People feeling the “pain at the pump” don’t want to be reasoned with. They don’t want to hear that the market is complex or even that it’s a simple function of supply and demand. People want to be consoled. They want satisfaction, and they want revenge against those whom they perceive to have wronged them.
While it’s easy to blame “Big Oil,” corporate greed or even speculators for high gas prices, people recklessly throwing out these accusations make the mistake of being angry with those who charge the high price rather than those who cause them.
Is it really too hard to understand that with two burgeoning industrial powers, India and China, joining the market, the demand on the global oil supply would increase and drive up the price we pay at the station? Is it really too hard to understand that a country which has limited its domestic oil production, now feels increasingly dependent on foreign oil and the global market?
Enter the revised Obama energy plan: a $1,000 energy rebate given to every middle-income household to be paid out of the record profits of Big Oil.
Now that hits the spot.
Seizing a company’s profits and redistributing it’s wealth will not get the country out of this energy crisis. Making it harder for oil companies to produce oil will only decrease supply and drive up the price, which will then fuel more discussions of evil oil companies and eventually price controls.