rustytigwire said:
Maybe big oil can get screwed up enough by political ignorance to get bailed out like the sub prime mortgage thieves. We may even come out ahead, at least we voluntarily buy fuel whereas the financial institutions are getting credit on money hasn't been printed yet (from the same bunch that wants to tax energy).
You think the un regulated disaster that is the mortage crisis, bailout and currency declining value is at all related to anything else but unregulated greed of the brokers and the money men? You think the bailout of these guys instead of the little guys being made homeless is not connected to rampant greed of the politicians and their seemingly only electorate, the lobbyists and those who bought them?
Much as we are here discussing, greed is the central issue in our current commodity crisis. The time is long past where we let the greed of individuals continue to control and profit from this shrinking resource. The price must and will go up. Whether we tax or not, the law of supply and demand (and the rule of cartels.)
But only as much as we are willing to pay, that is why OPEC used to keep the price stable: healthy economies in their buyers countries means more petrol sold. Price goes too high, people stop buying. At some point the ability to pay will put a cap on the price and then on the very production of the resource. If the price goes too high economies crash, recession, depression, contraction simply means lack of customer base for OPEC and Exxon. The reasoning is this. The resource is ours, here on planet earth, and we need that energy legacy to build our future. If you tax the fuel in the 100% range, you will both cut consumption and find the cap at which people are still able to pay. Now instead of OPEC and Exxon pocketing everything we earn, we the people get to put those profits from our very own reasource to good work for everyone's future. Jobs and new energy infrastructure will result.
The alternative is doing nothing different until the commodity becomes too expense to buy (or even produce) and we have nothing to show for this unprecedented waste of a non returning legacy of cheap energy. Nothing but "have mores' whose very obscene wealth is no longer worth anything for there is nothing left of value to buy. Not stocks, not bonds, not even gold. Without cheap energy the green miracle is over and we will be fighting over the privilege to even eat! Those green backs will not get you to the front of the line any more once brute force is re-established as the global governing principle. No less fair, but much more grim.
You know we are all expected to literally sign our economic stimulous checks to BigOil as the new millenial patriot we have been so well trained to be.
