No. Many employers get a SSN from their illegal workers. They pay their portion of the taxes for those emigrants. They then get a letter telling them the number provided is not a valid one but the govt still keeps the checks. So in reality the govt makes money off emigrants in the fashion.

This is all just a guess really. I spent most my time growing up on a farm working in the fields. Not really the place I'd run into this kind of thing. I can also guess how they get here and get a valid, as close as you can get without actually being the person, ID's including SSN#s. They'd have to pretend they were from 1978 or older though.

 

I'm sticking behind liquid coal for now. Do a little googling on it. Very very promising.

 

Your speculation on who is or is not a pilot is not really meaningful to this conversation.[/quote]

Who are you determine what's meaningful or irrelevant. Spewing out the information from the oil industry is as about as irrelevant yesterday's weather.

By the way, in your calculation of how much money oil business paid to the government, you left out the most important equation that anyone with a college degree should know, corporation pay taxes after taking out all of their expenses and costs (variable and fixed), which by the way includes their lobby expenses.

 

Bottom line is that its a result of a weak dollar worldwide and speculation running wild. I'm not a supporter of big oil raking in record profits while middle America gets squeezed, but I certainly don't see much of an outcry towards the futures traders who are really the ones keeping oil up over $100 bbl. More than likely this is due to the fact that most people don't have a clue how oil futures, or ANY futures for that matter, work so its easier to just blame big oil, politians, OPEC, etc.

 

Some of this is silly. Many people here act like the people that work at oil copmanies are these evil people who hate everyone and just want a ton of money. I don't know how you can call yourself intelectually honest or open by thinking this way. If you want the price to come down we have to find more of our own domestic oil (increase supply). If we don't then our destiny will continue to be controlled by OPEC and demand growth in China and India. Liquid coal and liquied natural gas could probably be used to make Jet A. Our politicians complain about evil oil companies and so do we when it is really our fault because we don't make congress open up ANWR for drilling. If you are scared for your jobs, and I am training right now to be a pilot and am scared for the future of the industry, you must urge congress to try to find alternative sources of oil. There is no other way to ease prices without cutting demand. You must increase supply.

 

Also keep in mind that a risk premium has been build into the bbl since the majority of oil comes from very volatile areas (Iran, Iraq, Venezuela and Nigeria). Even though supply has been slowly keeping up with demand, there is less and less of a cushion in the event of a supply disruption, a very tangible threat with these regions thus the risk increases. Again couple this with the fact that large financial institutions, hedge funds, etc. are POURING money into the commodities markets to try and take advantage of price changes and hedge against them. These are not producers or consumers of oil, just speculators. As you can see the rise can't be blamed on any one facet of the overall market or its influences.

 

Here's food for thought.


Gold-Plated Exit For Exxon CEO

By Steven Mufson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, April 13, 2006; Page D03

Exxon Mobil Corp.'s outgoing chief executive, Lee Raymond, received $48.5 million in salary, bonus, incentive payments and stock awards last year and retired Jan. 14 qualifying for a pension with a lump-sum value of $98.4 million, according to the company's latest proxy statement.
By the end of 2005, Raymond had accumulated $183.1 million worth of Exxon Mobil stock and had options worth $69 million to buy additional company shares. The company also covered his expenses for items including club memberships and private use of corporate jets.

 

So let's be conservative here and say that Exxon only makes money off of gasoline sales in the United States, which completely disregards their global business. And let's also say that Exxon has a measly 10% share of that market, which according to DOT was 140 billion gallons in 2004. So Exxon sold, say, 14 billion gallons in 2004. By raising gas prices $0.007 per gallon, they could have paid for this guy's exit package in one year.

Or, looking at it another way, this guy could give it all back and maybe depress prices by a very small fraction of a cent.

 

That was 2006. Imagine what he's worth now.

 

Well, my point was that I really don't begrudge these guys taking $100 million. They can do what they want. I think too many people mistakenly believe that evil rich oil executives are the reason we pay greater than $3 per gallon for gasoline. They just refine the oil, and I'm sure they'd like to do a lot more of it at a much cheaper price if the government would allow a new refinery to be built.