RonHill
Veteran
Location: ..
| brovic777| Quote |
| Yea I read that. I just go to Mexico where dental work is dirt cheap!!! 
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But you were just saying how great it must be to get Govt health care...Someone who is in that system just said it was not all you think it might be.
So what makes you think it would be better here?
And about gas prices....I read a good article about it. I will see if I can find it.
http://money.cnn.com/2008/05/01/new...sion=2008050112
But the gist was that the major difference between gas prices is the Government either subsidizing the cost (such as Venezuela .12/gal), or taxing it a bunch (such as Europe 8.38).
It also went on to say that in the US our oil consumption has risen 21% since 1980, while in Europe it has remained flat or even dropped as in France.
In every Country that has low gas prices...Demand was increased. In every case where the Country has high gas prices demand was reduced.
In the US we had cheap gas and we took advantage of it. We bought big SUV's and moved out into the burbs. We over extended ourselves.
I find all of the candidates gas fixes to make ZERO sense from an economic stand point. McCain's "tax holiday" will just drive up demand, and the price will go up. Some claim the gas prices will just stay the same, but with more going to profit and the Govt missing out on 9 billion in valuable tax revenue needed to maintain the roadways.
The market will always seek equilibrium.
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| Harvard professor N. Gregory Mankiw, who has written a best-selling textbook on economics, said what he teaches is different from what Clinton and McCain are saying about gas taxes. "What you learn in Economics 101 is that if producers can't produce much more, when you cut the tax on that good the tax is kept . . . by the suppliers and is not passed on to consumers," he said.
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Clinton wants to do the same and put a "windfall tax" in place. This is just as jacked up if not more so. A windfall tax will just prevent the gas company's from investing to find new sources and new methods of extraction.
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| Political consultant Carter Eskew, a former Al Gore adviser, said that if he were advising Obama, he would have said: "If you want to oppose this . . . you're going to have to spend a lot of time and energy explaining.
"I don't think it's brilliant economics; unfortunately, it may be good politics. The smart people say 'It's stupid,' and the people who aren't as schooled say 'At least it will do something for me,'" he said. "I don't know that anyone connects the dots: that there have been a series of politically expedient decisions . . . that have added up to an economic picture that is not at all rosy and in fact fairly disastrous."
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Bad policy, but most of the US will think it is a good idea.
Obama on the other hand wants to increase ethanol..The problem there is it is going to increase FOOD prices. He wants to suspend buying oil reserves..OK. But he wants to have a windfall tax as well.
And the windfall profit tax just does not work. They tried it in 1980.
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| The answer to the second question, according to the Congressional Research Service (CRS), is that the 1980s windfall profits tax depressed the domestic production and extraction industry and furthered our dependence on foreign sources of oil.
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In essence...the WPT does not work. We tried it and it just didn't work. A "Tax Holiday" will do little if anything...But it will do less harm in the long haul.
All of the above plans are nothing more than pandering to people who do not understand economics.
Some more reading about it if you care:
http://www.taxhistory.org/thp/readi...8b?OpenDocument
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| Meanwhile, domestic oil production had fallen to its lowest level in 20 years. While demand had continued to rise, domestic producers had fallen behind in the search for new oil reserves. As a result, the United States had increased its reliance on foreign oil supplies. According to the American Petroleum Institute, the United States had derived about 32 percent of its energy from foreign sources in 1983. By 1986 that figure had climbed to 38 percent. Some analysts expected the trend to continue, although not everyone believed that taxes were driving the dynamic.
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http://www.taxfoundation.org/news/show/1168.html
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| CRS also found the windfall profits tax had the effect of decreasing domestic production by 3 percent to 6 percent, thereby increasing American dependence on foreign oil sources by 8 percent to 16 percent. A side effect was declining, not increasing, tax collections. Figure 1 clearly shows that while the tax raised considerable revenue in the initial years following its enactment, those revenues declined to almost nothing as the domestic industry collapsed.
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http://www.portfolio.com/news-marke...st-Windfall-Tax
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| What began as a compromise by the Carter administration to lift ceilings on oil prices grew into a bureaucratic nightmare that Congress in 1984 called the "largest and most complex tax ever levied on a U.S. industry." The law produced nowhere near the revenue it promised, made the country more reliant on foreign oil, and generated reams of red tape, according to a 2006 report by the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service
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