Joe Stalin blamed small-businessman farmers, the kulaks, for the Soviet Union’s 1920s food shortages. Now another Joe, he of Biden fame, has his own scapegoats — for the rising prices his policies have wrought. And the latest targets are gas station owners.
The kicker: These businessmen earn very little selling fuel.
No matter, though, Biden’s scapegoating drew praise — from the communist fascist Chinese government.
The message was delivered in a tweet. To wit:
About this, commentator Andrea Widburg observed, “So that’s what happened: Inflation went from ‘transitory,’ to Big Oil’s and Big Meat’s price-gouging, to corporate consolidation, to Republicans, to Putin-did-it, to Trump’s mean tweets about the Fed. Now it’s the heartless, greedy, gas station owners who … did it.”
And while Beijing no doubt didn’t appreciate Biden’s Putin panning, about his latest claim they were tickled pinko. As Chen Weihua, China Daily EU Bureau Chief and de facto state propagandist, tweeted, “Now US President finally realized that capitalism is all about exploitation. He didn’t believe this before.”
The irony here is that there’s a reason why investor Jim Rogers, chairman of Rogers Holdings, said many years ago already that “America is more communist than China…”: Aside from the United States’ burgeoning statism, Beijing instituted free-market reforms decades ago and, at that very moment, ceased being “communist.” China’s labeling itself the latter is merely branding, and Westerners echoing it participate in false advertising. The nation is now perhaps best described as a fascist ethno-state.
Before returning to Biden’s gas problems, it warrants mention that Twitter respondents deliciously skewered China’s propagandist like a Shanghai street vendor making niu rou chuan beef.
For example, Jeremy Knauff wrote, “Cool story. Don’t you have some death camps to oversee?”
In this vein, tweeter Kyle Lamb added, “While we discuss exploitation, how many young Uyghur kids working at Nike factories in China have to work 20 hours to pay for your salary?” Ouch.
Speaking of which brings us back to the hurtin’ Biden’s policies are visiting on Americans. For starters, this is only a “time of war” if every time is such, because there’s always a conflict somewhere; as for Ukraine, it’s risky elective surgery (i.e., not our business).
Biden could make a difference, though — that is, if he’d say to the states, “Eliminate your gas taxes. And do it now,” along with suspending the federal levy. Given that California’s petrol tax, for instance, is 85¢ and the feds’ 18.4¢, this would save Golden State residents more than a dollar a gallon. Compared to this, how does Biden’s current appeal measure up?
First note that, despite not even asking states to stop stealing more of the people’s money at the pump, Biden is demanding that small businessmen make gas sales a charitable endeavor. This may play fairly well in Peoria (which is likely why the administration did it), as a survey showed that a whopping 45 percent of drivers believe average fuel retailers make at least $2 profit per gallon. The real figure?
Ten to 15 cents — at most.
And that’s before taxes.
That’s according to The Auto Channel (TAC) and other sources. The West Virginia Oil Marketers & Grocers Association (OMЄGA) claims even this figure is high. “Factoring in expenses, which include rent, utilities, freight, labor and credit card fees, a retailer is left with about 2 cents per gallon in profit,” it writes.
In fact, OMЄGA further asserts that when oil prices rise too rapidly, gas retailers will sometimes sell fuel at a loss rather than lose customers, many of whom patronize the stations’ real money-maker: their convenience stores.
However accurate OMЄGA’s claim, it is true that gas stations rely on their convenience stores for most of their earnings. Selling gas is just not a high-profit-margin business, which is perhaps why nationwide, “the number of stand-alone gas stations has declined for decades,” writes TAC.
In other words, the average fuel retailer doesn’t get a $1 million yearly profit from a foreign energy company — as Hunter Biden reportedly did. The upshot?
Joe Biden is engaging in evil demagoguery. For after wrecking the economy with ignorance-born (if not malicious) policies, the administration is now trying to turn small businessmen into kulaks as it blames them for its own folly. Talk about the powerful trampling the weak.
As for Big Energy, while its profits fluctuate with the market, Zippia reports that the “oil and gas industry has an average profit margin of 4.7%” — nothing to write home about.
In fact, depending “on the ease of extracting oil out of the ground — it is cheaper to produce in Saudi Arabia compared to offshore rigs or the Bakken Region shale — the breakeven costs vary as well and can be $60 per barrel or higher,” TAC wrote in November 2021. “For the better part of the past year, oil prices were below $60 a barrel, and that meant there were producers who were losing money on every barrel they produced. That led to some wells shutting down — many of them permanently — which has negatively impacted supply and further pressured prices.”
The bottom line is, the market is working more or less as it should. What’s not working is the current administration, which inherited in early 2021 a stable economy and gas prices of approximately $2.31 per gallon. Now, after spiking the cost of all goods with foolish policy, it’s disgorging propaganda that ultimately can lead to price controls and, hence, shortages. And what’s the last stop on that pain train?
Venezuela.
