From a recent Wall Street Journal opinion piece regarding "big oil" getting raked over the coals - again - for making obscene profits:
Of course, Exxon is guilty only of responding to a market need, and its earnings are nothing to apologize for. As a nation, we want energy companies investing in increased production, and Exxon and others currently have the wherewithal to undertake those investments. The worst thing for the economy right now would be to have American oil companies in no better shape than Ford or GM.
Politicians and many of our friends in the press imply that Big Oil is somehow responsible for higher prices because of "gouging" or somehow conspiring to withhold supply. Never mind that every time the Federal Trade Commission looks into these claims, it finds no evidence to support them. Energy prices fluctuate over time--oil was under $20 a barrel for most of the 1990s--and if oil executives could pull a string and create $65-a-barrel oil and $3-a-gallon gas, that's all we'd ever see.
To fight the profit motive is to fight a business' sole reason why it provides us with the stuff that we want.
This being an election year, we can expect this sort of political posturing to get worse. It's a special shame, however, that some in the media have decided to join the demagoguery in search of higher TV ratings. Not that an economics education is a qualification for punditry. But if windfalls are so terrible, then perhaps these media stars will be good enough to pay higher taxes on any "windfall" ratings they receive from populist TV demagoguery. At least oil companies provide a product we can't do without.
And if one really wanted to keep oil as the dominant evergy source (notice I didn't say "addictive"), admonishing them for earning record profits isn't going to damage that goal.
I've said it before and I'll say it again. The Sam Waltons and Bill Gates and the "big oils" of this world have done a heckuva lot more to move this globe forward than the policitians.