Point 1:Big oil doesn't set prices.
the oil companies do not come even remotely close to setting the price of oil and gasoline. They either benefit from high prices or get hurt by low prbut they do not set the price. The largest oil company in the U.S. (a piker compared with many foreign companies) controls less than 3 percent of the world's oil. Does that offer a clue on how prices get set?
Point 2. At least we have gas.
Those of us who lived through the early 1970s when low, artificially fixed oil prices meant that there was sometimes literally no gasoline or heating oil, can only give praise that there is a price system to make sure there always is gasoline and heating oil at some price.
Point 3. Anyone who wants to can have some of those "obscene profits."
Anyone in America with a few twenties in his pocket can become a shareholder of a big oil company and share in those profits. Those profits go to teachers' unions and policemen's unions and to any person on this earth who cares to speculate that the big profits will continue. Or, as my father once said to me, and I have said before, "If you think oil company profits are obscene, buy stock in the oil companies."
Point 4. Big Oil pays for a lot of good stuff.
a huge slice of the profits go to federal and state taxes, running into the tens of billions of dollars. Oil companies in general pay between 30 and 40 percent of their profits in tax. That pays for a lot of textbooks (that no doubt teach how bad oil companies are) and a lot of hospitals for rehabilitating wounded Marines.And vitally, lots of the money that goes into Big Oil goes to find ever scarcer oil reserves. And without them, we ain't going nowhere.
Point 5. So shut up. (Actually, that's just my interpolation).
