Redstate

By Erick Posted in Congress — Comments (11) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »

I believe we should punitively tax oil companies and take from them as much as their profit as we possibly can, diverting that profit into the general fund of the United States Treasury.

There, I said it.

I want the oil companies to have no profits -- none. Nothing for their shareholders and nothing to reinvest in their companies. Not one penny.

This is a relatively simple thing for the feds to do and I'm sure you'll agree with me once you understand why.

First of all, 27% of oil stocks are held by union pension funds. If we punitively tax big oil, we will be screwing the unions. And heck, they want to be screwed in that way. Likewise, given unionization in the oil industry and the need for layoffs if we start taxing their profits, they'll be laying off union members, likewise hurting unions through a decline in dues.

Second, I believe there are few greater dangers in this country than the movement toward an Earth First mentality where oil is bad, keeping your lights on is bad, and people are bad. Few industries devote more of their profits to green technology and alternative fuel sources than, ironically, the oil companies -- all of whom recognize the need to adapt and become more earth friendly.

As we advance down this road to earth friendliness, we will see our taxes go up, our costs go up, and our standard of living go down -- all for the sake of putting the earth first. By and large, we will have the oil companies to blame. Due to their research on how to ween themselves from Saudi Arabia's teat, we will actually be advancing the radical environmentalists' agenda.

The only way to stop this is to tax the profits of oil companies in a punitive way, thereby providing them less money to invest in earth friendly technology. The sooner we start, the better off we'll be in the long run.

Taking money away from the oil companies sticks it to both unions and environmentalists. I have no problem with that. Let's do it.

UPDATE (Dan McLaughlin): I would add one further point to Erick's analysis. If you take all oil profits out of private hands and reallocate them to the federal government, Congress will become literally addicted to selling oil, thus eliminating the possibility of any future movement to restrict oil consumption in this country. Once Congress - especially big-spending Congressional liberals - has a vested interest in the oil business, it won't want that business to dry up, any more than the states want the tobacco business to go away. Congress surrenders existing revenue streams about as easily as a barnacle abandons a boat (remember the telephone tax instituted to pay for the Spanish-American War?). Someday down the road, a future Congress will need to decide whether it can pay for some big new spending program by drilling in ANWR, or whether it is willing to lose all those tasty extra tax dollars by imposing stricter CAFE standards on SUVs. Guess what it will do?