Some perspective on Exxon’s profits
A lot of folks appear to be bothered that ExxonMobil had profits of $10.36 billion in the 2nd quarter of this year, or as CNN/Money reported it, $1,318 per second. That figure doesn’t bother me at all for several reason, including the facts that (a) 70% of those profits came from outside the United States [PDF] and (b) ExxonMobil paid $27 billion in taxes during that same quarter (I absolutely guarantee you that you will not see any articles touting how Exxon paid $3,422 in taxes every second during this same period).
Here’s the real figure that bothers me: the US Government spends money [PDF] at the rate of:
- $81,431 per second
- $4,885,844 per minute
- $293 million per hour
- $7 billion per day
In other words, if we took all of ExxonMobil’s worldwide 2nd quarter profits and gave that money to the US government, the US would burn through that $10.36 billion in a bit under 36 hours. Put another way: those profits wouldn’t support the US government through a complete weekend. ..bruce..
Category: Main, US Politics
About the Author (Author Profile)
Webster is Principal and Founder at Bruce F. Webster & Associates, as well as an Adjunct Professor of Computer Science at Brigham Young University. He works with organizations to help them with troubled or failed information technology (IT) projects. He has also worked in several dozen legal cases as a consultant and as a testifying expert, both in the United States and Japan. He can be reached at bwebster@bfwa.com, or you can follow him on Twitter as @bfwebster.Subscribe
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I for one have no problem with ExxonMobil’s profits.
They are (smartly) putting money back into development.
Also, the same idiots that want to charge a ‘windfall’ tax , what are they willing to give Exxon when they are in a downturn cycle.
Yeah, that’s the real question. I was living in Dallas in 1998-99 when oil was down at $10/barrel and all the domestic petroleum companies were struggling or going out of business. Of course, I also remember buying gas for $0.72/gallon…sigh. ..bruce..