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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 (78454)	7/28/2006 12:35:04 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 81568

Venezuelans don't get 11 cent per gallon gasoline. They may pay 11 cents at the pump, but there is no such thing as a free lunch. Subsidies come from taxes, or in this case from oil revenue, which if it wasn't used to subsidize gasoline could be used for any number of other programs for the poor or middle class, or for infrastructure, or to reduce taxes. And of course a big chunk of that oil revenue is basically theft, like all forced nationalizations. why do we have to pay $3 when the majority of that money is gouged corporate windfall profits? 1 - Come on, you can do it. Define gouging... 2 - Most of the money goes to pay the world price of oil, a big chunk of whats left goes to taxes. At least the biggest oil companies should be broken up and forced to compete against each other. The really big oil companies, in terms of reserves, or crude oil production are the big nationalized companies. Even Exxon-Mobil isn't big enough to have real price setting power in the US market. It accounts for about 3% of the world's crude production, and owns and out of close to 200,000 service stations in the US XOM owns only about 1000 and has an affiliation with only about 40,000. Not a small operation by any measure but not even close to enough market control to control prices. OTOH while I would not support forced breakups of Exxon Mobil and other oil companies, and I don't think any serious benefit would be achieved by such a course; it wouldn't be anywhere near as bad as confiscation/nationalization, price controls, or taxes that operate as profit ceilings. Its interventionist but it still leaves you with a market economy afterwords.