Part of the outrage arises because these oil companies are subsidized by the government- which is to say, taxpayers.
So, we’re helping them stay afloat while they boast record profits.
I wouldn’t mind a company reporting it was doing so well if it wasn’t also getting my tax money’s help to run its operation.
Or, if it truly needs that help, then it should share its good times in the form of significant tax payment on those record profits.
Welfare queens only count if they’re black.
You seem to be pretty astute at business, or at least claim to be, yet you seem to be under the impression that business is more about competition than cooperation. Yes, you do have to compete with others at some time, but really, the goal is to cooperate with the consumer better than your competitors. Anything that is generally thought of as businesses competing is better framed as attempting to cooperate with consumers better. If it’s not capable of being framed that way, it’s probably not legal (industrial espionage/sabotage).
Additionally, why would you care if your competitors made more money so long as you were making more money as well? A rising tide lifts all who can afford boats, while the rest drown.
I don’t know if you originated that, but it’s beautiful. I’m keeping that one.
Aside: I agree with the rest of your post. If @Crafter_Man believes what he’s claiming, he’s evidently wearing some serious reality-distorting googles.
Absolutely. This is why collusion happens in some industries and it’s why the government has cracked down on it in the past. When businesses engage in this, that’s a “cartel”, and there’s a reason why that term has sinister connotations.
Competition is a benefit to consumers, not a benefit to businesses.
I did come up with that just as I was posting here. I do agree it’s beautiful.
Perhaps they can give some pointers to the brain dead fools who run the federal government. I’d much rather some profit as opposed to 30 trillion, make that 31 trillion of debt.
You act like those are mutually exclusive things when they’re not, quite the opposite in fact.
You’re one of those people who think business financing and government financing are the same thing, aren’t you?
Bless your heart.
You could always write your Reps and Senators and tell them you don’t think your state should be asking for so much money, that we don’t need to beef up our military or law enforcement, we shouldn’t pay any interest on the national debt, or that your retirement funds shouldn’t be guaranteed.
Do you really want government to seek revenue over all other considerations? The power to tax and confiscate assets in the hands of a sociopathic that whose sole interest is extracting as much wealth as possible from its citizens customers doesn’t seem to me to be the happy place conservatives think it is.
Government owned enterprises are more common where I live than in the US but, if a publicly owned business ever makes a profit, octopus’s right wing ideological confreres always howl that it should be privatised.
Of course what our multi-limbed friend really meant that government should be cost-conscious like a private business is forced to be. And therefore should simply shut down when the revenue runs out rather than continuing to deliver services at what would be an ever-growing loss if a private business did the same thing.
I can just see the fun when the DoD starts out as usual on Oct1 (start of their fiscal year) and then when the money runs out on, say, Jul 12th, they simply park the jets & ships, stop paying the troops, and tell everybody to wander home on their own until next October; the base housing is closed!
Oughta work great.
The last time the feds ran a profit some fucking asshole decided to lower our prices.
Corporations (if thought of as human) are essentially sociopaths. It’s how they are designed. There is no morality in a corporation whatsoever. If they can influence politicians (using cash) to create laws that would enable them to chain workers to machines and whip them to increase productivity, then that is exactly what they would do.
And for those who say “that’s unpossible, because then their competition would do the same!”. So what. Then the corporation would just delve deeper, and try to make more money in some other immoral way.
Frankly, expecting morality is just foolish. It makes more sense to understand their lack of morality, by making sure the framework in which they’re allowed to operate is made by human beings with morals.
Agreed. Corporations are not designed with any morality whatsoever. It’s foolish to expect them to have any morals.
Unfortunately, oftentimes the framework in which they are allowed to operate is being constructed by human beings who are themselves sociopaths.
Exactly! That’s why regulations exist to try to do that. And that’s why I push back against people who want to be overzealous in establishing a “free market”. We don’t want to constrain businesses to the extent that we sabotage the ability for companies to make profit, but we can help them be less evil in the process.
I’m inclined to agree that we shouldn’t hate on commodity companies for windfalls when commodities rise. I didn’t hear anyone claiming they should get more when oil was at $20/bbl (which is generally well below the extraction costs of most of XOM’s fields).
Rather, we should agree on what the rules are under which they operate- so persecute collusion, don’t provide market-distorting tax schemes, etc. But if you were sitting on a bunch of oil, and the price tripled all of a sudden, you’d sell it for the new price too.
I will say, suggesting that one should invest as a way to participate is a bit deaf. You need money to invest, and if you’re someone who really feels the impact of the price of gas, you probably don’t have extra money to invest. It also assumes that you can predict the movement of commodities, which if you can, well, you won’t care about the price of gas.
Someone can most definitely correct me if I am wrong…
I keep tabs on oil and wholesale gas prices on oilprice.com, so I can anticipate local price rises (as per an older thread, they all go up simultaneously thanks to a regional chain called Gate, where when they go up everyone else follows suit, but when they go down everyone is all over the map, in ye olde “rocket and feather” pattern).
Seems like prices then depend on these daytraders and their “rationales” for why oil goes up or down on a given day, far more than they do on either local economic conditions or corporate policies. So who is buying these futures, exactly?