is little incentive for them to take care of their own country.
Last thing - I’m confused. How do American energy companies (the ones that drill in Texas, off the California coast, and in Alaska, and refine in America, and sell ni America) benefit from supporting their competitors (i.e. foreign oil)? Isn’t it morally revolting to require someone to subsidise their competitors? If you’re talking foreign oil, how does an American require them to do what you’ve outlined?
Maybe some of this is becuase I really think that the Iraq and Afghanistan wars were about brutal dictators and 9/11, respectively, and not about oil - which is why gas is $4/gallon and not $0.50/gallon.
Domestic companies buy crude oil from foreign concerns. They also drill in foreign countries, and they own stock in foreign companies.
The reverse is also true, with high levels of foreign ownership in “American” companies.
I’m pretty sure it doesn’t matter to them where the cude comes from…they’re all happy as long as the price keeps going up.
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