AviGandhi

Exxon's Record Taxes, Capital and Exploration Spending in Perspective

In 2007, on $400 billion in revenue, Exxon paid just $5 billion to the U.S. government; your assertion that "the bottom 50% of taxpayers will pay an estimated $34 billion in income taxes this year" only shows that you are ignoring an important part of Exxon's tax distribution.

Furthermore, Exxon should be taxed higher; it is making it's profit off of natural resources that don't actually belong to it, but to the people in other countries. We would never let Saudi Aramco drill in the U.S., but we're perfectly happy with Exxon drilling everywhere else in the world, and bitch about how high the taxes it pays to other nations are.

Finally, the negative externalities incurred by Exxon's business strategies and products incur even higher costs to society - environmental damages to our air and water, pollution of rainforests, coastal habitats, and other natural ecosystems, and human rights abuses in Africa.

It's ridiculous that Exxon makes so much money not by actually creating a technology of product that allows the world to move ahead (as oil did, say, 75 years ago) but by stealing natural resources from other peoples in other nations and selling them at inflated prices while putting on a campaign of misinformation to make us all believe that a) we need oil and b) Exxon is doing everything it can to keep oil prices down.

When an oil company spends twice as much on share buybacks as on exploration and production, there is something wrong. Exxon is great for shareholders, but terrible for the world - and it's not paying enough in taxes to make up for it.