Just to let people know who may not know this. Last year, Exxon Mobil made 30 billion dollars in profit which has come under increased scrutiny by the media and the government. However, their profit margin was less than 10%. For every dollar that they made, less than a dime was profit. Looking at ratios and percentages is a better way to gauge a company as opposed to numbers. It's like if you made 10 million dollars last year and you gave 1 million to chairty, 10%, and I made $100,000 and gave $20,000 to charity. You gave more than me, but I gave more of what I had than you did.

Also, if you want to know why we're paying so much in taxes: Exxon paid over ONE HUNDRED BILLION DOLLARS in taxes last year, more than 3 times their profit.

So if the government wants to launch an investigation, maybe they should look at themselves.

4/22/2006 10:14:25 AM

4/22/2006 10:44:40 AM

abonorio, what's the point of making sense in the SoapBox?

4/22/2006 10:58:59 AM

there is no point

4/22/2006 8:38:29 PM

omg the gomment is stealing our money

4/22/2006 9:05:22 PM

Well, when exxon makes a dime profit for every dollar that's brought in but has to pay over 30c to pay the government... I don't think congress needs to investigate the oil companies, they need to investigate themselves.

4/23/2006 4:15:13 PM

What, exactly, do you want them to investigate?

4/23/2006 4:22:52 PM

Hey Onorio,

I got no problem with Exxon making $Texas but I did wonder where your PM stuff came from? '05 Financials?

4/23/2006 4:23:11 PM

Where did you get less than 10%? I read somewhere it was closer to 15%, I can't remember where though.
(and I'm not saying 15% is bad, just curious where you read less than 10%)

4/23/2006 4:24:56 PM

Ok, according to Yahoo! Finance, XOM had:
370,680,000 revenue and Net Income Applicable To Common Shares $36,130,000 as of 12/31/05

That gives a PM of 9.75%

So, ~10% looks close.

4/23/2006 4:28:19 PM

WashingtonPost.com, published Oct. 2005.

Quote :

"For instance, in 2004 Exxon Mobil earned more money -- $25.33 billion -- than any other company on the Fortune 500 list of largest corporations. But by another measure of profitability, gross profit margin, it ranked No. 127. Jay Taparia, a lecturer in finance at the University of Illinois at Chicago and an expert on interpreting financial statements, said a quarterly profit or loss can only be judged in context, given the history of the company and its long-term prospects. "People who are freaking out about Exxon's record profit are the same people who were freaking out about AOL Time Warner's record losses" of $98.2 billion in 2002, he said. "One quarter's net income or loss doesn't mean anything." A $9.9 billion quarterly profit is mostly a function of Exxon Mobil's size. It had sales of $100 billion this quarter, more than any other U.S. company. At its current rate of growth, Exxon Mobil will be the biggest U.S. corporation this year by revenue, bigger than Wal-Mart Stores Inc., which had $288.19 billion in revenue last year. Generally, the bigger the company, the bigger the bottom line. Even so, many companies smaller than Exxon Mobil "earn" more, depending on what measure is used. Most financial institutions, such as commercial banks, are routinely more profitable than Exxon Mobil was in its third quarter. For example, Exxon Mobil's gross margin of 9.8 cents of profit for every dollar of revenue pales in comparison to Citigroup Inc.'s 15.7 cents in 2004. By percentage of total revenue, banking is consistently the most profitable industry in America, followed closely by the drug industry. Altria Group, the maker of Marlboro and other cigarettes, made 22 cents for every dollar of revenue in 2004, and pharmaceutical company Merck made 25.3 cents for every dollar of revenue in 2004. By other measures, such as profit per employee, return on invested capital and free cash flow, Exxon Mobil is nowhere near a standout."

Within the last year:

Quote :

"Profit Margin (1 year): 12.60%"

So yeah, profits are up, but nowhere near the taxes that Exxon Mobil pays.

[Edited on April 23, 2006 at 4:33 PM. Reason : .]

4/23/2006 4:31:03 PM

Microsofts reported for June '05 on Yahoo! Finance is
~31%

Evil Wal-Mart's is ~3.6% for all of FY '05

Apple's is ~9.8% as of 12/31/05

4/23/2006 4:31:39 PM

as a comparison, aren't government contractors capped at 10%?

4/23/2006 5:02:12 PM

Depends on the contract. You gotta bid for the contracts and the government I suppose can say we're not paying over ____ level. That's all a part of the free market though. Bid, bid, bid until you get the company that can do the best job at the lowest price (unless you're Halliburton).

That's not the same as saying "nationalizing an entire industry and then capping profit."

4/23/2006 8:14:29 PM

So last year the government got 100 billion from Exxon alone? Wow. Why do they even have an income tax for people with a family income of less than 60K?

4/24/2006 8:52:43 AM

Because the government is getting larger and larger and unfortunatly, the income tax subsidises all the shit the government wants/has to do.

I think they oughtta eliminate personal income tax of 60K and below and chop that shit I mentioned above in half. Meanwhile, withdraw from Iraq, make people work, don't take care of illegals when they get hurt, and then, maybe society will be on the right track.

4/24/2006 9:19:11 AM

omg the gomment's stealin' ur money

4/24/2006 12:12:06 PM

we had this discussion a long time ao when the profits were released - learn to search

4/24/2006 12:13:10 PM

well given the quality of these topics coming up blaming the oil industry, the topics weren't read.

4/24/2006 12:55:15 PM

Quote :

"You gotta bid for the contracts and the government I suppose can say we're not paying over ____ level. That's all a part of the free market though."

i was talking to someone at applied signal technology, inc. (signal processing for surveillance) and they said there was an actual cap

4/24/2006 1:40:04 PM

This is what worries me about capping the oil profit. Building rigs, drilling in alaska, etc are all very very very risky business ventures. You could pump mad $texas into these rigs with a high likelyhood that it will fail. If you cap the profit, you cap the ability to be able to take on more ventures which is the opposite of what the country needs. We need more infrastructure (see: Hurricane Katrina). If you lower the bar on their profit, you also lower the bar on their investment.

The oil industry is making "mad profit" as people would have you believe. They are well below the profit margins of the other industries. Why cap it? If you want to have a direct effect on the price of gas, lower the taxes.

4/24/2006 1:49:18 PM

but we need those taxes to pay for neocolonialization

4/24/2006 1:59:34 PM

if we didn't have taxes
we couldn't keep the edomites at bay

4/24/2006 2:04:10 PM

sarcasm ^, ^^ duly noted, but also please note that I am not for neocolonization. I want to get out of Iraq. Tomorrow.

4/24/2006 2:29:46 PM

oh i know you aren't, its one of the classical conservative ideals that i share with you

4/24/2006 2:31:05 PM

I think that's what would most categorize me, if I had to pigeon hole myself... I'm a "classical conservative." And by that, I mean totally against the neoconservatives currently in office.

4/24/2006 2:36:02 PM

oil products and gasoline are commodities, and companies in commoditized industries typically have extremely low contribution margins and even lower profit margins. i'd be surprised to find too many other commodities producers that have steady, reliable 10% profit margins. and these margins for oil companies are after all r&d expenditures are accounted for, so that's a moot point. so while exxon's margin may be below that of citibank, i bet its higher than that of georgia pacific or alcoa.

also, in most cases of rising raw material prices, added taxes, etc, only some of the added costs are passed on to the end consumer. each member of the supply chain eats some of the costs as well. if oil companies are maintaining steady margins, they're actually passing on costs above and beyond what they're facing. they can do this because of the nation's dependency on oil, but it's not necessarily the right thing to do.

4/24/2006 5:48:51 PM

you know what would fuel advancement, and you'll think i'm crazy, isolationism

it worked for the first 180 years of our country...

4/24/2006 7:59:39 PM

http://usinfo.state.gov/usa/infousa/facts/democrac/50.htm

4/24/2006 8:03:03 PM

Quote :

"you know what would fuel advancement, and you'll think i'm crazy, isolationism"

Dude, I am completely with you. 100%. Get out of Iraq, #1.

#2, people thought it was so terrible that the chinese president came here. You know what? I don't care what the fuck they do to their citizens over there. That's not my concern. If we can have a working relationship with china and be friends and trade between the nations, I see no reason why we should ride the moral high horse here. They're not threatening us. And they won't. Our two countries rely deeply on eachother.

#3, let Israel do whatever it wants to do to Iran. Let them fight it. It's not our battle. We need our own energy independence. I have a feeling that if we weren't around playing that moral high horse, we could get all the oil we want from Venezuela, from China. Commies? I hate commies too, but that has no impact in my life in America.

I'm tired of being the moral leader of the world. I'm tired of being the police man. Stop all foreign aid to every country and lets look after ourselves for once.

4/24/2006 8:16:41 PM

i thought i remembered bush saying stuff like that in 2000, but when i did some looking I found he had said stuff that was completely different. i guess i confused gingrich and dole with bush. we should have seen this coming from a mile away.

4/24/2006 8:44:18 PM

Quote :

"I'm tired of being the moral leader of the world. I'm tired of being the police man. Stop all foreign aid to every country and lets look after ourselves for once."

I had this discussion with some coworkers last week about how I was sick that the US always has their hands in everything. Let the fucking Europeans and all of Irans neighbors deal with that problem first, then we'll step up and help them out if it comes to that.

4/24/2006 8:51:59 PM

I think we oughtta say, "WHO THE FUCK CARES ANYMORE?"

We got thousands of miles of ocean on either side. Let them fight it out.

4/24/2006 10:51:15 PM

Yeah, isolationsism worked so well for us around the 40s

4/24/2006 11:54:06 PM

Quote :

"We got thousands of miles of ocean on either side. Let them fight it out."

You aren't stupid enough to think that matters and I know that.

Don't get carried away Onorio

4/24/2006 11:54:45 PM

Quote :

"Because the government is getting larger and larger "

yeah, its not like we had a FUCKING WAR AND A FUCKING HUMONGUS NATURAL DISASTER TO PAY FOR.

Cripes, you act like the money is all going to welfare or something. DID YOU WATCH THE NEWS LAST YEAR?

4/25/2006 12:02:57 AM

Yes. And I don't think FEMA should exist. I don't think there should be a government bailout everytime something happens. Look, you want to live 9 feet under sea level, you go right ahead. Let your insurance adjuster determine the price of that risk. Don't make me fucking pay for it.

The war: unnecessary. We're paying out the ass for something that wasn't a threat and we're kinda stuck there now.

Take away those two things: voila.

4/25/2006 8:25:49 AM

what about the people outside new orleans who live above sea level and had their houses destroyed?
should they get nothing because they were "dumb enough to live in Mississippi" ?

4/25/2006 8:42:58 AM

well

if you're dumb enough to live in a country run by abonorio you deserve whatever you get

4/25/2006 8:52:27 AM

I hate to jump in, but like the man said, that is between you and your insurance adjuster.

If you are poor enough to be ruined by such a disaster and no insurance company will touch you then maybe you should consider moving.

Or, more precisely, now that your stuff is gone you should go ahead and move elsewhere rather than re-build in the exact same spot.

Or, maybe you should rebuild there. Whatever was built there before lasted for 50 years, that's a good run for a city slum. Often-times we intellectuals over-estimate the negative impact of disasters upon individuals. Many of these people were renters, so the financial burden is limited to losing their jobs, having to find another rental, and having to replace their furniture, things easily fixed once employment is restored.

4/25/2006 8:52:41 AM

^ Bingo.

Quote :

"what about the people outside new orleans who live above sea level and had their houses destroyed? should they get nothing because they were "dumb enough to live in Mississippi" ?"

No. If the government wasn't continuously there for a bail out, the market would be allowed to function appropriately. If there were no FEMA, people would get private insurance policies to cover natural disaster. If you're living in a high risk area, the premiums will be higher. If you can't afford to live in a high risk area, you won't. Not only will that save lives (by removing the ability to live in a high risk area due to the free market) but you'll also save money in the long term by not having to do multi-billion dollar rebuilding programs.

[Edited on April 25, 2006 at 9:45 AM. Reason : .]

4/25/2006 9:41:40 AM

well, i guess i feel better knowing that you'll never be elected to any important public office based on that platform.

Cause last I checked, theres a lot more left that needs building than some replacements for rickety old houses.



[Edited on April 25, 2006 at 11:21 AM. Reason : .]

4/25/2006 11:19:08 AM

oil just lost $2 a barrel on the Bush announcement

4/25/2006 11:33:44 AM

two days in a row now Bush has done something good, woah!

4/25/2006 11:39:11 AM

what the fuck did he do yesterday?

and yes, if he can get gas to like pre-2004 levels (when it had a chance of being under $2 a gallon)

that will be his legacy

4/25/2006 12:00:26 PM

lol, I thought Bush didn't listen to polsters.

4/25/2006 12:15:04 PM

Quote :

"Cause last I checked, theres a lot more left that needs building than some replacements for rickety old houses."

Moron, venture capitalists and business folks have to pay insurance premiums too. If it was too expensive to build their skyscraper in NO, they might've looked somewhere else to build. That would've saved lives and money.

I don't expect to get elected. People are too dependant on someone else to do for them what they should do for themselves to oust the "hand that feeds them."

Shit, if someone were giving me a freebie, I'd take it too. Unfortunately, those freebies will all catch up to us one day... and I hope i'm not around to witness it.

4/25/2006 12:22:07 PM

The government is already working with the gas companies to artificially establish gas prices. They are run and controlled by the same people.

4/25/2006 1:19:54 PM

probably 50%+ of our nation's population lives somewhere where a natural disaster could destroy their homes. california's got earthquakes and fires, the entire eastern seaboard and gulf coast have hurricane risks, in the midwest there's tornadoes, etc. i dunno, everyone needs a hand from the government sometimes when shit goes wrong. i, for one, have no problem with some of my paycheck heading towards those in need in the gulf coast. better that than paying for supplementing in-state tuition for a bunch of know-it-all kids with no sense of national community.

and please, let's not forget how federal aid helped this state in the late '90's after floyd, dennis and fran. last i checked, people still live in raleigh, fayetteville, and gates county. guess they all should've not moved back too, eh?

4/25/2006 1:38:36 PM

I lived in Morehead City all of my life. I've been through dozens of hurricanes. Not once has my family received a check from FEMA.

All I'm saying is that if you want to live 9 feet below sea level, do it at your own risk and don't make me have to pay for your stupidity.

It's like those signs: NO LIFEGUARD ON DUTY! SWIM AT YOUR OWN RISK!

And you drown and die. You were warned. You didn't heed. Reap the consequences of your own action and don't expect someone to bail you out.

Quote :

"i, for one, have no problem with some of my paycheck heading towards those in need in the gulf coast."

Then you do it. Give to charity. No one is stopping you there. But don't hold a gun to my head and make me do it. I have no problem giving to charity. I like to give to causes that I believe in. I don't want the government taking 1/3 of what I make and dishing it out in various social programs. THe government should collect money for defense and maintaining infrastructure. All social programs should be private parties. That's the way it oughtta be. If you're so noble and you have no problem with them taking money from your check, then do it. Good for you.

[Edited on April 25, 2006 at 2:00 PM. Reason : double post]

4/25/2006 1:56:05 PM