« World Net Daily Misses a Point | Main | Tuesday »

April 25, 2006

Notes from Ferdy - Economics and Politics of High Oil Prices

by Ferdinand T Cat

Once again, it is a good time to review The Curse of Inventory Profits. One wonders why that article is not required reading for members of Congress.

In any case, the news today is that Bush has brought prices down by peeling back some regulations. This could be bad news for the Democrats, who stand to benefit in a big way if they can pin high gas prices on a Republican president. Fortunately, the Democrats have a plan to get the prices back up-- a windfall profits tax.

I was being a little harsh in that paragraph. The truth is, the Democrats think they're doing the right thing, it's just that the result will be to make things worse. And this is exactly what's wrong with policies based on fairness instead of economics. Before you pass a new law, your first question should be Will this make things better? If the answer is no, then you should consider another choice. Perhaps it really feels good to see another person punished for good fortune in bad times, but policy is not about feelings, it's about results.

It's important to remember that.

Respectfully submitted,

Ferdinand T. Cat

Trackposted to Tor's Rant-Gouging, Those Profiteers!, Common Folk Complaining About High Prices, The Median Tax, Dark Inventory, Plank's Energy Crisis, Jo's Service Station, and Basil's Multinational Petroleum Company.

# At Tue 11:27 PM | Permalink | Trackback URI | Comments (1) | More Notes from Ferdy

Trackback Pings

» Finals Are Almost Over from The Bullwinkle Blog
Posting will return to normal soon. In the meantime, our new blogger Maggie seems to be fitting in quite nicely! So to make up for my absence (what do you mean “there’s nothing to make up for”?), here are some excellent links to check... [Read More]

Tracked on April 26, 2006 6:10 PM

Comments

The "Curse Of Inventory Profits" is great. I know a whole lot of people who I am going to suggest that link to the next time they send me a whining email about gas prices and the evil oil companies. I hope they will be able to follow the logic, but I have my doubts.


Posted by: cfo mom at April 29, 2006 3:34 PM

HTML is not allowed in comments; however, if you put in a raw URL (http://www.somewhere.com/page.html) it will automatically be converted to a link.. Also, it is likely your comment will not appear unless you refresh the page manually after posting it.

Post a comment