The Pitfall of Windfall

So you want a winfall tax? You want some magic number, a profit figure at which a huge tax kicks in? Really? If you do, you are probably one of the folks that didn't make it to class the day that the teacher was lecturing on economics. I say this because it's almost axiomatic that anytime a corperation is taxed, the tax is simply included in the price of whatever goods or services that the corperation sells. So, let's say that windfall tax gets slapped on Exxon Mobil. It now costs them more to do business. How will they compensate? By charging more for their products. Duh.

Go ahead and ask for that windfall tax. You're the one that's going to pay it... oh, well, you and everyone else including me.

I think that the whole concept of windfall taxation comes from the Marxist idea of class warfare. Those who propose it do not seek to better anyone's life, but to pit 'average' citizens against another group of citizens that happen to sell petrochemicals. To what end, I can only speculate, but it would be a natural extension to assume that eventually, these people (tax proposers) will use such means as a way to centralize industry. Those who support the tax are not guilty of such sinister intention, but are badly misguided in their thought and have fallen victim to the us-versus-them mentality. They can't see past big numbers and their own pettiness, most most disturbingly, as evident by their behavior, believe that they are entitled to things by virtue of existance.
If there is a third group that supports this idea, they are awfuly quiet. I can only see the pre-Marxists and the foolish with extended hands.

What really bugs me is how many Republicans seem to be leaning toward the Marxist end of this whole oil thing. I'm not a Republican so much, but I vote for them because they are, or at least were, that much farther away from Communism and Socialism than the Democrats.