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One of my granddaughters asked, “Grandpa when can we vote this guy out?”
This guy is our president who is making our economy a complete mess. Let’s take just one item – gas prices. Obama’s solution to four or five dollar gas is to appoint a committee to investigate fraud or collusion and to burden a higher tax on big oil companies.
It takes a lot of cojones to try to put the blame on the oil industry after the president himself has prohibited more drilling for oil and gas off California, in Alaska, off the Eastern coast and various parts of the Gulf of Mexico. Couple this with his insane stubbornness to allow deep-water drilling after the oil spill one year ago. A number of big rigs have given up on the Obama administration to come to their senses and have moved their operations to foreign lands, losing thousands of U.S. jobs.
Gas prices have more than doubled since Obama took office and as hard as he has tried he hasn’t been able to blame this all on George Bush. The next best option is to attack the oil companies.
The whipping boy for Obama and his elite friends has been Exxon-Mobil. This giant company is so convenient as the media cannot relate how big business operates so attack anything that has gigantic numbers – especially profit.
With that in mind, I acquired the annual report and the audited financial statements for Exxon-Mobil for the year ended December 31, 2010. Let’s look at some factual information taken from these documents.
Much is being made about Exxon’s earnings which were a little over 30 billion for 2010. The media and big oil haters (including our president) go absolutely bonkers over such a big number. These same economic wizards can’t seem to realize Exxon is a giant company. Their total revenue was in excess of 370 billion dollars. This computes to a net profit of 8 percent on revenues.
Let’s consider a small business with $600,000 in revenue and a net profit of 48 thousand dollars. Do you think any of these critics with zero economic understanding would complain that the 48,000 dollar profit was excessive and unconscionable? This leads one to believe these media clowns fail to even understand percentages.
Now let’s discuss the boring mantra that corporations pay only a minute amount of taxes. Here’s the audited 2010 numbers for Exxon:
Earning before income taxes - $52,959 million
Income taxes - $21,561 million
This means this evil corporation paid income taxes at a rate in excess of
40 percent of the earnings. That’s even higher than the rate Obama wants to use to confiscate the earnings of individual billionaires. That’s not all. Consider this about this selfish corporation for 2010:
• Earnings after taxes $31,398 billion
• Income taxes 21,561 billion
• Sales based taxes 28,547 billion
• Other taxes 36,188 billion
This giant company then paid a total of more than 86 billion in all taxes and had earnings left over of a little over 31 billion. This begs the question: how many taxes should a corporation like Exxon be obligated to pay? Probably nothing short of paying 100 percent of earnings would satisfy some of the radicals.
Are all these income, sales and property taxes paid to political entities in the U.S? Not on your life. Because of restrictions by our government on drilling and exploration activities Exxon and other major oil companies have had to take resources and people to other countries. Just think of the jobs and resources that could be invested here with an administration that is business friendly and encouraging companies such as Exxon as opposed to demonizing them.
Let’s go further. What did Exxon do with the earnings left over after paying these taxes?
The financial highlights of the annual report show Exxon expended over 32 billion in 2010 for capital and exploration. This was necessary to replace gas and oil brought to the markets.
Here’s another revealing and important number not directly related to dollars. At the end of 2010 Exxon had in excess of 88 thousand people on the payroll. This does not consider the tens of thousands that are contract workers servicing Exxon or professional and service individuals that obtain a significant amount of their earnings from Exxon’s varied activities. Exxon not only paid these 88,000 a good salary but provided them with paid vacations, good health care and other benefits.
There are tens of thousands who are retired and receiving a generous retirement package.
Oh, and about those high gas prices and how that relates to companies like Exxon.
The prices the oil companies’ pay for raw oil has more than doubled in the last two years. Oil companies’ profits are not the cause of rising retail gas prices. Consider this – Exxon’s profits from refining and selling liquid gas accounted for only six percent of the 53 billion dollars in pre-tax earnings.
When wrestling with gas prices, staggering federal debt, unemployment and financial failures, we are paying a stiff price for electing a president that is economically illiterate and believes “social justice” is the answer to all national problems.
(Jerry Jackson of Heber Springs writes his “conservative viewpoint” column each Wednesday)
One of my granddaughters asked, “Grandpa when can we vote this guy out?”
This guy is our president who is making our economy a complete mess. Let’s take just one item – gas prices. Obama’s solution to four or five dollar gas is to appoint a committee to investigate fraud or collusion and to burden a higher tax on big oil companies.
It takes a lot of cojones to try to put the blame on the oil industry after the president himself has prohibited more drilling for oil and gas off California, in Alaska, off the Eastern coast and various parts of the Gulf of Mexico. Couple this with his insane stubbornness to allow deep-water drilling after the oil spill one year ago. A number of big rigs have given up on the Obama administration to come to their senses and have moved their operations to foreign lands, losing thousands of U.S. jobs.
Gas prices have more than doubled since Obama took office and as hard as he has tried he hasn’t been able to blame this all on George Bush. The next best option is to attack the oil companies.
The whipping boy for Obama and his elite friends has been Exxon-Mobil. This giant company is so convenient as the media cannot relate how big business operates so attack anything that has gigantic numbers – especially profit.
With that in mind, I acquired the annual report and the audited financial statements for Exxon-Mobil for the year ended December 31, 2010. Let’s look at some factual information taken from these documents.
Much is being made about Exxon’s earnings which were a little over 30 billion for 2010. The media and big oil haters (including our president) go absolutely bonkers over such a big number. These same economic wizards can’t seem to realize Exxon is a giant company. Their total revenue was in excess of 370 billion dollars. This computes to a net profit of 8 percent on revenues.
Let’s consider a small business with $600,000 in revenue and a net profit of 48 thousand dollars. Do you think any of these critics with zero economic understanding would complain that the 48,000 dollar profit was excessive and unconscionable? This leads one to believe these media clowns fail to even understand percentages.
Now let’s discuss the boring mantra that corporations pay only a minute amount of taxes. Here’s the audited 2010 numbers for Exxon:
Earning before income taxes - $52,959 million
Income taxes - $21,561 million
This means this evil corporation paid income taxes at a rate in excess of
40 percent of the earnings. That’s even higher than the rate Obama wants to use to confiscate the earnings of individual billionaires. That’s not all. Consider this about this selfish corporation for 2010:
• Earnings after taxes $31,398 billion
• Income taxes 21,561 billion
• Sales based taxes 28,547 billion
• Other taxes 36,188 billion
This giant company then paid a total of more than 86 billion in all taxes and had earnings left over of a little over 31 billion. This begs the question: how many taxes should a corporation like Exxon be obligated to pay? Probably nothing short of paying 100 percent of earnings would satisfy some of the radicals.
Are all these income, sales and property taxes paid to political entities in the U.S? Not on your life. Because of restrictions by our government on drilling and exploration activities Exxon and other major oil companies have had to take resources and people to other countries. Just think of the jobs and resources that could be invested here with an administration that is business friendly and encouraging companies such as Exxon as opposed to demonizing them.
Let’s go further. What did Exxon do with the earnings left over after paying these taxes?
The financial highlights of the annual report show Exxon expended over 32 billion in 2010 for capital and exploration. This was necessary to replace gas and oil brought to the markets.
Here’s another revealing and important number not directly related to dollars. At the end of 2010 Exxon had in excess of 88 thousand people on the payroll. This does not consider the tens of thousands that are contract workers servicing Exxon or professional and service individuals that obtain a significant amount of their earnings from Exxon’s varied activities. Exxon not only paid these 88,000 a good salary but provided them with paid vacations, good health care and other benefits.
There are tens of thousands who are retired and receiving a generous retirement package.
Oh, and about those high gas prices and how that relates to companies like Exxon.
The prices the oil companies’ pay for raw oil has more than doubled in the last two years. Oil companies’ profits are not the cause of rising retail gas prices. Consider this – Exxon’s profits from refining and selling liquid gas accounted for only six percent of the 53 billion dollars in pre-tax earnings.
When wrestling with gas prices, staggering federal debt, unemployment and financial failures, we are paying a stiff price for electing a president that is economically illiterate and believes “social justice” is the answer to all national problems.
(Jerry Jackson of Heber Springs writes his “conservative viewpoint” column each Wednesday)
