ORIGINAL: GMMAT
When gas gets too expensive for the masses to consume it......the price will come down.
Same as every other commodity.
You could do what the dems would love to do and over-tax the big companies......but imagine if they get tired of it and "take their ball and go home".
What's YOUR plan? Put a limit on what the oil companies can make? Tax their profits (even more)? Would this make the "Robin Hood" crowd feel better?
When we discourage initiative and reward complacency.....our country is doomed. It's spiraling right now.
I wasn't alive when it happened, but speaking of CR&G like we were, I remember a conversation just after Hurricane Katrina when gas prices were changing hourly that some of the old timers at the gun counter had.
One of the guys was working on a shrimp boat in the 1970s when Jimmy Carter was president and apparently tried or threatened to impose governments will onto oil companies. When they were out fishing/shrimping, the gent told us that anchored about ten miles offshore were litterally dozens of container and oil ships... just holding their cards until Carter backed down. From what I understand and read, the price of gas sky rocketed as supply was shortened and demand remained the same. The oil companies made it a point to prove that they could, with a few phone calls and a few dropped anchors, bring this country to a stand still.
With regards to Exxon, who is just a refiner of crude... the price of a gallon of gas in March of 2004 was according to CNN $1.79 a gallon. Exxon's profits have increased 60% since then.... and today gas hit an average of $3.27 a gallon.... I did ace economics in college, but I have forgotten most of it... never the less... something kinda tells me there is a correlation there.
Big J did make a good point... comparing oil to bows is a bit out of context. Our economy has become dependant on oil, I personally drove 94 miles today on a business roadtrip for work the next four days. That in a personal vehical to boot. Nature of the beast when you are young. But our prices and the price of everything has gone up (in some cases way up) and my expenses have gone up just to do my job in the last year... yet is anyone getting a pay raise? Not where I work... not where my parents work, not where my girlfriend works, not where my friends work. In fact several companies are laying off a lot of workers. So are the American people really benefitting from rising costs and shrinking margins....
no.
In the sporting goods industry there is one company (and its not a bow company.... I'll give you a hint its a gun company) that stands out as the one in my mind who exemplifies everything that quick was talking about in some of his early posts.
Anyone care to take a stab at it? Not that hard to figure out!