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Politics : Don't Blame Me, I Voted For Kerry -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: American Spirit who wrote (78352)	7/26/2006 6:20:52 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 81568

If he called in the Big Oil CEO's for a real grilling and threatened them with windfall profits taxes, gas prices would fall 50 cents in one week. Nonsense. Taxes tend to increase prices. True a tax could be structured as a price control (much higher taxes past a certain price, perhaps increasing to 100% or more if the price continues to go up), but that tends to lead to shortages, tax evasion, snuggling, lower investment in production, and in the long run perhaps higher prices. Price controls are normally either meaningless (if current and likely future market prices are within the allowed price range) or very negative (if they actually have any effect on prices). But of course he'd never interfere with their rampant gouging. How do you define gouging?