Excellent Commentary ........................................................................... Joab, FOLLOW THE MONEY....is the answer.... There is no doubt about it. Talk is cheap, money going to a name tells it all every time. The problem is legal largesse often defeats justice. Thus often there is no justice as it is not affordable in time, organization, or money. Thus justice is often not pursued or cannot be pursued. The other side knows this well in advance.
NAFTA allows the United States priveledged access to Canada's oil, even if Canada is experiencing a shortage. However both Democratic candidates have promised in their campaigns to reopen NAFTA so that America doesn't continue to be at a disadvantage like they claim.
McCain who I am not really a fan of was the first politician I have ever heard bring up the idea that the taxes on gas could be lowered (never going to happen). http://www.americanprogressaction.org/issues/2007/house_oil_contributions_all.html
Good thread, very intelligent conversation littered with local and industry know how. The regional posts of people livng in the area is awesome.. I think this is what ET was supposed to be. Nobody was called an ass-clown or challenged to a physical altercation through the whole thread,,lol.. Good stuff. EF
The best thing for the US would be to raise taxes on gas, not lower them. You want to discourage people from sending money out of the country for imported oil. You could argue that increased gas taxes would hurt the economy but all you'd have to do is decrease income taxes by the same amount. The net result would be a boost to your economy. http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/04/25/BUGF3PEIUQ1.DTL
Ugh, the idea of solving this by raising taxes makes me cringe. On the surface, that argument may attempt to treat the syptoms but we need to fix the root cause: we need to increase the supply of oil to the US of A because our economy is dependent on it. The same crooks in Congress who would ostensibly raise the gas tax are the ones preventing the buildout of these little things called refineries. Let's (1) drill for more oil in the USA and (2) build some fucking new refineries.
That would seem to be an obvious solution but in reality it is not that simple. We are in the process of drilling new wells in the US. As prices rise drilling deeper becomes economically feasible. However the rate limiting step, after the economics is satisfied, is the rate at which new reserves can be located. The total reserves under US owned soil and sea is finite. Does it really make sense to consume these reserves at an ever increasing rate? I'm asking the question, not answering it. For years the British and Europeans have taxed petrol heavily, which has had the effect of reducing consumption, and used the proceeds to sudsidize mass transport, which is energy efficient. This policy has seemingly paid off for them. In the US we do something quite similar, but with an entirely different result. We also tax gasoline, but we use the proceeds to sudsize individualized gasoline-dependent transport rather than mass transport. Thus the result of taxing gasoline in the US has been different than in the European countries. And, we have kept the tax rate low enough that consumption has been only slightly affected, if at all. Are we too smart to follow the European's lead? Or are we perhaps too dumb? Or is the answer: neither -- our gasoline tax policy is driven by a greater concern for corporate welfare than for social welfare. And if the latter is answer is the correct one, is corporate welfare not really social welfare in disguise? One thing does seem clear, the segments of society that benefit most from these two very different approaches to gasoline taxation are not the same.
I think alot of you are missing the fact that oil is a globally arbitrageable commodity that is easily shipped to the highest bidder. The reason we don't get much oil directly from the mid-east is shipping costs. It is cheaper to source our oil from geographically closer locations and is why we get more oil from Mexico and South America than the mid-east. However, if we walked away on Iraq, and the mid-east went awry, the global loss of the physical commodity would cost EVERYBODY more as there would be an international bidding war for the lost barrels. The global demand is somewhere near 85 million barrels per day, any regional loss of supply affects global prices. Perfect example of this in action is current U.S. natural gas prices. We derive 2-3% of our supply from LNG now, but are bidding prices through the roof to catch up to where Asian and European prices are just to capture more cargo's . Prices are now as high as when we had the hurricane Katrina outages in the gulf, and we are at the very beginning of injection season!
http://www.eia.doe.gov/bookshelf/brochures/gasolinepricesprimer/eia1_2005primerM.html The average schmoe (myself included) is probably filling up for $100 a week if he is lucky, so $5,200 annually. 20% of $5,200 is $1,040 per annum. There are at least two rebate checks there. All I am really saying is politicians are full of shit, not really new news, but this point about taxes that we ALL pay is overlooked. Would cheaper gas not increase discretionary spending?