Obama’s tax and spend energy policy… is not that bad
by tdaxp ~ August 2nd, 2008
Amateur Economist calls it “ignorance, arrogance, and socialism.” Crush Liberalism is profane. The heritage foundation is simply sarcastic. But is Obama’s plan to tax oil companies to provide a second round of “rebate” checks reasonable?
Think back to April 2005: oil was approximately $50/barrel, and I suggested a tax to raise the average price of gas to $5/gallon. Along with this I wanted to rebate the proceeds to the population on a per capita basis, so those that used less gas would actually profit from the gas tax.
The world ignored me, gas prices shot up to more than $4/gallon anyway. This has similar “demand destruction” consequences as my plan, but instead of Americans receiving monthly rebate checks, people who happen to have oil to sell (including the oil companies, but mainly including thugs such as Vladimir Putin, Hugo Chavez, King Abdullah, and so on).
Obama’s plan works like an attemp to half-implement my plan, doing nothing to prevent the massive transfer of wealth from the Core to natural resource providers, while rolling back the relatively negligible transfer of wealth from consumers to oil companies. Obama’s plan does not address the real issues. But that does not mean it is terrible.
The record oil company profits exist because the government failed to implement my plan earlier. Consumers feel squeeze because the government failed to implement my plan. Both Obama and McCain invision making things a little better, but ultimately Obama’s tax-and-spend approach is marginally superior to McCain’s gas-tax-holiday, merely because Obama’s plan continues to keep the price at the pump high and rewards Americans for not using gasoline.
August 3rd, 2008 at 10:11 am
Oil isn’t as profitable as you think.
Record oil company profits are not the same thing as record profitability:
http://www.opinionatedbastard.com/archives/oil_isnt_as_pro.html
That’s why Obama’s plan makes no sense.
August 4th, 2008 at 4:27 am
Dan, do you have a link to Obama’s Econ plan? I can find commentary, but no the plan itself (my home internet being down mostly doesn’t help either).
August 4th, 2008 at 5:40 am
Pierce,
Excellent link, and excellent ammunition against the class-warriors in Obama’s camp.
Still, the benchmark for ‘windfall’ is an industry’s historic profit ratio, not that of other industries.
PSlog,
Here you go [1]. It is hosted by Politico and is in PDF format.
[1] http://www.politico.com/pdf/PPM41_emergencyeconplan.pdf