Gas Hits Record Price: The Wisconsin Solution Is ???
Build More Freeways!
$6.5 billion worth in SE Wisconsin alone.
Any transit expansion in the works, as fuel costs - - $3.59 a gallon at station-after-station in the Milwaukee area, and $115/barrel - - price people out of their cars?
Nah.
3 comments:
The solution is: Blame Gov Doyle for suggesting that we find a way to tax the oil companies' OBSCENE profits as a way to keep at least some of our Wisconsin pump and heating fuel money here in the state, where we could fund any number of things that are hurting--education? green technologies? stewardship fund?
It is amazing to me that betsey, the original has no knowledge of accounting or economics. First of all the OBSCENE profits that the oil companies make is nothing compared to their level of sales or their level of capital investment. I believe that their profit as a % of sales is around 10%. They make their profit on volume. I guess that you would be in favor of taxing all companies with a margin in excess of 10%? Big law would be in trouble, so would a lot of companies. Gas taxes account for more out of a gallon of gas than does the profit that the oil companies make.
People like a betsey should be required to take a business and/or economic course before they write about something they know nothing about.
William, you should take an economics course, or at least a tax law course covering IRS code. The oil companies are allowed to WRITE OFF capital investments, cost of materials, salaries and other business expenses. They should pay a high level of taxes on the amount they do make. A 35 percent tax on NET profits appears reasonable to me when, for example, the 30+ billion profits of ExxonMobil in a single quarter exceeds the Entire gross domestic product of a significant number of countries. Furthermore, when the profit is so high they just use it for stock buybacks and a 450 billion dollar retirement package for their ex-CEO Lee Raymond rather than re-investing it in energy infrastructure, it is out of control. I am all for Doyle recapturing some of these profits, particularly when the Federal government under the CheneyBush regime doles out billions in tax breaks and subsidies to the oil industry.
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