Hey, Remember Capitalism, Part 2

Well, apparently members of Congress aren't reading my blog. Or perhaps they are embarrassed that a 26-year-old has a better understanding of our constitutional economic principles? Probably the former.

Regardless, the Senate tried again today to readdress the issue of oil companies making too much money. Fortunately, enough of our Senators had their wits about them today to defeat the bill. Here are a couple of links to spark your interest:

Story on the Senate...(Fox News)

See how your Senator voted...(Senate.gov)

One of my favorite quotes of the day was from the number 2 Democrat in the Senate, Richard Durbin of Illinois, he said, "The oil companies need to know that there is a limit on how much profit they can take in this economy." I may be mistaken, but that seems to be the exact antithesis of a free market economy.

Just for fun I did a little check on the gas taxes that we pay. For every gallon of gasoline that we purchase we pay 18.4 cents in Federal taxes, and in the great state of Arkansas, we pay an additional 21.5 cents. (Gas Price Watch). According to the CIA World Factbook, 64% of our population here in the states is between 15 and 64 years of age, which is 203,987,724 people (CIA Factbook). Just taking this group of people, assuming that each of them drive a car, I came up with the following data:

I am fairly average, so I'm basing all of this data on my personal buying habits, which I openly admit may be higher or lower than the national average, but the point of this exercise is to provoke thought. On average, I fill up once a week (17 gallons of unleaded gasoline at $3.85/gallon). This means that each week I pay the Federal government roughly $3.13 in taxes. This doesn't seem that much, but when we multiply this by the 64% of Americans in our example, it turns out that the Federal government collects $638,481,576 in gas taxes weekly. Or $33.2 Billion each year. And this doesn't even include the 18-wheelers or mass transit fuel expenses.

Perhaps the time has come to start identifying areas where the Congress should realize that "there is a limit on how much profit they can take in this economy." Maybe the Congress should hold itself to the same fiscally responsible standards to which they want to hold businesses. Just as corporations are accountable to their shareholders, our representatives should be held accountable to the oath they took to "well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which" they hold.