JoB
regardless of what oil companies profit margins are.. they are still making record profits… and receiving government handouts.
i think suggesting we are penalizing them is probably a gross exaggeration.
Go to a third world country and repeat the corn/soy rationalization… they are calling it the tortilla wars in Mexico.. because peasants can no longer even afford the grain to make tortillas… i don’t think the rationalizations will go over so well there.
The research for pharmacuetical companies is subsidized by the american taxpayer… yet the american consumer absorbs all of the cost… while those in other countries with governments that regulate drug costs actually pay less for brand name drugs produced in the same manufacturing facilities that produce the drugs we buy.
I guess they have to recoup their advertising costs somehow…
shareholder prices and and profits have always been public companies first concerns, but it is only somewhat recently that the expectations of shareholder profits and profiteering on wall street have become more important than the expectation that those same companies would reinvest in future development.
When the question of how much profit can you generate today becomes more important than the question of how long you can generate any profit at all, you have fiasco like our current mortgage and insurance bailouts..
which, by the way, the taxpayer will pay for whether the company bankrupts the individual taxpayer’s personal assets or not.
here’s the thing.. supply side economics didn’t really get popular until Reagan.. and with him we got massive deregulation..
there is a chance that it could have ultimately worked for the United States economy if the market had been confined to the United States… tho i am skeptical.
But of course, it isn’t. Supply side economics has only worked for those who look at business globally. In other words, global businesses are doing well..
but if the economy of the united states includes the economic health of it’s citizens.. not so much.
oh.. and apparantly those citizens who aren’t doing as well economically as they were a decade or two ago.. are expected to pick up the tax burden for bailing the companies that failed due to poor business practices.
How can anyone justify that? I understand it was necessary to forestall the kind of crash that created the great depression.. but bailouts won’t eliminate another great depression, they will only forestall it.
regulation came as a result of the lessons learned in previous economic disasters… how many times will we have to relearn them?
seems to me like we should put supply side economics back in the universities and go back to demand side economic policies..
those which most americans think we are following when they say.. let the market place work.
American’s are being sold a real bill of goods… and aren’t getting much in return for their investment.