adios
03-05-2004, 02:05 PM
Saw this yesterday on the Cavuto show. There was an environmentalist on one side of the debate and a representative of a conservative think tank on the other side. The envirnomentalist stated that higher gasoline costs were due to not enough competition as evidenced by Exxon/Mobil merger and resultant $21 billion in profits (merger during Clinton administration I believe). A quick review of Exxon/Mobil's income statements and that's about right although they're spending about $3 billion more in cap ex than they're depreciating so the profit picture is not quite as rosy but rosy none the less. The conservative think tank rep stated that the problems with higher gasoline prices was over regulation and such implying that there was plenty of competition. Ok I do know that demand for gasoline is on the rise world wide. Many negative stories about capacity to produce gasoline and about reserves of various energy companies. Also US petroleum inventories are low. However, Cavuto asked each guest if they thought that increased costs that are due to additives to reduce pollution are a regressive tax more or less. It seems to me that even if the environmentalist was right, there out to be an incremental difference in the price of gasoline between places that require such additives and those that don't. So I guess Cavuto had a good point. So are envirnomentalists being cruel to the lower wage earners in society when they advocate cleaner fossil fuel emissions?