Here’s some wisdom from the floor of the Senate. To find it in the Congressional Record, go here. (When you get there, click on “Day of Session" right below the search field. Then choose “Senate Pages” for November 16. When you get the field that says: “Go To Page” type in S12928.)
What follows is an excerpt from a floor speech by Senator Dorgan who has proposed a windfall profits tax. I think he meant John Maynard Keynes in the opening sentence part of the quote but it’s easy to confuse three-named economists with the first name John. It’s even easier to make fun of pointy-headed academics:
John Kenneth Galbraith used to say, in the long run, we are all dead. But we go into this winter, as consumers in this country, confronting a fuel bill that has dramatically increased over last year, and then reading in the newspaper in the morning, wearing a sweater in a home that you have to keep a couple of degrees cooler in order to afford to heat your home, that ExxonMobil has a 75- percent or 89-percent profit or all the majors are showing massive profit increases. So while they sit there fat and happy, racking up the profits, everybody else is trying to figure out how they pay the price. How do you scrape up the money to heat the home, to fill the car, to fill the tanks so that your tractor and farm equipment is ready in the spring? People say: Well, if that is a problem for you, that is tough luck. There are a couple of economists writing in recent days—I won’t name them—who can tell us everything about the future but can’t remember their home phone number. You know the type. They are telling us what will happen here is if people can’t afford to pay the cost of energy, it will force them to conserve more. Easy to say for one of these economists who drive around town in their Volvo or Mercedes cogitating about the future. What about the people who have to use a car to drive to work, have to fill the tank with gas but don’t have the money to do so, or the people who understand they live in the northern part of this country where we have tough winters and they have to pay the heating bill and it costs a lot of money and they don’t have it? What about that?
I sure wish he’d name them. I hope he’s talking about the two economists who write here at Cafe Hayek. But neither of us argue that high prices are good because they force people to conserve. He’s confusing us with some environmental groups. We like high prices because they give the oil companies an incentive to keep looking for more energy. That way the people we’re all worried about will have more oil and gas in the future.
By the way, neither of us drives a Volvo or a Mercedes. Must be two other economists who can’t remember their home phone number.
