Fight inflation with a windfall profits tax

Step one: tar. Step two: ???

Does your lifestyle involve consuming energy? If so, you may have noticed a tingly little sticker shock, especially at the gas pumps (but also everywhere else, from electric cars to home heating and beyond). Inflation, amirite?

To hear corporate Democrats and snake-eyed Republican sociopaths tell it, the problem is that we just can’t have nice things. The real mistake was making sure working people didn’t starve during the lockdown. Unfortunately for this narrative, reality has a well-known leftist bias, and boy are there a lot of CEOs boasting about price-gouging to their shareholders:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/11/20/quiet-part-out-loud/#profiteering

Of course, capitalism trufans insist that this is impossible, because in a competitive market, any company that gouges its customers will lose their business to a less-greedy competitor. Of course, for that to be true, we need to have competition, not monopolies, oligopolies and cartels.

https://pluralistic.net/2022/02/02/its-the-economy-stupid/#overinflated

Back to that energy sticker-shock. Yeah, you may be seeing $4.06-$4.32/gal prices at the pump, but the benchmark oil price of West Texas Intermediate crude is way down — about $20 a barrel.