Politics, USA

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I don't know what the answer is. Tax the shit out of the oil companies and use that money to let the government essentially hire them to drill? That seems to be the most common response. However it neglects the fact that the taxes will just be reflected in the price. That is, the price of oil would just rise and the costs would be sent to the consumer. Net effect of 0 on the oil company, it would all be paid by the populace.

Punishing those who actually provide the oil will be pretty bad.

My roomates plan is to have the government raise taxes and then, much like we do during a hurricane, make it illegal to raise the price. I think that'd definitely work. But thats one big big BIG step toward communism.

This will most definitely not work. Price roofs have always caused shortages no matter what good it has been applied on. It was tried on oil during the seventies and if you look it up you'll see it was horrible. It's all about incentives really. If you artificially lower the price of something, people have more incentives to consume and less incentives to produce, which is exceptionally bad during a time of crisis. You can see examples on this everywhere. When it's been applied onfood the result have been starvation, when applied on housing (such as rent control) the result have been housing shortages and deterioration.