POWIP Piece of Work In Progress – Former Abode of Dan Collins

Explain to a Simple Girl: How Does Raising Taxes Lower Prices?

No, really.

Because this is important.

Obama seems to think that an appropriate response to increasing gas prices is to threaten to remove various tax breaks on gas companies. I well understand all the arguments against such a move -- I want to understand, other than some nebulous "fairness" or "punishment" blather, how the hell this is supposed to help people dealing with rising gas prices.

Even to the general masses, this has got to look like a total non sequitur.

White House press secretary Jay Carney said at his daily briefing Tuesday that this is an apt week to highlight the tax breaks.

“The oil and gas companies are all announcing their profits this week. They’re expected to be quite large,” he said. “And while we certainly are glad to see companies making a profit, we do not believe that . . . they need to be subsidized by the American taxpayer.”

Okay......and? You raise taxes on them, so they raise their prices to keep up their profit margins and....?

I mean, how was this supposed to work out for the rest of us?

But let's look at those taxes on gasoline, shall we, and see who's making how much money on that gas:

Oh, here in my great state of NY, the various govt entities are making almost 66 cents per gallon. Do you think the gas companies are making that much in profit, hmmmm?

Do you really want to talk about taxes, Obama?

SPEAKING OF GAS TAXES: When people buy electric vehicles, you'd think they'd get to avoid the high gas taxes... well, Washington state isn't about to give up those revenues.

Meep

Meep is a member of the Irish Catholic mafia, having a suspiciously high number of green-eyed, red-haired friends. While she doesn’t have red hair herself [except when she goes into the sun (rare for any vampire)], she does have green eyes. She’s a raving Papist and is a life actuary on the side [i.e., she counts dead people]. An amateur pain-in-the-ass [willing to go pro!], she likes covering retirement, mortality, math, and education issues.

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