Tuesday, July 22, 2008

A Week of Oil Charts #4 - You are Big Oil

Presumably according to leftist religion (I've decided to call it a religion because socialism cannot be proven to work and it's largely based on faith and hope and self-appointed leaders asking you to give them your money), "big oil" would be owned by a few ultra rich elitists. You know, Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld each holding a 33% share with the tie breaking vote going to Hitler (who was resurrected by a secret CIA program to provide Bush guidance - it's true!).

However, that annoying pest to leftist religion known as "truth" paints a different picture.



Apparently we all own big oil. You do, your friends do, your mom does, even your grandpa. If you participate in pretty much any 401k, 403b and 457 plan, it's almost a guarantee you own a piece of big oil. And not just a small piece, a big piece. Matter of fact the whole damn thing.

This is another ramification people who like to bash big oil better start thinking about. If you want to tax them more, then that means their price will go down and you'll be hurting not only yourself, but the millions of other Americans who've invested in them indirectly via their retirement programs. And if you really do care about the elderly who are living on a fixed income, how about you not destroy the value of their underlying investments and leave them be. Additionally, dare I point it out, oil (and other commodity firms) are about the only stocks that have been doing well over the past year. Imagine how much less would be in your retirement account if you didn't invest in big oil.

Of course, this is called "logic" and "thinking things through" which is something the big oil conspiracy theorists cannot do. They can only "link" about one or two levels, a perfect example being corporations moving offshore.

You hate them.

You already tax them at 40%.

And you want to tax them more.

You demand they pay for everything.

And then you act surprised that they move offshore to Abu Dhabi or the Caymans or Ireland.

It's like beating your wife and being surprised she leaves you.

Alas, they cannot link the two together and therefore not only are corporations bad for making a profit (be they oil firms or otherwise) they're doubly bad for having the gall to move to a more business friendly environment.

Regardless, it's these kind of things, where there is a lapse or an inability to link the consequence with the action that triggered it, where I often opt not to debate socialists as it's pointless.

2 comments:

JMK said...

"You hate them.

"You already tax them at 40%.

"And you want to tax them more.

"You demand they pay for everything.

"And then you act surprised that they move offshore to Abu Dhabi or the Caymans or Ireland.

"It's like beating your wife and being surprised she leaves you." (CapCapitalism)
<
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Yes, it's exactly like that.

But the sad thing is, these are the same dolts who don't understand that "Corporations DON'T pay taxes," BECAUSE THEY CAN'T, as ALL "costs of doing business" MUST be passed on to the consumer in the form of either higher prices or less product (or both).

Of course, the idea of "profit as the lifeblood of business" is a hard concept for such folks to grasp.

Anonymous said...

I found the report you referenced on that chart, but I'm not seeing where you got your exact figures. For instance, some of your numbers match up with those in one table, but your other numbers don't.

Can you please tell me where in the report those figures come from?