House Dems Want “Reasonable Profits Board” To Regulate Oil Company Profits…

carpelibertatem:

House Dems Want “Reasonable Profits Board” To Regulate Oil Company Profits…

talkstraight:

Six House Democrats led by Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) want to set up a “Reasonable Profits Board” to control gas profits.

The Democrats, worried about higher gas prices, want to set up a board that would apply a “windfall profit tax” as high as 100 percent on the sale of oil and gas, according to their legislation. The bill provides no specific guidance for how the board would determine what a reasonable profit is.

The Gas Price Spike Act, H.R. 3784, would apply a windfall tax on the sale of oil and gas that ranges from 50 to 100 percent on all profit that “exceeds a reasonable profit.” It would set up a Reasonable Profits Board made up of three presidential nominees that will serve three-year terms. Unlike other bills setting up advisory boards, the Reasonable Profits Board would not be comprised of any nominees from Congress.

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WTF??!!!!

<rant>

This brings to mind one of my favorite questions posed by an audience member (and left unanswered by Huntsman) at one of the GOP debates last year. “Out of every dollar that I earn, how much do you think I deserve to keep?” A reasonable profit? This concept suggests that it is possible for a producer of goods and services to make too much money. Such a thing is only possible if consumers are coerced to pay more than what they personally choose to be a fair price for a good or service. What is unreasonable is a producer being penalized for good performance in the marketplace.

And isn’t it a commonly voiced aspiration of many Democrats to promote alternative forms of energy? Would not spikes in gas prices motivate people to seek these out and drive innovators to come up with fresh new alt energy ideas? Instead, the government wants to “help” by preventing prices from going “too high”, which in turn leads to a longer period of time where people will turn to gas and oil for their energy needs as the “cheaper” option and delays any motivation for consumers and innovators to find, implement and pay for new ideas.

Statistics already show today how people are making different choices about personal energy use thanks to higher fuel prices. But producers of goods can only make as much money on what they produce as consumers are willing to pay. In a truly free market, a so-called reasonable profit is equal to the amount of money a consumer is willing to voluntarily pay for an item in excess of the cost it takes for a producer to create that item. If a producer exceeds that figure by any amount, that producer gets NO profit. That should be the check and balance, not some board of three presidential nominees.

Occasionally I find common ground with Mr. Kucinich on foreign policy and civil liberties issues, but this is just an abysmal idea.

</rant>

If they do this to the oil industry. They could do it to anyone. I am sure they would like to enforce a maxim wage. The other thing they could do is make it the law any company has to get approval before they can pay the leadership of their business. Folks this is USSR style economics. This will never help the poor. It will harm them. Idiots.