Swamp, I accept your numbers. That means if the mean ol' oil companies sold gas for "free", our $2 gas would be $1.79 or so? But, if taxes were eliminated and the companies profits stayed the same, our $2 gas would be $.80 or so, right? If so, who is ripping us off? And just how great are our highways? In NC, they are not much to brag about.
Sure, we must have highways and they have to be paid for somehow. A gas tax is perhaps the most logical way. But how efficent is the gov. in handling that gas tax money and what would they do with more of it if Hillary gets her way? I say that no federal or state highway department has time to do much work, they have too many people sitting in too many offices filling out too much paper work to have much money left over to do a lot of good.
Far too often the highway projects are wasteful pork-barrel projects for elected folk to buy votes back home with our money in exchange for very little benefit to the common welfare. Can we all say " The Big Dig" in Boston or the "Bridge to Nowhere" in Alaska? Multiply those two boon-doggles by thousands of smaller but no less wasteful projects and it amounts to some real money that's largely wasted. But few of us ever put pressure on our elected "representatives" to stop it, so our gas taxes remain high while we complain over "excessive" profits for the fuel companies that provide the jobs, products and services we need.
I wonder, how much of that 10.4% total profit is excessive? And if that "excess" was eliminated, how much would it actually affect prices at the gas pump, a few pennies perhaps?
Are we finally at the point of such jealous envy - wanting all things to be "fair" of course - that we ask our benevolent government to run our lives and set both the minimum AND the maximum wages people must be paid by their employers? Or might it better to allow employers to determine how much a worker, and the price of his product or service, is worth to his business? I think capitalism and free competion is better at doing it than government. If government controls are good then North Korea, Cuba, France, USSR, etc, would be great places to live and work. (But I also wonder how much our powerful government officals and self-important politicians would get if voters got to approve their wages and benefits like they want to do for the rest of us?)
So long as we, the over-taxed and over-regulated public, allow politicians (and their media lap-dogs) to divert attention from their wild spending and high taxes by whining about "over-paid CEOs and high profits", nothing will improve for us. And, if we continue to allow them to succeed in limiting our freedoms by controlling our money, perhaps we don't deserve improvement. Our "rights" as men will continue to errode until they are finally reduced to a serf's "privileges", to be enjoyed with the government's consent.
In a free society, wages and prices will be controlled by market forces but we have allowed the government to control almost every ascpect of our lives, not just the drilling for and processing of oil, all for the common good of course. But, how much better are things now that government has so much control?
I will give you a single, non-controversial example of the value of our government's total control: the public schools. From kindergarden to university, bottom to top, they no longer prepare kids to earn a living Those of you old enough to remember how schools were before we turned them over to the gov. "experts" back in the early 60s and Carter's "Education Dept" in the 70s, I ask you if things are better? Are we spending too little in the schools, or simply requiring and getting too little from the government for our money?
So, do we really want even more of the gov. control of our fuel companies? Not me, the environmentalist wackos are already at the controls! Knowing the government's methods and efficencies, I prefer having enough gas at high prices over having too little at even higher prices!
