Windfall Idiocy

Now Obama is calling for a windfall profits tax on oil companies. Talk about your retrograde liberalism. Hasn't the idea of a windfall profits tax been discredited by now? It's been tried before, in the 1970's, and economists will tell you it - like most liberal ideas - only exacerbates the problem it purports to solve. A windfall profit tax on barrels of oil above $80 would cause oil companies to retreat from investment in new resources, thereby lowering future output, thereby lowering supply, thereby raising the price of gas at the pump while lowering return to stockholders, thereby lowering oil company profits, thereby....well, you get the picture - it's a nasty spiral downwards in which everyone ends up worse off. Whatever temporary revenues the government gains from a windfall profits tax would soon be eliminated due to the tax penalty imposed. We'd end up with artificially higher oil prices due to decreased supply, and less profit for the oil companies to invest in order to increase supply, and, ironically, less revenue for the government. It's simple economics, folks, which Obama is apparently ignorant of. That would not be surprising - I wouldn't trust most politicians to run a lemonade stand. The only other possibility is that he is aware of these basic economic facts but is engaging in populist demagoguery in order to get elected. Neither possibility is attractive in a presidential candidate, especially one who, if elected, would have a working majority with the imbeciles on Capitol Hill. Please, please, please, don't elect this man.