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-- Bush's Petro-Cartel Almost Has Iraq's Oil
Bush's Petro-Cartel Almost Has Iraq's Oil
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| Bush's Petro-Cartel Almost Has Iraq's Oil By Joshua Holland, AlterNet. Posted October 16, 2006. Even as Iraq verges on splintering into a sectarian civil war, four big oil companies are on the verge of locking up its massive, profitable reserves, known to everyone in the petroleum industry as "the prize." Editor's note: This is the first of a two-part series. Go here to read the second installment. Iraq is sitting on a mother lode of some of the lightest, sweetest, most profitable crude oil on earth, and the rules that will determine who will control it and on what terms are about to be set. The Iraqi government faces a December deadline, imposed by the world's wealthiest countries, to complete its final oil law. Industry analysts expect that the result will be a radical departure from the laws governing the country's oil-rich neighbors, giving foreign multinationals a much higher rate of return than with other major oil producers and locking in their control over what George Bush called Iraq's "patrimony" for decades, regardless of what kind of policies future elected governments might want to pursue. Iraq's energy reserves are an incredibly rich prize. According to the U.S. Department of Energy, "Iraq contains 112 billion barrels of proven oil reserves, the second largest in the world (behind Saudi Arabia), along with roughly 220 billion barrels of probable and possible resources. Iraq's true potential may be far greater than this, however, as the country is relatively unexplored due to years of war and sanctions." For perspective, the Saudis have 260 billion barrels of proven reserves. Iraqi oil is close to the surface and easy to extract, making it all the more profitable. James Paul, executive director of the Global Policy Forum, points out that oil companies "can produce a barrel of Iraqi oil for less than $1.50 and possibly as little as $1, including all exploration, oilfield development and production costs." Contrast that with other areas where oil is considered cheap to produce at $5 per barrel or the North Sea, where production costs are $12-16 per barrel. And Iraq's oil sector is largely undeveloped. Former Iraqi Oil Minister Issam Chalabi (no relation to the neocons' favorite exile, Ahmed Chalabi) told the Associated Press that "Iraq has more oil fields that have been discovered, but not developed, than any other country in the world." British-based analyst Mohammad Al-Gallani told the Canadian Press that of 526 prospective drilling sites, just 125 have been opened. But the real gem -- what one oil consultant called the "Holy Grail" of the industry -- lies in Iraq's vast western desert. It's one of the last "virgin" fields on the planet, and it has the potential to catapult Iraq to No. 1 in the world in oil reserves. Sparsely populated, the western fields are less prone to sabotage than the country's current centers of production in the north, near Kirkuk, and in the south near Basra. The Nation's Aram Roston predicts Iraq's western desert will yield "untold riches." Iraq also may have large natural gas deposits that so far remain virtually unexplored. But even "untold riches" don't tell the whole story. Depending on how Iraq's petroleum law shakes out, the country's enormous reserves could break the back of OPEC, a wet dream in Western capitals for three decades. James Paul predicted that "even before Iraq had reached its full production potential of 8 million barrels or more per day, the companies would gain huge leverage over the international oil system. OPEC would be weakened by the withdrawal of one of its key producers from the OPEC quota system." Depending on how things shape up in the next few months, Western oil companies could end up controlling the country's output levels, or the government, heavily influenced by the United States, could even pull out of the cartel entirely. Both independent analysts and officials within Iraq's Oil Ministry anticipate that when all is said and done, the big winners in Iraq will be the Big Four -- the American firms Exxon-Mobile and Chevron, the British BP-Amoco and Royal Dutch-Shell -- that dominate the world oil market. Ibrahim Mohammed, an industry consultant with close contacts in the Iraqi Oil Ministry, told the Associated Press that there's a universal belief among ministry staff that the major U.S. companies will win the lion's share of contracts. "The feeling is that the new government is going to be influenced by the United States," he said. During the 12-year sanction period, the Big Four were forced to sit on the sidelines while the government of Saddam Hussein cut deals with the Chinese, French, Russians and others (despite the sanctions, the United States ultimately received 37 percent of Iraq's oil during that period, according to the independent committee that investigated the oil-for-food program, but almost all of it arrived through foreign firms). In a 1999 speech, Dick Cheney, then CEO of the oil services company Halliburton, told a London audience that the Middle East was where the West would find the additional 50 million barrels of oil per day that he predicted it would need by 2010, but, he lamented, "while even though companies are anxious for greater access there, progress continues to be slow." Chafing at the idea that the Chinese and Russians might end up with what is arguably the world's greatest energy prize, industry leaders lobbied hard for regime change throughout the 1990s. With the election of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney in 2000 -- the first time in U.S. history that two veterans of the oil industry had ever occupied the nation's top two jobs -- they would finally get the "greater access" to the region's oil wealth, which they had long lusted after. If the U.S. invasion of Iraq had occurred during the colonial era a hundred years earlier, the oil giants, backed by U.S. forces, would have simply seized Iraq's oil fields. Much has changed since then in terms of international custom and law (when then-Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz did in fact suggest seizing Iraq's Southern oil fields in 2002, Colin Powell dismissed the idea as "lunacy"). Understanding how Big Oil came to this point, poised to take effective control of the bulk of the country's reserves while they remain, technically, in the hands of the Iraqi government -- a government with all the trappings of sovereignty -- is to grasp the sometimes intricate dance that is modern neocolonialism. The Iraq oil grab is a classic case study. It's clear that the U.S.-led invasion had little to do with national security or the events of Sept. 11. Former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill revealed that just 11 days after Bush's inauguration in early 2001, regime change in Iraq was "Topic A" among the administration's national security staff, and former Terrorism Tsar Richard Clarke told 60 Minutes that the day after the attacks in New York and Washington occurred, "[Secretary of Defense Donald] Rumsfeld was saying that we needed to bomb Iraq." He added: "We all said � no, no. Al-Qaeda is in Afghanistan." On March 7, 2003, two weeks before the United States attacked Iraq, the U.N.'s chief weapons inspector, Hans Blix, told the U.N. Security Council that Saddam Hussein's cooperation with the inspections protocol had improved to the point where it was "active or even proactive," and that the inspectors would be able to certify that Iraq was free of prohibited weapons within a few months' time. That same day, IAEA head Mohammed ElBaradei reported that there was no evidence of a current nuclear program in Iraq and flatly refuted the administration's claim that the infamous aluminum tubes cited by Colin Powell in making his case for war before the Security Council were part of a reconstituted nuclear program. But serious planning for the war had begun in February of 2002, as Bob Woodward revealed in his book, Plan of Attack. Planning for the future of Iraq's oil wealth had been under way for longer still. In February of 2001, just weeks after Bush was sworn in, the same energy executives that had been lobbying for Saddam's ouster gathered at the White House to participate in Dick Cheney's now infamous Energy Task Force. Although Cheney would go all the way to the Supreme Court to keep what happened at those meetings a secret, we do know a few things, thanks to documents obtained by the conservative legal group JudicialWatch. As Mark Levine wrote in The Nation($$): � a map of Iraq and an accompanying list of "Iraq oil foreign suitors" were the center of discussion. The map erased all features of the country save the location of its main oil deposits, divided into nine exploration blocks. The accompanying list of suitors revealed that dozens of companies from 30 countries -- but not the United States -- were either in discussions over or in direct negotiations for rights to some of the best remaining oilfields on earth. Levine wrote, "It's not hard to surmise how the participants in these meetings felt about this situation." According to the New Yorker, at the same time, a top-secret National Security Council memo directed NSC staff to "cooperate fully with the Energy Task Force as it considered melding two seemingly unrelated areas of policy." The administration's national security team was to join "the review of operational policies towards rogue states such as Iraq and actions regarding the capture of new and existing oil and gas fields." At the State Department, planning was also underway. Under the auspices of the "Future of Iraq Project," an "Oil and Energy Working Group" was established. The full membership of the group -- described by the Financial Times as "Iraqi oil experts, international consultants" and State Department staffers -- remains classified, but among them, according to Antonia Juhasz's "The Bush Agenda," was Ibrahim Bahr al-Uloum, who would serve in Iyad Allawi's cabinet during the period of the Iraqi Governing Council, and later as Iraq's oil minister in 2005. The group concluded that Iraq's oil "should be opened to international oil companies as quickly as possible after the war." But the execs from Big Oil didn't just want access to Iraq's oil; they wanted access on terms that would be inconceivable unless negotiated at the barrel of a gun. Specifically, they wanted an Iraqi government that would enter into production service agreements (PSAs) for the extraction of Iraq's oil. PSAs, developed in the 1960s, are a tool of today's kinder, gentler neocolonialism; they allow countries to retain technical ownership over energy reserves but, in actuality, lock in multinationals' control and extremely high profit margins -- up to 13 times oil companies' minimum target, according to an analysis by the British-based oil watchdog Platform (PDF). As Greg Muttit, an analyst with the group, notes: Such contracts are often used in countries with small or difficult oilfields, or where high-risk exploration is required. They are not generally used in countries like Iraq, where there are large fields which are already known and which are cheap to extract. For example, they are not used in Iran, Kuwait or Saudi Arabia, all of which maintain state control of oil. In fact, Muttit adds, of the seven leading oil producing countries, only Russia has entered into PSAs, and those were signed during its own economic "shock therapy" in the early 1990s. A number of Iraq's oil-rich neighbors have constitutions that specifically prohibit foreign control over their energy reserves. PSAs often have long terms -- up to 40 years -- and contain "stabilization clauses" that protect them from future legislative changes. As Muttit points out, future governments "could be constrained in their ability to pass new laws or policies." That means, for example, that if a future elected Iraqi government "wanted to pass a human rights law, or wanted to introduce a minimum wage [and it] affected the company's profits, either the law would not apply to the company's operations or the government would have to compensate the company for any reduction in profits." It's Sovereignty Lite. The deals are so onerous that they govern only 12 percent of the world's oil reserves, according to the International Energy Agency. Nonetheless, PSAs would become the Future of Iraq Project's recommendation for the fledgling Iraqi government. According to the Financial Times, "many in the group" fought for the contract structure; a Kurdish delegate told the FT, "everybody keeps coming back to PSAs." Of course, the plans for Iraq's legal framework for oil have to be viewed in the context of the overall transformation of the Iraqi economy. Clearly, the idea was to pursue a radical corporatist agenda during the period of the Coalition Provisional Authority when the U.S. occupation forces were a de facto dictatorship. And that's just what happened; under L. Paul Bremer, the CPA head, corporate taxes were slashed, a flat-tax on income was established, rules allowing multinationals to pull all of their profits from the country and a series of other provisions were enacted. These were then integrated into the Iraqi Constitution and remain in effect today. Among the provisions in the Constitution, unlike those of most oil producers, is a requirement that the government "develop oil and gas wealth � relying on the most modern techniques of market principles and encouraging investment." The provision mandates that foreign companies would receive a major stake in Iraq's oil for the first time in the 30 years since the sector was nationalized in 1975. Herbert Docena, a researcher with the NGO Focus on the Global South, wrote that an early draft of the constitution negotiated by Iraqis envisioned a "Scandinavian-style welfare system in the Arabian desert, with Iraq's vast oil wealth to be spent upholding every Iraqi's right to education, health care, housing, and other social services." "Social justice," the draft declared, "is the basis of building society." What happened between that earlier draft and the constitution that Iraqis would eventually ratify? According to Docena: While [U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Zalmay] Khalilzad and his team of U.S. and British diplomats were all over the scene, some members of Iraq's constitutional committee were reduced to bystanders. One Shiite member grumbled, "We haven't played much of a role in drafting the constitution. We feel that we have been neglected." A Sunni negotiator concluded: "This constitution was cooked up in an American kitchen not an Iraqi one." With a constitution cooked up in D.C., the stage was set for foreign multinationals to assume effective control of as much as 87 percent of Iraq's oil, according to projections by the Oil Ministry. If PSAs become the law of the land -- and there are other contractual arrangements that would allow private companies to invest in the sector without giving them the same degree of control or such usurious profits -- the war-torn country stands to lose up to 194 billion vitally important dollars in revenue on just the first 12 fields developed, according to a conservative estimate by Platform (the estimate assumes oil at $40 per barrel; at this writing it stands at more than $59). That's more than six times the country's annual budget. To complete the rip-off, the occupying coalition would have to crush Iraqi resistance, make sure it had friendly people in the right places in Iraq's emerging elite and lock the new Iraqi government onto a path that would lead to the Big Four's desired outcome. |
nice, SUVs for all! Back to the days of Suburbans and Expeditions, finally.
you have left wing anti-war propaganda. then you have...
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| Published: 27/02/2007 12:00 AM (UAE) Iraq approves new oil law Agencies Baghdad: The Iraqi government has approved a plan to divide the country's oil revenue among its people. Prime Minister Nouri Al Maliki called the draft oil law a "gift to all the Iraqi people." The Bill must now be submitted to Iraq's parliament for approval, nearly four years into squabbling among Iraq�s minority groups over the distribution of oil revenues. "This law affirms ... all the revenues will be shared at the federal level and redistributed equitably among all Iraqis," Deputy Prime Minister Barham Salih said. Oil Minister Hussain Al Shahristani said the law �will guarantee for Iraqis complete national control over this natural wealth.� Iraq has the world's third-largest reserves of oil. |
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| By Joshua Holland, AlterNet. Posted October 16, 2006 |
lol didn't even notice the date. star-muppet, why do u even try?
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| Originally posted by Q5echo you have left wing anti-war propaganda. then you have... ...>THE REST OF THE NEWS< |
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| Originally posted by Dopey lol didn't even notice the date. star-muppet, why do u even try? |
LUKoil seems to be capitalizing in Iraq nicely. Taking a few Oil reserves, and taking the place of haliburton.
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| Originally posted by Marc Summers LUKoil seems to be capitalizing in Iraq nicely. Taking a few Oil reserves, and taking the place of haliburton. |
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... The Russian oil company Lukoil will become the largest fuel supplier in Iraq The Russian company will take responsibility for all the activities connected with logistics, and commercial and financial coverage of the fuel deliveries. Over three months beginning from April 1, LITASCO will have to deliver 180,000 tons of gasoline and 130,000 tons of diesel fuel to Iraq. After this the contract may be renewed. ... |
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| Originally posted by Q5echo you have left wing anti-war propaganda. then you have... ...>THE REST OF THE NEWS< |
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| Originally posted by Magnetonium LOL ... a great analogy to that article is like saying there were democratic elections in Turkmenistan (or Belarus for that matter). No matter what the people choose or what the elections governing body chooses, the real power is with the FORCE, in this case the invaders. I am sure occupational forces are not going to pass and just give Iraqis all this free money, Iraqis will end up collecting crumbs on the floor - the majority, if not the entire operation will be supervised, planned and profited from by the Americans and their allies. No invader country is dumb enough not to take advantage of the FREE resources when its in control of the country where it installed a puppet regime that not only barely has any power to do anything in the country without direct American support, but at the same time will have to obey to their masters. Overall, USA is mostly likely going to give an oil share to Iraqi people, but that will be like an analogy of McDonalds "heavily" supporting charities. Sure they give millions of dollars every year, but their PROFITS are only Lord knows how much bigger. Its going to be a good brainwashing for you to assume that Iraq will even get a fair portion of ITS OWN resources. Use common sense. If I was the Americans in Iraq, I'd grab some of the BLOODY oil to "compensate" for my problems. You really think Iraqi government (puppet government) will say much in return? |
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| Originally posted by Magnetonium ... but that will be like an analogy of McDonalds "heavily" supporting charities. Sure they give millions of dollars every year, but their PROFITS are only Lord knows how much bigger. |
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| Originally posted by Shakka That is the argument of a communist asshole. If I were McDonalds and you walked in and ordered a Big Mac, I'd pinch a loaf in it and offer you some extra special sauce. |
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| Originally posted by Magnetonium LOL, I WORKED in a McDonald's, I know EXACTLY how it works. Your analogy is actually very comparable to oil. Oil and Big Macs are cheap to make and produce(Big Mac costs 25 Canadian cents to make, by the way, including the box and all vegetables). Oil is cheap, too, though its ridiculously expensive on markets. Workers get paid poorly (Iraq/McDonald's), while the companies get all the money - in this case, American corporations. And I described in my previous post as to how much of the money Iraqi people will see I looked at the cost papers ... A hamburger costs 8 cents to make. And how much does McDonalds charge for one? |
))
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| Originally posted by Q5echo you have left wing anti-war propaganda. then you have... ...>THE REST OF THE NEWS< |
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| Scramble for Iraq's oil begins as troops start to pull out By Saeed Shah Published: 23 February 2007 We are about to find out if the invasion of Iraq really was a war for oil. The country is on the verge of passing a petroleum law, which will set down rules for investing in its oil industry. That will set off a race among the foreign oil giants, scrambling for their slice of Iraq's vast oil riches. Britain's two world-leading oil companies, BP and Shell, both say they want to enter Iraq. Exxon, ConocoPhillips, Total, Russia's Lukoil and the Chinese will also form part of the rush. Even while the security situation in Iraq remains dire, it seems the prize will be just too great for the oil majors to resist. The country has proven reserves of 115 billion barrels of oil, around the same as Iran, but it is thought that its actual reserves could be anywhere up to 300 billion barrels - which would make it bigger than Saudi Arabia. Much of the west of Iraq remains unexplored. John Teeling, chairman of Petrel Resources, the explorer listed on London's AIM market which has had interests in Iraq since 1997, says: "Iraq has 70 discovered, undeveloped fields. You'd die for any one of them. Even the small ones have a billion barrels. If this isn't the holy grail, it's right next door to it." It is hard to exaggerate the scale of the opportunity in Iraq, especially given the fact that foreign companies are, essentially, shut out of the rest of the Middle East and Russia is increasingly hostile to international players. "It costs $1 a barrel to get oil out in Iraq. If you're getting $60 for it, that's good economics. You don't have to go to Harvard to figure that out," Mr Teeling says. War-torn Iraq is currently producing less than 2 million barrels a day, well down on the 2.8 million barrels before the 2003 invasion by the US and Britain. Tariq Shafiq, a former executive in the Iraq National Oil company and one of the experts called in to draft the country's petroleum law, says Iraq could "very easily" get to 3.5 million barrels a day. He says it is "physically" capable of producing 10 million barrels a day - around the current output levels of Saudi Arabia, the pre-eminent producer today. Mr Shafiq, who now works for the consultants Petrolog & Associates, says that foreign involvement in Iraq's oil industry is needed for its technical knowledge, not capital - given the high price of oil, investment is pretty much self-financing. "Iraq has been left behind," he says. The former president Saddam Hussein cut Iraq off from foreign oil technology, first by pursuing the war with Iran in the 1980s, then the international sanctions of the 1990s. Advanced oil recovery techniques, such as water injection, passed the country by. The petroleum law, which is now in its third draft and is expected to go before the Iraqi parliament soon, allows wide-ranging and deep involvement in the sector. It envisages three type of international contract - buy-backs, production-sharing agreements (PSAs) and service contracts. The PSAs are the deals most favoured by big oil, as they allow the foreign company to book the reserves. Buy-back contracts typically require upfront investment from the international company, with a guaranteed rate of return to repay the money. Mr Shafiq says that the draft law does not specify a figure for the permitted rate of return, it talks of a "fair" return. This he interprets as being no more than 20 per cent. The law awards much power to the regions for negotiating contracts, with the central government given an oversight role, a feature that did not exist in the Mr Shafiq's original draft and one that he believes will play into the fracturing of Iraq. However, the oil revenues will be shared between the provinces, according to their populations, not their oil resources - that gives the oil-poor Sunni areas a big stake in the success of the industry. While the oil industry's majors and super-majors are not currently in Iraq, the minnows such as Petrel and the Norwegian group DNO, which is actually producing oil in the relatively safe Kurdish north, have shown that it is possible to operate in the country. The lack of a law setting out the rules for the oil industry and the extreme security problems have kept the big operators formally away. But they have been active behind the scenes and, once the petroleum law is enacted, it is expected that all of them will rush to the Iraq oil ministry's negotiating table. Shell and BP, for instance, have obtained precious knowledge of two of Iraq's biggest oilfields by providing free assistance. These projects do not involve having company personnel on the ground in Iraq. BP has studied the reservoir data from the Rumaila field in the south, to advise on how to maximise future production. BP says: "Once the security situation permits, and the Iraqis seek assistance, we would consider opportunities there, as we would elsewhere in the world." Shell is currently undertaking a reservoir study of the Kirkuk field, in the north, "in order to assist the Ministry of Oil to enhance production from this field". Shell is more forthright. It says: "Shell has a very long history of working in Iraq. We would welcome the opportunity to help Iraq re-build its energy industry, but we will only enter the country once security, living and working conditions are improved. We have had discussions with Iraqi officials from the Ministry of Oil from outside the country, in order to better understand the complex situation in Iraq. We have experience with the technical and operational challenges that Iraq will face in future. This is based on our experience with similar situations in the Middle East. We aspire to establish a long-term presence in Iraq and a long-term relationship with the Iraqis, including the newly elected Government." The Western oil majors will almost certainly have to wait until the security situation in Iraq improves before they are prepared to put their people on the ground. However, they are likely to tie up the Ministry of Oil in negotiations over projects until that happens - assuming that Iraq does not simply dissolve into all-out civil war. And, as the south and the north of the country, where most of the oil lies, are relatively less violent, it may be possible to operate in the country even while the central region around Baghdad continues to be a bloodbath. The Russians and Chinese are almost certain to send their people in, no matter what the risks. Here the US group ConocoPhillips has pulled off a clever arrangement. Lukoil negotiated with the regime of Saddam Hussein for rights to the giant undeveloped West Qurna field. ConocoPhillips has taken a 20 per cent equity stake in Lukoil - a deal approved by the Kremlin - and it has apparently negotiated a 50 per cent share in Lukoil's West Qurna interest. So the Russian personnel would take the risks but Americans would still benefit. Iraq's oil wealth is just too great for the majors to miss. The question is not if they will go in, but when. |
AND THIS ???
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| Oil bonanza stays in Western sights after cosmetic change to Iraqi deals By Tim Webb Published: 25 February 2007 The final draft of Iraq's controversial hydrocarbons law has been submitted to the Iraqi Cabinet ahead of its presentation to Parliament for ratification next month. Iraqi officials have attempted to defuse the backlash caused by last month's revelation in The Independent on Sunday that the law would grant foreign oil companies a large slice of the country's oil reserves. The final draft has quietly dropped the term "production-sharing contracts" used in earlier drafts. These contracts involve energy companies paying for the initial investment in an oil field but reaping bigger returns if their gamble pays off. The proposed introduction of production-sharing agreements in Iraq is controversial because they are usually used in challenging regions where oil is difficult and expensive to access, such as the Amazon. By contrast, much of Iraq's 112 billion barrels of proven oil reserves - the second-largest in the world - has already been discovered and is cheap to drill. But the draft, seen exclusively by The Independent on Sunday, still proposes handing over exploration and production contracts for up to 32 years - far longer than most deals between companies and goveernments. The draft empowers the new Federal Oil and Gas Council to set the exact terms of each contract, but given Iraq's parlous economy and security uncertainties, the terms offered are likely to be very generous. Greg Muttitt, a campaigner from lobby group Platform, said: "This is a huge amount of time. If contracts are signed in the coming months... there will be a massive risk premium, and the Iraqi side would be negotiating from a position of extreme weakness. As a result, the terms would be highly profitable for the companies, and Iraqis would be unable to change them for 20 years." Other differences between previous drafts include the omission of a requirement for the terms of each contract to be published within two months. Now, according to Article 36, only non-specified "financially significant" details need be published, and no timeframe is given. Iraqi unions have expressed their opposition to the proposed law. In a speech earlier this month to a conference, Hassan Jumaa, head of the Federation of Oil Unions, said: "We strongly warn all the foreign companies and foreign capital in the form of American companies against coming into our lands under the guise of production-sharing agreements." Foreign oil firms already operating in Iraq are anxious not to antagonise unions as some may have links to insurgents who could target oil installations. David Horgan, managing director of Petrel Resources, an AIM-listed oil company focused on Iraq, said contracts could be renegotiated by the government. "The term 'production-sharing agreement' used in previous drafts has been dropped because of the controversy the term caused. They have built quite a lot of flexibility into the law. It makes sense to reward companies who start work now when the security situation is bad. The terms can always be made less attractive in a few years when things calm down." He added that the Iraqi government had changed its approach in recent weeks over the hydrocarbons law. Rather than trying to force it through, particularly in the face of opposition from the Kurds in the north seeking more control over their oil resources, officials have attempted to achieve consensus within government, he said. Last weekend, past and present officials from the oil ministry met in a hotel in Jordan to hammer out the draft's final details. |
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| Originally posted by Magnetonium Workers get paid poorly (Iraq/McDonald's), while the companies get all the money - in this case, American corporations. I looked at the cost papers ... A hamburger costs 8 cents to make. And how much does McDonalds charge for one? |
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| Originally posted by Shakka Great, but they're not exactly doing skilled labor now are they? Should a McDonalds hamburger artist make 50K/year? Can you show me the breakdown of how exactly a hamburger costs 8c to make? Does that include just the beef, lettuce, tomato, bun, etc? The energy costs that are required to cook said beef? The sweet packaging that your tasty burger is served in? The labor costs that go to under-paying that super-skilled laborer that knows how to flip a piece of meat onto a bun? Or are you just throwing out another bullshit "fact" to support your position? |
Capitalism is a beautiful thing. Saying a corporation is greedy is no different than saying that their millions of shareholders are greedy, which basically says investors in general are greedy, which is not a mischaracterization. That doesn't necessarily make them bad folks.
P.S. I would be curious to see that spreadsheet--might be useful for future analysis.
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| Originally posted by Magnetonium LOL, I WORKED in a McDonald's, I know EXACTLY how it works. Your analogy is actually very comparable to oil. Oil and Big Macs are cheap to make and produce(Big Mac costs 25 Canadian cents to make, by the way, including the box and all vegetables). Oil is cheap, too, though its ridiculously expensive on markets. Workers get paid poorly (Iraq/McDonald's), while the companies get all the money - in this case, American corporations. And I described in my previous post as to how much of the money Iraqi people will see I looked at the cost papers ... A hamburger costs 8 cents to make. And how much does McDonalds charge for one? |
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