#49 Seemingly Off-Topic, But Actually Not

"So Exxon Mobil has just broken its own record again, reporting a mind-boggling $11.6 billion profit on $138 billion in sales," writes Matt Nesto of CNBC today. "While it would be easy to protest -- and some will -- and easy to simplistically label it a windfall -- and many will -- the fact of the matter is that Microsoft is three times more profitable than Exxon. Instead of only looking at the absolute numbers, professionals assess the degree of earnings power a company has via profit margins (net income divided by total sales). By that measure, Exxon doesn't even land on the medal platform of the the mega-cap corporations."

According to Nesto at least. On the other hand, there are Statistics, and then there are Damned Statistics, and finally, I might add, there's Bullshit. His argument falls into this last category.

Exxon's "non-windfall" profit of 11.6 billion dollars cannot be compared to MSFT's profit margins or any other company's profit margins, profits -- or any other number. There ARE no other numbers comparable. This is the largest recorded profit ever anywhere.

Remember that these are the same folk who brought us the Exxon Valdez oil spill, and whose punitive damages were recently reduced by--what--90%?

When people are having to choose between buying gas and buying food, Exxon's profit of 11.6 billion dollars is obscene. Period.

Our next president may have to address the inequities of income in our society, where the very very rich (people, as in dubya's friends; corporations, as in Exxon) get richer, and the rest of us work harder to make ends meet. If this kind of news doesn't convince middle- and lower-income Americans, and many rich Americans, to vote Democratic across the board come November, nothing will.

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