Join the Neopoet online poetry workshop and community to improve as a writer, meet fellow poets, and showcase your work. Sign up, submit your poetry, and get started.
Windfall Profits
I have been doing reasearch on the so-called windfall profits of oil companies. I have to admit they are making money hand over fist, but here are the findings I made.
The oil companies are making on average 4 to 8.5 cents per dollar profit on gas. Microsoft makes 17.5 cents per dollar profit.
The government, when you factor in federal, state, county, and local taxes, including a delivery and a sales tax in some places, makes between a low of 16 cents per dollar and a high of 60 cents per dollar. The local stations ie: convenience stores, average anywhere from 1 cent to 10 cents PER GALLON. That leaves the rest taken up by the middle men and transportation. Where does the money our governments get go? We don't see it yet they do not want to cut their taxes. Instead they want to raise them by adding a windfall profit tax on the oil companies. Where is the one on themselves. An interesting fact I found out working for business over my years is that they don't pay taxes. What you ask? Well, it goes this way. The government adds a tax on them and that makes them less profitable so they raise their prices to compensate. What does that mean? That means that YOU, the average taxpayer pays the taxes.
Everyone that thinks a windfall profits tax is a good idea need to rethink their position. I hope you can afford to pay it out of your pockets. Another drawback to this tax is that it will make us more dependent on foreign oil as the companies will just cut back production and maybe even jobs to avoid having to pay this tax. An economic genius I don't claim to be, but if anyone would really think this through they would see the ramifications involved. Where I live is a large chemical complex area and is still a strong union presence. I have watched over the years and have seen this happen time and again. The union strikes to say get $1.00 an hour raise. Within 2-3 weeks of this raise, the price of the product goes up, then the price of groceries, housing, gas etc. follows.
All this boils down to this fact: Let them put a windfall profit tax on companies if you can afford to pay for it. That is just my uneducated experience in the matter. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion on it and I might actually be wrong, but that is the way I see it.
Rett
The oil companies are making on average 4 to 8.5 cents per dollar profit on gas. Microsoft makes 17.5 cents per dollar profit.
The government, when you factor in federal, state, county, and local taxes, including a delivery and a sales tax in some places, makes between a low of 16 cents per dollar and a high of 60 cents per dollar. The local stations ie: convenience stores, average anywhere from 1 cent to 10 cents PER GALLON. That leaves the rest taken up by the middle men and transportation. Where does the money our governments get go? We don't see it yet they do not want to cut their taxes. Instead they want to raise them by adding a windfall profit tax on the oil companies. Where is the one on themselves. An interesting fact I found out working for business over my years is that they don't pay taxes. What you ask? Well, it goes this way. The government adds a tax on them and that makes them less profitable so they raise their prices to compensate. What does that mean? That means that YOU, the average taxpayer pays the taxes.
Everyone that thinks a windfall profits tax is a good idea need to rethink their position. I hope you can afford to pay it out of your pockets. Another drawback to this tax is that it will make us more dependent on foreign oil as the companies will just cut back production and maybe even jobs to avoid having to pay this tax. An economic genius I don't claim to be, but if anyone would really think this through they would see the ramifications involved. Where I live is a large chemical complex area and is still a strong union presence. I have watched over the years and have seen this happen time and again. The union strikes to say get $1.00 an hour raise. Within 2-3 weeks of this raise, the price of the product goes up, then the price of groceries, housing, gas etc. follows.
All this boils down to this fact: Let them put a windfall profit tax on companies if you can afford to pay for it. That is just my uneducated experience in the matter. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion on it and I might actually be wrong, but that is the way I see it.
Rett