Econ 101
By Kevin on August 11, 2008 at 9:00 PM in Barack Obama, Economy, Energy Policy
OK, this really isn’t economics 101, but a more topical discussion of the impact of BHO’s proposed punitive windfall profits tax on oil companies. Now, economics makes most folks get glassy-eyed, so I will spare you the math and theory, those who care to seek out the theory, the writing and the math please do so. My education is in Economics, Natural Resource and Environmental Economics to be specific. So, I have a bit of an understanding of what a tax on a commodity does.
It doesn’t matter what you call it, windfall profit tax, corporate income tax or Help My Poll Number’s are Falling and I Need Some Poll Viagra Tax Stunt.
What I have to say is this.
It is a really, really bad idea.
For numerous reasons, including:
Higher energy prices for one.
It is called price-elasticity. Oil prices have to increase greatly to impact demand a little.
So, the oil companies will simply raise prices to offset an increase in their costs.
Which we really don’t need.
Higher energy prices will cause higher prices for nearly everything else.
This is called inflation, class.
And, if you make the cost of doing business in the U.S. higher for most industries, what do you think will happen?
Anyone?
Bueller?
They’ll go where costs are lower.
This will increase unemployment, weaken the U.S. economy, and increase our trade deficit.
But these are the (relatively) good things.
Why do I say that?
Because it will discourage domestic production, which will increase the power of countries that do not punitively tax oil production, like our friends in.
Saudi Arabia (you know where most of the 9/11 folks were from)
Iran (our buddy, and Israel’s too)
Venezuela (aiding Narco-terrorists)
It’s that national security thing, again.
And is more than likely another stunt, meant to placate the electorate rather than a real policy idea from the man who voted for the Cheney Energy Bill. And who has taken money from the Oil industry.
You see, with falling poll numbers, the BHO campaign is getting desperate, and with energy policy being the flavor of the week, a little punishment for the big, bad, mean, greedy oil companies is just the thing to right the good ship Hope.
It’s just that one thing.
He doesn’t mean it.
Like a lot of things.
Just another talking point.
Kevin,
Are you arguing that taxing WINDFALL profits will cause the price of oil-based products to increase?
If the oil companies become distressed by taxes on WINDFALL profits, where can they go?
SM
Off f**king shore, with their infrastructure jobs and everything else they can take short of the pumps…
Jeeze
The f**king government makes more on a gallon of gas than anybody. They will always get their cut. This windfall profits tax DOES NOT LOWER PRICES. It forces them up.
Here’s Economics 102… Whenever an excuse arises which will allow you to raise prices to “reflect increased costs,” do so.
Windfall Profits Tax, for those of you not driving in the 70’s allowed oil companies to jack prices SKY HIGH and keep them there. Carter’s head was so far up his ass that it never came out. Thank God all he usually f**ks up now is a cut on a board for Habitat. Just keep the fool out of the Middle East. Its like sending Nathan Bedford Forrest to judge a rap contest.
Do some math on this crap. The government Never takes all the windfall, they just take what they can, leaving plenty of profit for the oil companies too.
Where can they go?
To the Olympics!
The oil companies aren’t blameless in this. That being said, it is the speculators who should be reined in–and hard.
Than oil will not be traded on American markets and these jobs go off shore.
Screw this nonsense. We have to suck corporate ass or they take their ball and go home. I got news for all of you they are doing it anyway. So I say tax the shit out of them and if they leave tariff the shit out of them. The GAO not an Obama front group just released their findings over from 1998 to 2005 66 percent of all domestic companies 68 percent of foreign companies doing business in the U.S. avoided corporate taxes. These corporations feel free to use our harbors, roads, bridges, airports, and nay other infrastructure without paying for it. Screw them all.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080812/ap_on_bi_ge/corporations_income_tax
It’s not about taxing them, it’s about collecting the taxes owed.
Good luck with that as the IRS only goes after little biz.
The speculators are merely doing their jobs. This whole blame the speculators thing is another trick by the party bosses.
Zeke,
A) As you note at the end, taxes on windfall profits are taxes on profits over and above what would count as very good profits. Because oil companies are successful functioning at levels below windfall profits, it is illogical to conclude that some taxation on windfall profits will cause prices to rise.
B) What influence do oil companies sacrifice by severing their connection to the US mainland? Further, what percentage of the world’s oil reserves are open to development by private companies? Why would these companies sacrifice their influence over a tax on windfall profits?
SM
SM
Steve,
My point is that the oil companies will use the tax as an excuse to raise prices, knowing they can still increase profits regardless.
As to moving their infrastructures, that is still eminently doable as they lease their stations out to franchisees.
Envision McDonald’s moving their corporate headquarters to Belize. People still eat at Mac’s but the money goes away.
Budweiser is another example only in that the end result is that a big corporation Somewhere Else owns it now.
Again, with oil, it only requires an excuse. I remember that they once raised prices because they had intentionally decreased production.
I suggest you take a course in economics. The math is really simple for starters. The demand for oil is relatively fixed. i.e. inelastic. What that means is that if the government raises the cost of oil, i.e. a tax, the price will increase, but the demand will not change very much, thus the price paid by the consumer will go up.
Yes, but I believe the point of a windfall profit tax is not really about collecting money from the oil companies. (Or in Obama’s bizarre world, he’ll supposedly collect this tax and send us all a thousand dollars.)
I think the purpose of a windfall tax is to encourage, to manipultate oil companies to invest in refinaries, in looking for oil, etc. They don’t pay taxes on money they reinvest. With the price of oil going up, they know consumers can only take so much. The amount of gas we use doesn’t always remain fixed, we do have a breaking point. Right now, people are already driving less. You can’t get blood out of a turnip.
It is a small matter to tax windfall profits and to prevent price gouging. Further, current short-term shortages are manufactured in the sense that the bottleneck is a lack of refining capacity. Most of the capital expenditure in refineries in the last 15 years in Canada and the US has been dedicated to cleaner production. Frankly, unless you can earn much more by producing more refined product sold at lower unit prices, then there is no advantage in developing more refining capacity, especially given a finite resource base. This is the same problem that plagues electricity production.
No. It is a big matter. Do you even live in the U.S. and/or are you another Socialist like poster Charles Lemos?
Do we windfall tax big drug companies and dot.coms? What about Microsoft and Apple?
Who decides which companies?
It’s an extremely unAmerican idea.
If you want to regulate what a corporation can do for national security including securing the public trust and for
police powers - think health and safety - fine.
The problem is that the government hasn’t ensured our security by getting into the refinery business. And nobody wants a refinery in their backyard.
So, the oil companies take the less expensive route to deal with unrefined crude oil and ship it to the highest bidder for refinement anywhere in the world.
Yeah, you shouldn’t title an article about windfall profits taxes “Econ 101″ if you can’t quite grasp the concept of a windfall profits tax. Implemented correctly, a WPT leaves oil companies no incentive to raise prices on gasoline. A WPT would leave oil companies with a solid but not outrageous profit ceiling, and stabilize gas prices.
And please, fellow posters, save me the “SOCIALISM!” and “COMMIE!” flaming. That’s just a dodge. There’s nothing wrong with the government stepping in to prevent price gouging. There is, however, something VERY wrong with oil companies making record-smashing profits at the cost of the American economy.
John -
They are two very different things - regulating price and windfall taxes.
You clearly don’t understand the differences between the two.
Maybe you should take a look at the insurance industry by way of contrasting and
study what you’re discussing.
So…was this a bad idea when Hillary Clinton had it?
http://www.hillaryclinton.com/news/release/view/?id=7354
Just curious.
Hillary’s plan called for the revenue from the WFP tax to pay for a gas tax holiday for comsumers. She also required federal oversight to make sure the cost did not get pushed back to the consumer.
Obama certainly thought it was a bad idea at the time. Another flip-flop from the pancake man.
Kevin,
Wrong on all counts.
Actually, the only time in recent history that domestic oil production increased is the last time there was a ‘Windfall Profits Tax’ in place.
Worked like a charm. That’s why Senator Clinton was in favor of it now.
You’re merely promulgating Big Oil propaganda.
No, he’s not wrong on all counts. It’s a good post, it’s just over-simplified. A windfall tax done the right way in combination with other things could be a good idea. But simply blathering about making the oil companies pay like Obama does is just pointless pandering.
The part that’s not mentioned here is that when you increase taxes on a company they don’t always turn around and pass the additional costs onto the consumer, they sometimes invest more money into their business as a way of reducing their profits. So a windfall tax could be a good idea if it encouraged oil companies to improve refinaries, look for more oil, etc.
If you read Hillary’s plan, it was detailed and the windfall profit tax was only one piece of the puzzle.
“Aye, there’s the rub!” Nobody is allowed to search where the oil is. (thank you ms. pelosi) Offshore is still a dream and right now, still banned. ANWAR is the size of some city parks (probably a facetious statement) and there is oil there, BUT! Even if you could get the oil out…
The regulations concerning new Refinery construction are tighter than a frogs rectum and so restrictive that we haven’t built one since, I think, the 70’s.
We send the stuff to China and PAY them to refine our oil into gas that they fill their tankers with and send to… us.
Outsource windfalls you say? Impossi…. heyyyyyyy!
Um, the oil companies asked for and received leases to drill on millions of acres of land. If there is “no oil there” (great job channeling Sean Hannity,) why did those companies request leases on that land?
It’s an old ploy- where’s the oil? Anywhere the oil companies are not allowed to drill. That’s where the oil is. Except for when the oil companies want to sell us oil. Then there’s plenty of oil in other places.
Oh and Zeke, if you are going to quote Hannity, you ought to at least credit him with a footnote. Otherwise, your post is just plagarism.
John -
It’s shale oil, which is wildly difficult and destructive to take out.
Not to mention expensive.
The other oil fields aren’t big producers or they would be tapping them.
Your premise that they only want to drill somewhere where they would have to purchase new rights is illogical.
I don’t trust oil companies, but there is a science to their business and like all corporations they are in business to make a profit.
Do you not understand basic price elasticity? OK
Time for school. The link below has pictures so the obots can follow along.
Read
Learn
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/2899
Kevin, I understand absolutely nothing about economics. I signed up for an Econ. 101 and attended maybe two weeks, found myself falling asleep and dropped it. I do have a question, however. Did the Cheney Energy Bill include subsidies of approx. $6 bil. for the oil companies and didn’t Obama vote in favor? So what would be the overall effect on the economy, if the US government stopped the subsidies and did Obama address that in his “Energy Plan”. And, how much of that $6 bil. has actually been used for the stipulated purpose of research and development?
Elise -
There is the problem.
Oblowme’s bad judgement. And a lack of Congressional oversight once again.
Perhaps if Junior Senators like McCaskill and Oblowme actually paid attention to their jobs instead of constantly campaigning this wouldn’t happen.
McCain didn’t vote for the Bush-Cheney Energy Disaster.
Oh goodie, another Carter malaise. I just can’t wait….
Yeah, me too. I unfortunately remember the Carter years. I was a young, 20-something in the 70s. We didn’t need to worry about high gas prices because there wasn’t any gas to worry about. Inflation was out of sight and no one could buy a house because interest rates were through the roof. My husband and I and two babies lived in a phone booth house until Carter was defeated. Good man, well-intentioned man, but Jimmy Carter was a disaster as a President.
People were shooting one another for gas during Carter’s reign, remember that???? Yeah, they sure were the Golden Years!
And those windfall profit taxes on the oil companies? Hello? Did not work. If anything the strategy made things worse, big time.
So, please. Don’t mention Jimmy Carter to anyone who lived through those years. Because we remember. How in the hell could we forget?
Trust me, it wasn’t pretty. I don’t want to go there, again. Not even if you knit me a pretty sweater.
Ah, Nostalgia!
I had a ‘59 Bug Eye Sprite then and its tank held seven gallons. I carried a five gallon Gerry-Can behind the seats and when the gas was rationed, instead of getting in line, I’d pull in behind the place, take my can and walk up to the guy and I’d tell him I ran out of gas in line and he’d fill that can…
Statute of limitations is over on that so I’m safe to tell the tale now…
That, Peggy Sue, was the sucky part of that era, but could you do the “Bump?”
If we had adopted Carter’s energy policies in the late-70s instead of laughing at them, we’d be virtually energy-independent today. The energy crisis didn’t start with the Carter presidency and wasn’t caused by it. And thirty years later, we are in a much deeper hole when it comes to energy than we were then.
Blaming Carter is a lot of fun (for some people,) but it’s not really based on any factual information. Carter inherited the Nixon-Ford economy and horrible Middle East situation, the media and the GOP took his common-sense energy policy and mocked it, and as a result that energy policy stayed stuck in neutral for the next generation.
Oh and BTW, I do remember being asked to keep our thermostats at 68 degrees, and wearing a sweater around the house. This winter, how many millions of people will walk around wearing TWO sweaters because they can’t AFFORD to keep their thermostats above 62, or will be unable to pay their fuel bills at all?
Obama is so full of crap. Vote for me, I’m going to give you all a thousand dollars to help you buy gas! Just like George Bush’s stimulus. Meet the new boss, just like the old boss. Except this fool insults our intelligence by pretending to be all about something new. Change, change, change. Bah humbug.
The new math is called Obamath, he’ll give a $1000, and take $10,000 then claim you are better off because of him. Just like the Obamath where if people increase tire inflation then it will save more gas than drilling offshore.
I fail to see how people arrive at the point where they think Obama is intelligent — I don’t see that, I’ve never seen that. I was a lot smarter than Obama when I was in high school, perhaps even elementary school. I think Obama is a dumbass and I am not afraid to say it.
Hey, it’s a bunch of Republicans criticizing Obama’s policy toward taxing oil companies!
Oh the good AUTHOR DEBORAH can’t seem to leave to blog or answer a simple question.
It’s okay that your books probably aren’t doing very well in sales although they may be outperforming Pelosi’s. I think ABC books have a larger sales demographic.
Stop the hate!
Oh - you’re still here? I watched Phelphs win his third gold medal.
Did you write “The little swimmer that could” or was that TOO advanced for you?
Stop the hate!
You are such a card!
Boycott the olympics, brought to you by NBC, home of Chris Matthews, Keith Olberman, and slave-labor in China.
Just following the Good AUTHOR’s lead!
Three whole books and you won’t grace us with the title of not nary a one.
One you’ve even completed 7 of 9 chapters.
I just can’t believe we have an AUTHOR in our midst sharing such compelling ideas and is so modest about his/her/it’s accomplishments.
Stop the hate!
And you are the race card touting Obama.
Good for you, do you expect to get a medal for watching him? At least learn how to spell the man’s name if you are going to make a big deal out of watching him.
I’m commenting on a STUPID policy that has no basis in sound economic theory. And guess what sweetie? I’ve been a democrat since I had the choice between Walter Mondale and Ronnie Reagan. Who did you cast your first presidential vote for?
My bachelors is in environmental and resource economics, and this is stuff they teach at the sophomore level. Look at the link, learn something, then feel free to comment.
My first presidential vote was for Carter over Ford but I volunteered in the previous presidential election. So you could imagine how good I felt in August 1974 when Nixon resigned.
And did you learn nothing, or have you chosen ignorance? My point is that the proposed windfall profits tax is just another bone thrown to the pack of hungry dogs that are mad at paying $3.50-$4.00 a gallon. The fallacy of capping prices or going after speculators is made evident by the fact that this is a global market, america cannot control it anymore than we can control the setting of the sun. What we can do is increase domestic production, increase the development of alternative energy sources, decrease our dependency on foreign oil. Trust me, I’m no fan of exxon/mobil, BP, Shell, Citgo or any other oil company. But don’t try to tell me that a windfall profits tax will do anything but increase prices at the pump and the cost of heating oil and the resulting increase in everything that it takes gas or diesel to make and deliver to your local Walmart. It’s just a stupid, pandering stunt by someone who doesn’t get it, and whose paycheck is most likely not strained by the current energy crisis. It’s a gimmick.
It may be a global market, but oil futures are traded in New York.
ANd Singapore, and KL, and Hong Kong and London.
Why did we bomb Saddam’s sorry ass?
Why are we looking for an excuse to bomb Iran?
Same reason: the threat that they would price their crude in Euros versus GringoBucks (US dollars).
The oil companies won’t go offshore very far, because they, through the Republican appointees, own the Federal courts now.
They’ve all been “nationalized” in one shithole or another over the last 70 years - Cuba, Mexico, Venezuela. They want to stay where they get the best Return on their investments safely.
Don’t you have a good track record? Anyone who is bragging about voting for Carter is not playing with a full deck.
Oh cut the crap. I was a Democrat when you were still having bladder accidents at school. What I’m NOT is a socialist, a marxist or a communist. Is that all right with you?
My first economics professors were all marxists from 1960s Harvard. And even they would get this for what it is.
Good for the Republicans, somebody has to criticize Obama’s silly tax increases. I think Obama made too much money from the book he sold and he should be taxed more on his profit — especially for what a piece of sloppy work that probably contains a lot of fiction. In case you have not figured it out yet, Obama is a compulsive liar.
Since I’m not an economics major, I can’t speak to the pros and cons of the ‘windfall tax’ so that we can all have a thousand dollar rebate. I can say this however, what right does the government have to take from A B and C and give to D E and F? Anytime you have a President who wants to be a Robin Hood and take from the rich, give to the poor, redistribute the wealth, if you will, we’ve got a BIGGER problem than just the price of gas. Does this also mean that if my neighbor, Joe, makes 10 times the salary do, he is expected and required to give some to me to level the playing field? The answer to me is simply, drill, drill drill until we are no longer dependent on foreign oil…do whatever we have to do, new technology, research, whatever it takes. Be very leery of a government big enough to ‘fix’ everything for everyone, if the government is big enough to take care of all of our needs, it’s big enough to take away everything as well. America is a great country, always has been, it is a land of opportunity, land of the free and home of the brave….let’s keep it that way and vote the bums out that want to change it so much none of us will recognize it.
Just one more reason I’m not voting Obama.
25 Hints You’re Not Voting for Obama (take the test!}
Peter Kirsanow at the National Review’s The Corner provides 25 tongue-in-cheek hints that you might not be going to vote for Sen. Obama in the general election.
http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=ZDJkNGE0ZjQ0NjZhZjMzMGM2MWFlNjcxZWZlNmQ5ZGM=
Man, you guys are sounding more and more like Repubs by the day. Free market economics now? What next? Social Darwinism?
Oh the racist accusing Freedom Fighter is back calling people republodemoindy’s.
Aren’t you tired of the hate yet?
Stop the hate!
Oh no! We want to be good little marxists and hand over our life savings that we sacrified for…..otherwise known as Michelle’s “Pie”. Later we LONG to move into Far Left Liberal Fascism. We long for it. You folks are caught up in your own irony. You are becoming that which you despised for 8 years.
Huh? What Obama is proposing is boilerplate Democratic policies. If you find it so far left, you are demonstrating that you are far right.
are you kidding ? BOBO used the supply side argument to counter Hillary’s gas tax holiday.
Boilerplate? The only boilerplate I see here is Jimmy Carter.
For chrissakes what are you, 20 years old? Maybe you read a paragraph in a history book? The only difference between Carter and Obama is Carter cared about human rights. He would have never ran and hid when a boycott for the opening of the olympic games was called for. But then he wouldn’t have been worrying about Chicago 2016 instead of ethnic cleansing. He wouldn’t have made a 5 million dollar buy in advertising for the games in that godforsaken country either. But beyond that, Obama is a rerun of the Carter Malaise. I would fully expect him to come on Teee Veee wearing a sweater and telling everybody how bad they are. Just what America needs. Some twit telling them to turn down the heat on their elderly family members till they shiver, stop eating so much and start walking to your job, even if it IS forty miles away.
Figuring out that taxing big oil corporations more is going to raise prices on everything for YOU only requires an MA over CA times 100 for 3 digits. And not even a HIGH three digits. Do you really think those big oil guys are going to cut down their profit margin for their stockholders? Really?
Cheney Energy Bill=$6 bil. subsidy for oil companies. Obama vote=yea.
Lady, I hate to tell you this but you are a moron. Do you still ride the little yellow bus?
God, I love this site, but I absolutely can’t stand it when idiots begin to throw around “Marxist” and “Communist” talk whenever someone suggests that MAYBE oil companies should not be allowed to rape both the environment and the economy in pursuit of unlimited profits. All of a sudden I feel like I’m reading a blog that has been taken over by Sean Hannity, John Gibson and Mark Levin.
Here’s a clue: Taxes aren’t “Marxist.” They are how a society ensures that everyone (yes, even including the sacred oil companies) pay their share of the cost of maintaining that society.
And I hope that in the year 2008, calling people “Marxists” doesn’t shut them up as effectively as it did in, say, 1952.
Why do you think that oil companies owe more than insurance companies? Or drug companies? Or dot.coms?
Or truck lines? Or hospitals?
The price of gas is regulated by the way.
And oil companies pay a huge amount of taxes.
Obviously Debbie doesn’t think Obama has had his hands in BIG OIL pockets as well.
Perish the thought!
What exactly did that vote for the Bush/Cheney bill do for big oil?
You want to refresh my memory Freedom Fighter or are you just about making racist statements?
Stop the hate!
Sure, he has some donations from oil companies. But McCain has far more.
http://opensecrets.org/pres08/sectors.php?sector=E
I’m not talking about DONATIONS. Geesh.
I’m sure the good AUTHOR covered this in one of his/her/it’s books on barackalatte ecomonics.
Stop the hate!
Then what are you talking about? Having one’s hands in big oil’s pockets normally means getting campaign contributions aka donations. And McCain has gotten far more from oil companies, as the link I posted showed.
damn BOBO was more in the tank for the energy industry then Hillary was. It must have been his vote for cheney’s energy bill
I know the title of one of you books.
I thought I’d never figure it out.
The title of one of the good AUTHOR’s book must be that autobiography called “Three blind mice and I am one of them.”
I guess I can go to bed now. You might want to go to since your rhetoric is tiring.
Stop the hate!
Obama has gotten far more money from terrorists.
Back in the early 1970s when OPEC shut off the oil spiggots to raise the price of oil, Ted Kennedy pushed through a Windfall Profits tax on the oil companies. By the late 70s inflation was in double digits, interest rates were in the 17-20% range, unemployment was up, inventories were at an all time high, etc etc. I for one do not want a repeat. What no one mentions regarding the high profits of the oil industry is the way they calculate the ‘profit’ on the sale of their inventories. If they are using the ‘first-in, first-out’ (fifo) method of calculation, their profit per barrel will be misleading. Using the fifo method a barrel of oil purchased a year ago at a lower price, then sold today at market price (higher/barrel than a year ago). Simplistically, without considering the cost of production, if they bought a bbl of oil a year ago at $52 and sell it a year later at $140, they have a large profit, right? Maybe. They now have to replace that bbl at the rate of $140 or higher. If market oil prices then fall they will have a loss on that replacement bbl. Not that I have a favorable opinion of the oil cos., but it should be noted that this political tool is maybe not what it seems.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uSpcxkKlEFA
Interesting but, I think, much like a balloon: squeeze here… it bulges there.
Perhaps price controls would help: cap the price of gasoline and watch supplies dry up - instant conservation - a good thing, speculators have heart attacks - another good thing and ’supply side’ magical fabulists die of apoplexy.
I say it’s a win, win, win…
I am not sure why supplies would dry up, since the rest of the world still uses gasoline. Unless the rest of the world caps prices along with us, you might as well just ban gasoline in the US and force conservation. Win win win!
Easy on the drugs man, have a friend check out what you write before you send it out.
Nixon did Price Controls, remember?
All it takes to beat it os to assign a new Description and SKU to your product.
Now, it’s a NEW product, and not subject to the Controls.
Roofing, concrete and lumber producers did it, looting a few billion, and got away with it.
STOP THE HATE!!!
The government has to go after the speculators - otherwise they’ll do to the entire domestic market what Enron did to California. Taxing windfall profits? Yes, I think the oil companies can well afford to kick back some of the money they basically got for free.
It will just shift the supply curve outward. The oil companies will simply increase prices, we’ll pay more and have less to spend for food, clothing, etc., which will also cost more due to increased costs of production.
and on and on it goes
Ah, it’s potted Econ 101. The real economists know that that sort of thing is a gross simplification that you teach to 18 year olds. You have to read the economics journals and understand econometrics to see the far more complex models used to capture actual economic dynamics.
but it always go back to supply and demand. Speculators in the commodities markets are going to create larger swings in price as they trade the treads. If they don’t have a legitimate need to buy and sell they have no business being in the market.
Do you have a point, or do you have a reason that can convince me of the merits of BHO’s economic policy? As I showed earlier, the supply and demand of oil are inelastic (that means the supply and demand curves don’t change significantly to price, thus if the price is increased through artificial means, such as a tax on profits, the result will be an increase in price, with no significant reduction in demand or the suppliers profit) Thank you for throwing out the term, econometrics, and yes, I do understand the theory and statistical models of econometrics. But do you? And yes, I must ask, but you and the rest of the collective never seem able to answer the simplest of questions.
Can you give me just one reason, only one, why I should cast my vote for him?
Try not to use the terms hope or change in your response.
You can’t ask the good AUTHOR to do that, can you?
I’ll wait and see what happens!
Stop the hate:-)
Another sign of intelligent life captain
Obama has people like Austin Goolsbe, Jason Furman and Paul Volcker on his economic team.
Paul Volcker is Chair of the Trilateral Commission.
Furman is one of Wal-Mart’s most prominent defenders. Some have stated that Jason Furman has overstated the potential benefits of globalization and social security private accounts.
Goolsbe is a professor in the business school at the University of Chicago and reported to be a member of skull and bones. He is considered a libertarian because of his economic philosophies which includes an argument that the best job of assimilating immigrants is the free market and not government. Goolsbee has said 60-70% of the economy faces virtually no international competition. Therefore, globalization is not a major issue.
Let’s face it-Obama is a globalist and America and American workers are not first on his list of concerns.
Obama truly considers himself a “citizen of the world.”
Host: “Debbie didn’t answer in the allotted time. Too bad”
(hostess in cocktail dress frowns and looks sad, in a sexy pouty way)
Host: “Don Pardo, tell Debbie what fabulous parting gifts she’s won for playing, “Hope and Change”.
Don Pardo “Debbie, for playing , ‘Hope and Change’, you’ve won a brand new pony”!
Studio audience: “Yay”!
Don Pardo “And that’s not all, Debbie. You’ve also won an all expenses paid trip to the exotic and mysterious tropical resort of Gaza”!
Studio audience: “oooohhhh”!
Don Pardo: ” While in Gaza, you’ll share an exciting and fun-filled week sharing blogging time with Ramsesh and Akmehd, a rattan mat, and a suicide vest”
Debbie “ohmygod, ohmygod, ohmygod”!!!
Kevin,
I couldn’t stop laughing at your game show simulation. I hope Debbie has a good time in Gaza!
Debbie and all of Bobos little friends never answer the question. Ever.
You do not have a clue of what you are talking about, dumbass. If you are a typical Obama recruiter for the internet then Obama needs to drop that strategy. The Obama campaign consists of idiots.
Or, as the Aluminum Mfrs’s Ass’n president said:
“We’re going to make aluminum, and we’re going to make money. If you’re using our product because it’s cheap, plan accordingly.”
S T O P T H E H A T E ! ! ! !