bedbug wrote:When do we get congressional hearings on capping government's tax profits?

Yes, that would be a good point.  Government's tax profits are infinite yet they complain about 4, 8 or 10% profits by oil companies!  What a sham!  

Yet government complains when people try to limit the rate of growth in government taxes!

hoodleehoo wrote:Obviously, capping gas prices would not be fair. Businesses have to have the right to follow supply and demand.

HOWEVER, price gouging is illegal! With oil companies having record profits, something has to be done.

Could a law capping oil PROFITS work?

What if oil companies weren't allowed to mark up the price more than a specific amount from what they bought it for?

no, unless you're thinking we should "cap" their losses too? but why stop with oil?

if you want to make a difference, cap the income of lawyers, politicians and bankers. put the rest back into our infrastructure, and had we started doing this 50-years ago my guess is the i-35 bridge would have never collapsed. capping the income of lawyers, politicians and bankers would be productive.

NO we shouldn't cap profits.  Prices are up because supply is down (thanks Dems) and, mostly, because demand is up (China, India).  

If the government does ANYTHING to disrupt the market system for organizing the distribution of goods, there will be immediate negative consequences.  If prices or profits are capped, there will be a shortage (see the 1970's).  The government always screws up the marketplace because it creates false signals and then people act in ways that don't make sense (another example is the mortgage crisis right now that was caused by the artificial manipulation of interest rates).  Free markets work much better than government because free markets have tons of information that a few bureacrats sitting around a table can't keep up with.  Watch how fast stock market prices respond to the most minute details.


To learn about the free market, I highly recommend watching Free To Choose, a TV program done by Milton Friedman.  You can watch it here: http://www.ideachannel.tv/

Spend some time watching the above videos and you'll be able to debate free markets with the best of them.

hoodleehoo wrote:Obviously, capping gas prices would not be fair. Businesses have to have the right to follow supply and demand.

HOWEVER, price gouging is illegal! With oil companies having record profits, something has to be done.

Could a law capping oil PROFITS work?

What if oil companies weren't allowed to mark up the price more than a specific amount from what they bought it for?

Uhmmm, oil companies do not set the price of oil in the US, the international marketplace does,  making capping profits an ignorant idea.

capping gas profits?   This is unbelievable in this country that some people would consider such a thing.  

How would you like your income capped?  I mean WHY STOP with gas profits.

By all means, let's cap the gas profits but let's cap them on the Federal Government.   If anyone is making Windfall Profits on gasoline, it is the Federal Government.

seabee wrote:

Free2Choose wrote:NO we shouldn't cap profits.  Prices are up because supply is down (thanks Dems) and, mostly, because demand is up (China, India).  

If the government does ANYTHING to disrupt the market system for organizing the distribution of goods, there will be immediate negative consequences.  If prices or profits are capped, there will be a shortage (see the 1970's).  The government always screws up the marketplace because it creates false signals and then people act in ways that don't make sense (another example is the mortgage crisis right now that was caused by the artificial manipulation of interest rates).  Free markets work much better than government because free markets have tons of information that a few bureacrats sitting around a table can't keep up with.  Watch how fast stock market prices respond to the most minute details.


To learn about the free market, I highly recommend watching Free To Choose, a TV program done by Milton Friedman.  You can watch it here: http://www.ideachannel.tv/

Spend some time watching the above videos and you'll be able to debate free markets with the best of them.

Two questions.

First, can one stand on solid ground while challenging the virtues of free market theories in a nation that values freedom, liberty and justice as we define it in our constitution?

I say no, and our forefathers said the same. Free markets are a reflection of our nature. All else is a reflection of ideological concepts of divinity or other varying vacuums of mankind, consequently the historically indelible and unmistakable suppression of human nature inherent to these many other forms of social structure. Thus America. It is not possible to value our constitution and any other form of social structure other than a free markets.

But sustainability of anything calls for balance, to this we all agree I suppose, and unfettered any free market produces a natural gravitational pull towards the consolidation of capital. The force itself is a survival instinct, or greed if unregulated and with no natural threats. And in a global economy, just as politics is the continuation of warfare by other means, global commerce is a continuation of international politics by other means. In that sense you can’t be big enough in this world. Sll of us, even some of our biggest players, are pawns on a chess board in global economy,

My concern in this global game is the preservation of a healthy middle class. We lose this and we lose it all, thus my 2nd question which is are we tossing out the baby in the interest of competing globally with nations that know nothing of or could care less about freedom, liberty and everything else we hold near and dear in our constitution?

In that sense I'm for a better balance with isolation. We have not "friends" out there, no one to protect with our blood anyway, and the proliferation of democracy means very little to me while the presevation of this great nation means everything. Make our borders strong but that's it. Be a poisenous frog, one bite and you're dead, so we own the open seas. And the air. And space maybe. But let the world eat each other alive, they're not going to stop to argue about hanging chads.

The middle class has had the political power of it wealth steadily worn away through degregulation and the over easy access to money resident in its base of wealth that being home equity. Unrestrained easy credit with crazy fees, enormous interest rates and a buy now pay later mentality is killing us. We have Reagan and his ilk to thank for this as his example of borrow now pay later spread like wild fire through the population. He gave permission to spend wildly to a population lacking the education necessary to understand the ramifications. This gave Bush II one of his "foot soldiers" the balls to tell us all to go shopping after 9/11. And we did! Can you imagine such "leadership" in  the context of an earlier era? He'd have been run out on a rail. Very sad...and simply evil in its construct and purpose. There's nothing  the least bit conservative in any of it!

SoldiersMum wrote:By all means, let's cap the gas profits but let's cap them on the Federal Government.   If anyone is making Windfall Profits on gasoline, it is the Federal Government.

And unlike the oil and gas companies, the federal government doesn't do a darn thing to earn that money.  They harm the production of oil and gas, not help it.  

Really though, it all comes down to basic economics and supply and demand.

Igmond50 wrote:The middle class has had the political power of it wealth steadily worn away through degregulation and the over easy access to money resident in its base of wealth that being home equity. Unrestrained easy credit with crazy fees, enormous interest rates and a buy now pay later mentality is killing us. We have Reagan and his ilk to thank for this as his example of borrow now pay later spread like wild fire through the population. He gave permission to spend wildly to a population lacking the education necessary to understand the ramifications. This gave Bush II one of his "foot soldiers" the balls to tell us all to go shopping after 9/11. And we did! Can you imagine such "leadership" in  the context of an earlier era? He'd have been run out on a rail. Very sad...and simply evil in its construct and purpose. There's nothing  the least bit conservative in any of it!

The mortgage problem of today is caused by BJ Clinton's forcing the mortgage companies to hand out loans to unqualified people under threats of being labeled racist.  Did some of them go overboard?  Yes, of course they did.  But a larger problem is that a bunch of people took out loans they knew they would eventually not be able to pay.  

It doesn't take a degree in economics to get the fact that you do not go out and purchase something you know you will not be able to pay for in the future when your loan interest balloons so your argument about those poor people who lack the education necessary to understand the ramifications does not hold water.  Lack of Personal responsibility, Iggie, is the primary reason.

The economy after 9/11 was in a dither.  Bush said get on with your lives and get back to normal.  Do not let the terrorists win.    Bush never said "hey everyone, go out and buy things you can't afford and won't be able to pay for."  The fact is people did resume their lives and went back to buying and the economy got back on track.  

The topic is Capping Gas Profits..not interest rates, not buying, not mortgages, not how horrible Reagan or Bush II were/are.  Please get back on topic people.