Oil Company Profits

John Stossel takes a look at why the word "profit" is such a dirty word.

At a recent press conference Sen. John Kerry was upset as he snarled, "Oil companies in America are reporting record profits. Record profits."

When did profit become a dirty word?"

I wish the oil executives would face the media. They could say something like:

"What are you complaining about? What do you think we do with our profits? Buy fancy cars and homes? Well, we do, actually, but nearly all the money goes to looking for more oil and following environmental rules that you want us to follow. You should want us to make more profit. Anyway, we make less profit per gallon than your beloved government takes in taxes."

Gas prices are high, but it still takes me the same amount of time to get to work as it did last year when prices were much lower. In this layman's perspective that tells me that most people are still dirving to work--therefore gas demand is still high.

If demand goes down, the price will go down--that is how markets work. And no matter what happens, oil companies will still make a profit and still employ hundreds of thousands of workers.

Oh by the way, record profits in the oil business also means record tax payments from oil companies.