Is that Kuwait on fire?

Eli,

I only have a couple of comments to your "Success and Sustainability."

The NY Times story about the subsidies of the oil and gas industry is amusing. The story links to a CBO report that has pretty much nothing to do with special tax breaks for the oil and gas industry and instead looks at tax rates on capital income. The CBO makes the surprising discovery that capital structure and capital intensity impacts effective tax rates. Stop the presses.

Then the story blows the lid of the massive tax breaks enjoyed by the oil and gas industry. Hold your breath, it's as much as $4 billion a year. Thank god, now we can balance the budget. It is literally a drop in the bucket for the oil industry and half of the breaks have to do with production in Saudi Arabia, so is completely irrelevant to subsidizing US production. Oy. This is weak, thin stuff to argue the oil industry is the beneficiary of massive subsidies. But fine. Finish off the $4 billion a year in tax breaks and the whole green energy fiasco. Deal.


And, Is that a picture of the Kuwaiti oil fields on fire?

Bill