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Re: Bugeye Group..... Re: [midgetsprite] SHELL RANT

To: midgetsprite@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: Bugeye Group..... Re: [midgetsprite] SHELL RANT
Date: Thu, 02 Feb 2006 18:47:38 -0800
Cc: bugeye@yahoogroups.com, ladaniels@sbcglobal.net, Spridgets@autox.team.net
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Larry Daniels wrote:

>Buster, "profit" would be how much more we paid to put gas in our tanks than 
>what it cost them to put it there.
>The cost, adjusted for inflation, pales in significance to what it "could" 
>cost if we weren't getting ripped off by the oil companies.  Since we don't 
>have a damn bit of choice, we are victims of whatever they feel like charging 
>us.  Ergo, $36 Billion (with a B) in profits.  Go ahead, justify that.
>

How many people here scream and holler about Google's profit's?  Hmmmm. 
I don't hear a voice in objection.  OK, last year Google made 45.5 cents 
on the dollar in profit.  Does anybody scream and holler when they go 
through the drive-through at McDonlds where they pay 11.6 cents on the 
dollar every time they order a Big Mac?  How about complaints over the 
20.1 cents on the dollar when men pay for Viagra and its producer, 
Pfizer.  The reality is that a lot of other industries  from software 
to semiconductors and banking to biotechnology  make more money on 
every dollar sold than do the oil companies. 

People tend to piss and moan over Exxon's profits simply because it is 
by far the largest oil company in the world.  If it were split into 10 
smaller companies, the amount of their profit would not raise too many 
eyebrows.  Of course the cost of gasoline would rise simply because of 
the benefits of economy of scale that come with a company's size.

And Alan, you have to admit that in the U.K. especially, the rise in the 
cost of oil comes as a welcome bit of news the Gordon Brown (for you 
Yanks, he is the Chancellor of the Exchequer, or treasurer)?  Why?  
Simply because in the U.K., government taxes amount to 67% of the cost 
of petrol at the pump.  The higher the cost of oil, the most tax going 
to the government.  (It is the same here, but on a smaller scale, and 
varies from state to state.)  If the U.K. taxed petrol at the same rate 
as the U.S. taxes gasoline, the bottom line cost to the consumer would 
be about the same.

Importantly, the price analyst for Automobile Association, the 
consumer's defender, this week observed, "We are not being ripped off at 
the pumps. "Oil companies cannot set the world oil price, which is set 
on the world markets."

She zeroed in on the underlying reason for volitile oil prices:  the 
western world, from America to the U.K. to Germany must now compete with 
the rapidly industrializing nations of China and India.  Their almost 
over-night increase in demand for oil has been the primary cause of the 
rise in price of oil-gas-petrol.  It is that most basic law of 
economics:  the law of supply and demand.  And that law can't be 
repealed or appealed!

Buster Evans




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