Exxon Mobil = Devil
i just read this:
Exxon Mobil Corp. posted the largest annual profit by a U.S. company — $40.6 billion — on Friday as the world’s biggest publicly traded oil company benefited from historic crude prices at the end of the year.it makes me sick.Exxon also set a U.S. record for the biggest quarterly profit, posting net income of $11.7 billion for the final three months of 2007, beating its own mark of $10.71 billion in the fourth quarter of 2005. via
6 comments:
Hmm. Is it bad that I use Exxon Mobil to fuel my '97 Nissan 200SX, almost exclusively? It's just so convenient...just down the street from my house...
Help me understand where you're coming from... (no, seriously, that's not smug conservative sarcasm. I really want you to help me get what you think about this)
Exxon Mobil is a publicly traded, for profit U.S. corporation. They employ tens of thousands (more?) of people around the world, pay billions in taxes to the American government, and they provide a substance that allows people to get to jobs, drive ambulances, create things out of plastic, and so on and so on. Their primary product, gasoline, is difficult to harvest from nature, difficult to refine and make more useful, difficult to transport, and difficult to dispense. It is also highly taxed by governments, who contribute nothing to the process of producing or distributing a substance that is the life-blood of nearly all global economies. And yet they sell this substance for way less per gallon (even with high taxes) than bottled-freaking-water.
So, help me understand which part of that makes you think that Exxon Mobil is the devil?
Mike: see reason #2 from
this post.
my initial "sickness" reaction comes largely from the fact that most US companies are not doing wellright now. especially last quarter. our economy is struggling. meanwhile Exxon posts their largest profits per quarter. i believe they are taking advantage of the system, taking advantage of you and me.
i do realize that gas is very cheap. its alot cheaper here in the US than other countries...but you have to agree that there are huge subsidies being paid out. (Especially in ethanol.) SO in the long run, we are paying for it just the same in our taxes.
sigh. ill stop here and await your rebuttal. ;)
(and COME ON mike! dont you take a break?!?!? Its superbowl SUnday!! :) )
Since it is Super Bowl Sunday (what a game!), I'll only rebut with a question. Why is it wrong for a for-profit company to make a profit? If Gap makes a huge, record breaking profit next year because everyone just HAS TO HAVE their sweet turtle neck sweaters, will they be the Prince of Darkness as well? What do you have against capitalism, comrade?
i have nothing against capitalism. but i dont believe this is capitalism. its a monopoly and the monopoly is kept a float and guided along through coercion and lobbying people and the government. its all just really nasty business. the amount is huge: $40 billion.
to put that in perspective... taking 15 credit-hours at the university of nebraska will cost a student $13,000 a year. thats $52,000 for a college education. that $40 billion can put 769,230 people through college. it could fund every single student at the university for 4 years...and there would be enough money to do the same thing at about 40 other colleges.
its enough money to give every living human being in the entire united states $133.
it could fund 1/10th of the war (http://costofwar.com/)
or it equivalents $1.02 million for each one of its 39,130 U.S. employees.
so either everyone in the entire recession-rid U.S. economy is: in the wrong business OR exxon mobil is up to no good.
g - I felt your comment was inappropriate. My main point with Exxon was and is: "its a monopoly and the monopoly is kept a float and guided along through coercion and lobbying people and the government."
Maybe I should have been more clear with that.
But I do see your point, I am humbled by it and often wonder which is the better life? For two years I worked at a Nursery and I hoed, by hand, 96 acres of Boxwoods. My very first job was working side by side with Mexicans in Northern California digging rocks out of a hillside with picks and shovels and putting them on palates. I was paid $10 a palate and could only manage 3 a day. It was all hard work and I slept like a baby every night. I try to have empathy for people in say, Moldova. There is something to be said of working hard with ones hands. There is also something appealing about getting off at 5pm every day. I do neither now, but I do feel I can better serve His kingdom with the gifts I have learned. What I do now feels much more meaningful and has a larger impact on the world. And there is nothing in my job that is coercive.
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