I have family that live in the Utah/Colorado basin where the largest reserves for natural gas and oil are found in America. There have been news stories pointing out how this basin has more recoverable energy than all of the Middle East.
Yes, multinational corporations come in and "make the profit," or do they? First, they have caused a massive economic boom in the area. Hundreds, then thousands of workers making $50-100k a year. All kinds of young men who barely graduated high school, never went to college but are willing to work hard are making the kind of wages that others get a bachelor or masters degree to make. My nephew works a hard 60hours a week, has a GED and is taking home $70k a year.
Gas and oil prices have remained steady even as inflation has caused milk, bread and other food stuffs to roughly double in price. My Mom and Dad owned 20 acres that 10 years ago was worth $50k total. Now they are being offered 5 times that for the same acreage.
Then these corporations, they pay tens of billions in energy taxes and mineral rights. As for other 'greedy profits' these corporations are owned by stock holders, the largest of which are pension funds. These energy corporations make money, the pension funds remain healthy and pensioners have monthly checks to show for it. Most of the "profits" go into stock prices and dividends to stock holders.
We seem to get caught up in the fact that the CEO of these corporations make $20 million or more. Well, if you consider that this greedy CEO leads an organization that improves the quality of life, wages and retirements for tens of thousands of people...what is that worth?
If the UK is smart enough to allow the exploration and extraction of this energy you will see tens of thousands of hard working jobs making a pretty good living. We have often moaned at the MASSIVE wealth we have sent to Saudi Arabia, Qatar, etc with "our oil" money. Now is the chance to bring that massive wealth home and you are crying about it?!?! It is estimated that Americans send $700 billion of oil money to the Middle East. Imagine keeping that $700 billion a year home. Government formulas tell us that would create 7 million middle class jobs over the next 20-years. And you are whining about that?
The thought of trading two dozen CEO jobs making $20 million jobs for 7 million middle class jobs....I would take that trade every day of the week and ten times on Sunday. We win. Screw the millionaires!
Just my two cents.
Boo
PS Sad my Brit friends forgot about this model. It works!
