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Mario, you have your facts wrong, unfortunately.
The fifteen percent figure, while closer to reality than the 20 percent figure being pedaled out by gas-tax-holiday supporters before, is still off the mark.
You can see the current gas prices -- as well as the percentage of taxes -- included here.
It is 11 percent, not 15 percent. And that is including state and federal funding. This is, as you know, money that goes to fixing roads and other infrastructure needs.
Meanwhile, you would be hard-pressed to find any legitimate expert who would support such a plan; the huffington post tried and failed.
No experts support the plan because there's no reason to believe that reducing the taxes would resuce the pump price.
The oil companies don't sit around thinking "I guess 4% is enough profit for us, we'll set the price so we make 4%". No, they set the price as high as they can and still sell all the gasoline they have produced for this summer. If that price is $3.75 a gallon, that's what they'll sell the gas for. If we reduce the taxes, that'll simply increase their profit margin and keep the price at $3.75.
Surely someone with a bit of knowledge of markets and economics would see this.
Do you really think the party of Reaganomics, understands economics?
The price of gas is whatever people will pay for it. The price will never reach a point that it will not sell.
And, who would have guessed it? The 4% figure is wrong as well. Oil industry profits are a pretty steady 9.5%. What does that mean? Nothing without context. To do a broad sweep of industries, let's compare it to the average profit margin of the S&P 500: 8.5%.
Other things we should accept uncritically because an executive said them to Congress include "Cigarettes are not addictive" and "There are no steroids in baseball..."
Commenting by HaloScan
