The Senate hearings last week with the oil industry were truly disgraceful. Senators exhibited once again their ignorance, stupidity and disingenuosness.
Regarding ignorance and stupidity, many of these Senators don’t seem to recognize that you reduce the supply of a good, any good, by taxing it more. Likewise, supply increases when you tax it less. Investors are interested in after-tax return on investments. Raising taxes reduces after-tax returns, making it harder to find investments that produce the required threshold return. This is elementary economics. Either Senators don’t understand this concept (and undoubtedly some are so stupid or idealogical that they don’t or won’t) or they would rather demagogue the issue for what they perceive as political advantage, despite the harm imposed on future energy supplies.
Again, in the ignorance and stupidity category is the wasting of valuable time on days of these hearings when the country is insolvent and approaching bankruptcy. Trillions need to be cut from government spending and these geniuses who caused the problem are unwilling to address the problem. They prefer face time on what they consider a “safe” issue rather than tackling the problem that threatens to destroy the government and the country. Raising taxes on the oil industry (or anyone else for that matter) provides a pittance of what is needed. The problem is not too little taxes but too much spending.
Christopher C. Horner, in a scathing piece entitled Do Profitable Senators Need Taxpayer Subsidies, touches on the real dirty secret of subsidies — those that subsidize the parasites/crooks who hold office:
History’s spate of elected officials getting spectacularly wealthy while making (now) $174 grand a year is a series of coincidences. Still, no paupers in this crowd, with most worth a fortune 90% of Americans only aspire to, and making all sorts of money off of that fortune each year! But of course it’s their subsidies that are the issue here. Do these profitable lawmakers need taxpayer subsidies?
Isn’t it a great country where know-nothings and do-nothings can be elected to public office and become instantly wealthy? Here are a few questions that our “public “servants” should be asked:
- Just how much is too much in terms of what you make?
- Should one term in office guarantee a Senator a retirement benefit in the millions?
- How is it possible that you become millionaires while in office?
To understand the subsidies they receive, imagine if you earned $174,000 per year for six years and had to maintain two residences and proper appearance. Do you think you would be able to save any money? These bright public servants are all able to substantially increase their net worth under such conditions. Amazing, they must have talents that we don’t see. But then so too do Mafia dons.
Entering government service is a sacrifice and a public service. NOT! It was originally so. Now it is merely a respectable form of organized crime.
