LSU Prof: Obama's oil tax proposals jeopardize thousands of jobs

It's easy to beat up on the oil companies and let's face it, for the past hundred years or so, oil companies have certainly made themselves odious enough to deserve any beating they get.

So it's not surprising that, after just such an oil company just spewed millions of gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico, President Barack Obama would choose oil companies as the target for tax hikes to pay for his plans to help small business out.

But now along comes LSU economist Joseph Mason, who says Obama's plans for closing oil company tax loopholes could cost thousands of jobs and billions of dollars to the economy. Mason came out with estimates this morning that those costs would outweigh any benefits the tax hikes would bring.

Here's what I wrote about it this morning in Portfolio.com:

Mason estimates, the hike in oil company taxes would slash U.S. economic output by $341 billion and lead to $68 billion in lost wages throughout the U.S. “Though politicians think they are selectively targeting ‘Big Oil’ with these energy tax proposals, they would actually devastate thousands of small American businesses nationwide as well as the workers who depend on them. With at least 150,000 U.S. jobs at stake – in fields ranging from healthcare to real estate – it’s clear that the costs … far outweigh the potential benefit of increased government revenues that may be derived from the proposal,” Mason said in a release.