reply to post by Animal
You have a good memory! Yes, I did say that.
The thing is that it would probably increase the profits made by the oil companies, but then again, it would put to rest once and for all this silly
crying that the oil companies are somehow 'ripping off' the American people by making a mere 8% profit margin.
The money made is made because they sell a lot of fuel products. Period. Would you expect the corner convenience store to make as much as the local
WalMart? Of course not. WalMart sells many many times what the convenience store does. They also hire more people (let's not get into how they treat
their employees; I know all about that), they pay more for the store space, and they have to stock more merchandise. They're bigger.
Likewise, oil companies are huge. They sell massive amounts of fuel, for cars, delivery vans, trucks, planes, motorhomes, trains, home heating, lawn
mowers and chainsaws. The more they sell, the more they make. Blaming them for making money is like me crying to Toshiba that they charged me too much
for this old laptop. Of course they didn't charge too much, because I paid it. If it had been too much, I wouldn't have paid it. End of argument.
Verbal kint had a nice little metaphor above, outlining the relationship between Thug and Werko. The one thing he left out is Ug, the big guy with the
club. After a while, Werko decided he was having to do too much to get the leftovers, so instead of going hunting himself, he got Ug to beat up Thug
and take his squirrel away. Werko had promised Ug he could have half of the squirrel. Ug decided that he needed more than Werko, so he ate the
squirrel and gave Werko the leftovers and the dirty pans.
In the meantime, Thug woke up with a bad headache and decided to hide his squirrels from Ug and Werko from now on. So now Ug has decided he likes
squirrels and wants more, and Thug doesn't seem to have any, so Werko gets forced to go get some squirrels to give to Ug. Ug keeps giving Werko less
and less leftovers each time (but plenty of pots to wash), until finally Werko is hunting and washing for nothing (except to keep Ug from beating him
over the head with the club). So Thug still has his squirrels, but he has to hide them and wash his own pans, Ug gets plenty of squirrels for doing
nothing, and poor Werko gets to hunt squirrels and wash pans for occasional leftovers. But, hey, Thug got what was coming to him! Right?
This my friends, is socialism and nationalism. Ug is the government that is going to make sure those mean old oil companies don't make you work any
more.
TheRedneck
[edit on 3-8-2008 by TheRedneck]



