Name just one thing that America and the E.U could cut to start getting back on track financially

[Kasz216]

ArnoldRimmer said:

Kasz216 said:

That's the point though... they don't have  a leg up.  The things they're referring to as subsidies are things that apply to everybody, and they don't want to get rid of them because oil industries are doing well, they want to because they're oil industries.

In otherwords, they want to penalize companies based on their buisness.  Not remove advatnages.

Oil subsidies more or less don't exist.

The Wikipedia article on subsidies ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subsidy ) mentions that:

"Examples of industries or sectors where subsidies are often found include utilities, gasoline in the United States, welfare, farm subsidies, and (in some countries) certain aspects of student loans."

So the claim that oil companies receive significant amounts of subsidies doesn't seem too far off.

Call me crazy... but when someone says "Such and such has a lot of subsidies."

Then someone says "Like what"

Then the other person can't come up with anything....

I'm going to guess this isn't the case until someone can actually come up with some subsidies.

The closest think oil and gas companies have to subsidies are tax credits that allow them to bring tax deductions foward compaired to other tax deductions.

Which are tax deductions the oil companies would get anyway... so eliminating them brings the government no new revenue, only pulls revenue foward that it would get later.