More on Subsidies for the Oil Companies
A reader comments on my post on subsidies for the oil companies. Thanks for the additional clarity Craig. Your charts also do not allow for infrastructural benefits. The oil lobby weighed in heavily in favor of our national highway system. This has been cited as part of the demise of the railroads. Many today can’t imagine a world without the interstate road system just as they cannot imagine a world without oil.
Let me start by stating the obvious: this whole conversation on subsidies is very wide-ranging and not amenable to exact defined boundaries.
What you’re saying here is interesting; in fact, I don’t think I’ve ever run across this idea before. But while the demise of the railroads is a bad thing, the interstate highway system is a good one, IMO.
But what about the things that are unequivocally bad, like the wars we fight with our $800B defense budget (larger than the next 16 countries’ budgets combined)? What about the healthcare expenses associated with breathing the aromatics of burned hydrocarbons? What about all the long-term environmental damage in terms of global warming, ocean acidification and loss of biodiversity that we’re ignoring and passing onto our children? There really is no sincere effort to account for any of these things.
Why? Big Oil owns the US Congress.
How much longer will this be true? It’s up to you and me.
Whether the interstate highway system is good is unclear. It has greatly increased our dependence on private cars thereby greatly increasing petroleum consumption. It has also encouraged urban planning to be done around private cars thereby making us even more dependent on them. The dependency on private cars has made it necessary for many people to own a car to live a normal life; without a private car, their employment opportunities are greatly limited. That has increased the gap between rich and poor.
Craig,
“Big Oil owns the US Congress”
Why do you continue to perpetrate old myths ? If your statement was true, then the heavily subsidized ethanol industry wouldn’t exist !
Not only does the US Congress ignore complaints from the Oil Industry but actually mandates the use of ethanol.
The oil industry is continually attacked and used as a whipping boy by Senators, Representatives and even Presidents.
There is nothing sinister or covert about the importance of the Oil industry to US governments. Since the oil industry is the key to American economic prosperity and integral to all US economic activity, it would be a foolish and irresponsible administration that excessively damaged the nation’s most important wealth creator, and largest taxpayer.
In recent years, the growth of an alliance between the farm lobby, Big Agriculture and the RFA, has seen lobbying on an unprecedented scale. It would be fair to say that these lobbyists have much greater direct control of Senators and Congressional Representatives than the Oil industry.
Although Big Oil does have considerable influence, its influence was insufficient to avoid being forced to pay out huge amounts of money following the gulf oil spill.
The influence of Big Agriculture on the government is excessive. Even though it is now recognized that corn ethanol was and is a mistake for multiple reasons, Big Agriculture and individual farmers have sufficient influence that it is unclear that we will ever be able to end the requirement that ethanol be added to gasoline. Also, Big Agriculture and the food industry greatly influence the government’s dietary recommendations in an effort to increase and boost profits. The resulting dietary recommendations are not probably not optimal for health.
Craig,
I think Frank makes his points very succinctly.
From my observation crusaders who need to create sinister enemies, conspiracies etc, do so at the risk of the rhetoric and hyperbole detracting from any positive message they may want to convey.
Objectivity becomes lost when advocates blame secret “enemies” for their message not being accepted by the general populace. It’s counter-productive to cry “We was robbed!” or blame the rules for the failure of either the Singer, the Song, or both to win the confidence of the majority.
IMO environmental acceptance and advancement is harmed when confused with less relevant political concepts and ideologies.
That’s the problem with environmental politics . “Green” political parties start out with broad inclusive support and rational environmental principles. Over time, they find themselves infiltrated and hi-jacked by radicals and power seekers from the old Socialist Left.
Soon the general public realizes that the Green Party is like a Watermelon, Skin deep Green on the outside, but red all the way through !
As a result, opportunistic politicians like Donald Trump arise to capture peoples imagination. America should be glad he’s running for President, an office he’s most unlikely to attain. Imaging if he ran for the Senate, Congress or even a governorship, where he stands a much better chance of being elected, and from which he could acquire real legislative power while wielding considerable political influence.