0.5% Tax on every gallon of oil that reaches our shores and devote the money to renewable research

[ThomWV]

Simple proposition. Let's tax (not a tariff) ever drop of oil that comes off any and all tankers at the rate of one half of one percent of its 'street' value on the day its unloaded. Take the money that comes in from it and devote it to research, to be performed by Universities only with severe limitations on subcontracting if you like, in developing more efficient means of producing renewable energy and to the development of efficient energy storage.

How's that sound.

Let's see, we consume a little over 20 million barrels per day I and believe we import about 65% of that, so there's 13 million barrels a day coming in that currently sells for $100 per barrel, so that's 13,000,000 x $100 = $1,300,000,000 for the tax base and if my arithmetic is correct that will come out to $6.5 million dollars a day. Stack that up for a couple of weeks and you can begin to fund some serious research projects.

On Edit: to avoid tarrif issues with treaties we have in place simply tax all oil as it enters the refineries.

[Winterblues]

1. If Exxon had to pay a tax of fifty million dollars a day they would still

be putting in their pocket almost seventy million dollars a day after all expense.. A fifty million dollar a day tax would not hurt them one iota..

[screembloodymurder]

2. Make it 2% and provide rebates on hybrids.

Couldn't agree more.

[Anticon]

3. You are forgetting Reaganomics my friend...

The reason Exxon is so rich and will not drill any new oil wells no matter how much offshore or reserve land we give them is because of piss down economics. Their profit is determined by taking a percentage of all costs involved including labor, material, advertising and all other overheads. Let's say their % is 30%...If the cost of a barrel of oil goes up by $1, Exxon just made another $0.30! Any tariffs (or taxes) paid by an importer will get adjusted into the cost and consumers will pay the entire increase plus give Exxon more money. The only thing we can do is regulate, and hard. If Exxon really wanted to make profits then they could actually work for it by building refineries and so on. We could then take the extra money and pump it into alternatives.

:shrug: