Funny how the laws of economic gravity don't apply to oil companies, isn't it? What goes up just stays up. Water flows uphill in the oil economy.

There's talk once again of imposing a windfall profits tax on the oil companies. The idea must make Republicans grind their teeth, but the word "windfall" is in there for a reason: Oil companies are just sitting back watching the money pour in and refusing to compete, as businesses in an open and honest market would, to gain competitive advantage by pricing their products just a little bit lower than the competition. In an actual free market, the price of the end product, gasoline, should not be rising as fast as the cost of the raw material; classic free-market theory predicts countervailing pressure from competition.

There's no sign of any such competition. Instead of reacting to cost increases as an opportunity to compete for advantage, the oil companies just shrug and claim there's nothing they can do about it, they're as helpless as the rest of us. And hope we won't connect that assertion with record high profits, like Exon-Mobil's $100 million per day in the first quarter.

When a company is enjoying profits like that, it has tremendous power to compete. That's a war chest, and a company with any intention to compete would never pass up an opportunity to use it to advantage. It can absorb smaller profits now in order to realize longterm gains in market-share and total revenue. Exon-Mobil's gas should be the cheapest on the market. Is it?

When companies don't compete, we lose. The result is simply a transfer of wealth away from American consumers without any exchange of increased value in return. That's a windfall, and I see no moral or ethical reason why it shouldn't be taxed like hell, and the money returned to the Americans it came from.

Think of it as a tax rebate, Republicans. You like those, don't you? If you're happy to get back money picked out of your pocket by a government, shouldn't you be equally happy to get back the money taken by a business pickpocket?

I know government and business aren't supposed to be the same thing. But a group of business banded together in a cartel to extort money from us through naked force doesn't sound an awful lot different from a government collecting taxes, does it? Well, there is one profound difference: At least the government, in theory, answers to us. The American oil cartel most certainly doesn't.

I'm in favor of a windfall profits tax on the oil companies. They didn't earn it, and I want it back.