Originally Posted by
dontsurf
that's the best part isn't it? i know i'm soooo happy every time i fill up my car's gas tank to be paying such high prices, helping the oil companies with such high profits, when i already gave them all my federal tax money last year. i look at how much subsidy the oil companies get, and realize all the tax money i'll ever pay will never even come close to what they're getting, so it's all just thrown away.
that's what you get when the oil companies form the nation's energy policy in a secret meeting right after the new administration takes office (2001). might make people think twice about who they're voting for next time i hope.
For what it's worth, oil companies aren't making profits as high as many companies who produce the other consumer goods you pay for. Exxon's profit margin (profits as % of revenues) last year was 11.4%. Compare that to Microsoft (28%), Pfizer (36%), Qualcomm (32%), Johnson & Johnson (20%), etc. and you'll see that they aren't even in the top 10% of the Fortune 500. Exxon is a 470 billion dollar company; the largest company in the world. Their profits are naturally going to seem large if you look at them purely as a number amount compared to another company. Harley Davidson had a 2007 profit margin of 17%, higher than Exxon Mobile, yet their profits were just $1 billion compared to Exxon's $39 billion. But Harley Davidson is a $15 billion company so their profits don't seem as much.
I don't like paying more for gas as much as the next guy, but I don't buy the bs politicians and the media push my way. Your gas is not higher because a star chamber of power brokers in Washington got together and conspired to raise the prices to fill their pockets. And when you hear politicians start talking about how they think oil company profits should be used (i.e. taken and redistributed) you should remember that those are shareholder profits. Shareholders would include a lot of mutual fund owners, and people invested in 401K plans. Just my $0.02.