Not anytime soon. Depends on how you define “doom of everyone.”

Are we in a recession? Probably. Will it matter in a year? Probably not.

If I knew do you think I’d tell you :p Then you’d have the upperhand and I wouldn’t be able to become one of the new superpowers…wait, that’s not me, I’m not like that…am I?

I am a little concerned if Obama gets to be President raises windfall taxes on oil companies (how is taxing an oil company going to make the prices lower?), gets a national health care system (if NHS is free someone still has to pay for it in raised taxes!) our economy won’t improve anytime soon.

welcome to fluther, honniemac !

@jlelandg
Do you believe in supply and demand? The oil companies are making insane profits. Tax the profit and it won’t matter. Because of supply and demand. We will only pay a certain amount (free market) for gas. Gas will cost the same because we set the price (demand). Free market for the win. They will just have less retained earnings. Or the whole thing is bullshit.

Google Collusion

We will tackle health care when you get back to me on the insane profits oil companies are pulling in.

You mean like that 36 billion dollar profit for just 3 months? That is what I call Highway ROBBERY!!! I believe in college the economics teacher called that price gouging.

I think johnpowell is probably correct. There has been a general consensus for some time about the profit insanity that pervades corporate America. But people generally don’t get emotional about it until they start feeling the effects. When they start feeling the effects, then they start taking personal action by boycotting certain products, those that are engaging in what the consumer sees as unethical. When that happens and it happens on a large scale, the corporations that are engaging in a less than favorable fashion are more or less forced to deal with the prices. The corporations then generally respond by shouting to the world that they’re suffering, that their 3rd quarter earnings are lower than their 2nd quarter earnings, expecting everyone to shed tears for them, giving the public the impression that they’re on the brink of financial disaster.

When the peasants are suffering, but corporate America isn’t, they begin to feel far less sympathetic toward large corporate America, and force them to deal with the gross inequities that exist.

I have no opinion on the whole economy thing.

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In respectful disagreement with some of my esteemed Fluther colleagues…

Taxes on corporations do one thing: increase the cost of making product. That cost is passed on to the consumer.

The point is to realize that the government can indeed limit the profits of corporations, but it will not decrease cost to the consumer. So therefore, what’s the point, except the redistribution of monies… which is not a job of the U.S. federal gov’t.

It seems to me that people feel that the oil companies are price gouging. Price gouging is illegal… but that’s not what’s happening here. Devaluation of the dollar as well as supply & demand are the key influencers. The supply problem is directly due to the energy policy of the America that prevents U.S.-based companies from drilling anywhere new. Hell, the Chinese are drilling less than 60 miles off the coast of Florida, but we can’t. And going by environmental-impact track record, that’s not the way you’d want it to go.

And since when is making a profit a bad thing? The oil companies’ profit margins aren’t really that far out of line. Percentage-wise, Apple is even higher (15% vs. Exxon’s 11%). And oil companies have massive R&D and engineering costs… the whole industry is speculative in nature and hence, risky. Big risk and big rewards go hand in hand.

I understand using taxes as a tool to help coerce companies/states/people to go down a particular path… but using them purely to punish success and redistribute wealth (which is the rhetoric most often used when discussing oil company profits) strikes me as completely wrong, reactionary, and pandering to class division.

Oil Companies make 4% profit on what we pay at the pump, many Americans own stock in the oil companies that are making profit. Jimmy Carter and the liberal congresses of yesteryear installed a windfall profits tax and we had long lines at the pump in the 70’s.