Thread by @doctorow

Does your lifestyle involve consuming energy? If so, you may have noticed a tingly little sticker shock, especially at the gas pumps (but also everywhere else, from electric cars to home heating and beyond). #Inflation, amirite? 1/

To hear corporate Democrats and snake-eyed Republican sociopaths tell it, the problem is that we just can't have nice things. The real mistake was making sure working people didn't starve during the lockdown. 2/

Unfortunately for this narrative, reality has a well-known leftist bias, and boy are there a lot of CEOs boasting about price-gouging to their shareholders:

pluralistic.net/2021/11/20/qui… 3/

Of course, capitalism trufans insist that this is impossible, because in a competitive market, any company that gouges its customers will lose their business to a less-greedy competitor. 4/

Of course, for that to be true, we need to have competition, not monopolies, oligopolies and cartels.

pluralistic.net/2022/02/02/its… 5/

Back to that energy sticker-shock. Yeah, you may be seeing $4.06-$4.32/gal prices at the pump, but the benchmark oil price of West Texas Intermediate crude is *way* down - about $20 a barrel.

oilprice.com/oil-price-char… 6/

How is it possible that we're paying so much for oil? Is it sanctions? War? Supply-chain shocks? Is the Moon in Neptune? Or is it, you know, a highly concentrated energy sector soaking the public and using all of the above for cover? 7/

Two Democratic lawmakers - one from each house - think it's the latter. @RoKhanna and @SenWhitehouse have proposed a "windfall profits" tax on oil companies.

khanna.house.gov/media/press-re… 8/

It would claw back the billions the hydrocarbon barons have soaked us for and return it to the public in a one-time payment of $240 for every single tax filer and $360 for joint filers. 9/

The rebate targets low- and medium-income earners - it phases out at $75k for individuals and $150k for joint filers. 10/

As @ddayen writes for @TheProspect, this is just a drop in the proverbial barrel. Corporate profiteering has costs the average American household $276/month, with the majority of it coming from the energy sector.

prospect.org/economy/windfa… 11/

Nevertheless, by taxing the windfall that energy companies have reaped from contracting Russian energy supplies, Congress can shift those profits from the energy monopoly to the public it preys upon. 12/

More importantly, of course, is to transition off of oil and onto renewables, and quickly. Oil producing regions don't need the trappings of civilization - education, a social safety net, democratic stability. All they need is a hole in the ground, surrounded by guns. 13/

The world's oil addiction doesn't just endanger the planet - it helps the kind of people who took the Mad Max movies as a suggestion and not a warning fund and export their ideology around the world. 14/

Image:
fourbyfourblazer (modified)
flickr.com/photos/1095725…

CC BY 2.0
creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.… 15/

ETA - If you'd like an unrolled version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

pluralistic.net/2022/03/15/san…