"Need" now means wanting someone else's money. "Greed" means wanting to keep your own. "Compassion" is when a politician arranges the transfer.

Continuing where I left off yesterday: the second thing that has been bothering me is the talk of Exxon Mobile's profits. It made $40 billion in profits last year, and Hillary Clinton and the media have been talking about how that money needs to be taken away. Apparently it's not "fair" for a company to keep the profits it earned.

Of course these people fail to mention the most important part: Mobile is not keeping its $40 billion profits. The $40 billion is gross profits, and doesn't take into account the crude oil it needs to buy (the price of which is rising), the employees and maintenance costs it needs to pay, and so on. Profits are not the same as profit margins. Its profit margin hasn't increased, by the way: even though its profits have been up the past couple years, its profit margin has stayed steady at 10%.

Also lacking in the media (and Clinton) analysis is the amount of taxes Mobile paid. It has paid an average of $27 billion in taxes every year the past three years, a number that none of us can even fathom. It comes out to about 41% of its taxable income. And this is still before it pays its employees, its maintenance costs, etc. So the next time you're watching TV and you hear something about record profits- listen carefully to see whether profit margins are ever addressed. I think you'll find they aren't.

Politicians and the media are going to keep making these ridiculous claims as long as they know the average person can't be bothered to get a grasp on simple economics. So if you're one of the people they rely on to remain ignorant, pick up The Undercover Economist (I've mentioned it before) or something similar. And if you know someone who believes ignorance is bliss, give them a copy and show them its not. How long are we going to let ourselves be manipulated like this?

The title of today's post is a quote by Joseph Sobran.