Continuing from yesterday, when the oil companies make $41 billion in one year, as Exxon Mobil did in 2007, it’s distributed to millions of people. The money goes into pension funds and retirement accounts that people like your grandparents may have invested in at one time. Much of that money goes to help pay the mortgages and health resources for elderly Americans through dividends.
So an attack on the oil companies is an attack on ordinary, hard-working Americans. If the government restricts them and refuses to remove the proverbial handcuffs, that cuts into some of the money that is set aside for retirement plans and so forth. As Stein illustrates, that would be like “cutting off one end of a blanket and sewing it to the other.”
In addition to the money going into the pockets of ordinary Americans, much of those profits also go for exploring more efficient and safer ways to find and distribute that evil oil to us.
It’s plain and simple. The American economy and the American lifestyle revolves around oil. If the oil companies shut down for a day, the nation would seize. Instead of placing more restrictions on them, regulating them more than they already are or passing a “windfall” tax to punish them, let them do what they do. Lift the restrictions along our nation’s shoreline to drill or let the companies lend their expertise and technology to help find other forms of energy. Until we find something as economical, efficient and plentiful to give us energy, the oil companies are our best friend.
With that in mind, don’t be afraid to get a truck at your local GMC truck dealer. And if somebody gives you a dirty look, just let it slide. You and I both know that oil companies aren’t the mean monsters they’re made out to be.
