11/7/22
Dirty energy making 'excess' profits...but that's not the key problem; it's the proxy war, stupid.
Inflation has been a bugaboo of discontent in keeping the populace under control. In the runup to the usual ratification of the two-party Big Business/MIC sponsored system, Biden’s handlers have had him attempt to deflect blame on Big Oil, and away from the proximate cause of inflation. It hasn’t gone well.
We all know why oil prices have risen: the MIC’s insane preoccupation with ‘weakening Russia.’ Stop the proxy war and poof—oil flows around the world, sanctions are gone and trade resumes, prices come down, a huge peace dividend by not sending billions to the corrupt UKR regime, not to mention reducing the overwhelming threat of nuclear war.
What’s the alternative the MIC-backed MSM would rather have us focus on?
An earnings windfall for Big Oil stirred condemnation from the Biden administration last week. The president lashed out against the giant firms as several of them reported the latest surge in profits. Exxon Mobil brought in a record $20 billion in profits and then raised its dividend, citing a commitment to ‘return excess cash’ to shareholders. Chevron reported $11.2 billion in profits. President Biden called the figures an “‘outrageous’ bonanza stemming from Russia’s war on Ukraine,” and threatened a tax on oil-industry profits, last tried in 1980 following the OPEC embargo.
Biden’s handlers attack has the Big Oil Demopublicans striking back. West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin on Saturday demanded President Biden apologize for his “offensive and disgusting” pledge to shut down America’s coal plants — leading Biden’s handlers to later reframe the tone-deaf message. That was a reminder of the Demopublican dependence on Big Oil at the end of the day.
Either way, under capitalism a windfall profits tax was a policy disaster, but don’t worry too much about the warnings of a repeat. The 1980 tax “was a direct excise levy on production” that predictably deterred investment. An income tax on “excess” profits—one proposal would calculate that by subtracting a “normal” 10 percent return on expenses from oil-company earnings—would mostly be “a boon to accountants.” But it also won’t stir up more production. Oil companies see a recession coming with weakening demand, so they are putting their money into stock buybacks, rather than production increases. A new tax won’t change that.
The fact is a rational energy policy of transitioning from fossils to alternative energy isn’t on the table—it’s posed in a binary ‘either/or’ alternative, instead of weighing trade-offs.
One option apparently not on the table: nationalize and socialize the industry to make distribution directly accountable to the people as part of a centrally-planned economy.