…without even the courtesy of asking you for permission.

June 20, 2011 – Happy Summer Solstice!

Taxes are expenses which are mandatory for societal participation. For some reason, we’ve had this confused for a long time – and we think that government taxes are different than private taxes.

Newflash: corporations are equivalent to governments from the individual’s perspective.  Corporations assess private taxes.  Private taxes are, for some reason, not transparent, totally secret, and totally inefficient.  Any kind of long-term economic profit is inefficient for society.  Check out the long term economic profit made by the 5 largest “energy” aka oil companies in the world -

BP, Conoco Phillips, Chevron, Exxon, and Shell have all made over $30 billion in profit this year. Profit means that they have covered their costs, and the extra left over, when everyone goes home, is $30 billion.  That’s billion with a B.  Like, 30 thousand million.

$30000000000.00

But that’s *their* money. They earned it. They’re a private organization. It’s none of our business what they do with the money.

Wrong
Are you like me?  Do you commute?  Perhaps you have to drive your car on occasion.  Do you in any way ever consume oil?  Is oil consumption not absolutely mandatory for participation in our society?  Oil expenses are a form of taxation.

And the private taxes assessed on the hard working middle class American are higher today than they ever have been in history.  We pay more for oil, education and healthcare than anyone in America ever has, ever.

Are you like me?  Do you wonder where this extra money goes?

To the super rich, of course!  Because they *earned* it!

No wait.  Got my notes confused there, for a minute.  I earned that money, when I worked for it. And they’re taxing me without representation, making $30 billion in quarterly profits, and the profit goes to, what…  CEO pay, I gather.

How is this any different from a greedy king taxing his peasants into the dirt?

Write a strongly worded message to your congresspeople. Because our tax money actually adds $4 billion in profit to these oil companies.  Shouldn’t that money be going the other direction?  Like the way it works with public utilities, which like oil, have high barriers to entry which predisposes the market toward long term economic profit for large firms, aka oligopolies, which use their market power to be a black hole for currency, sucking everything in within reach, letting nothing out, and leaving the survivors to fend for themselves.

With nothing but plastic cutlery.

This could get ugly.