Oil "Windfall" Profits

Considerable whining has taken place in the last couple months about supposedly egregious oil profits. I think the majority of the complaints are born out of ignorance. No one, myself included wants to pay higher prices but the amount of noise over the fact that the higher prices somehow lead to increased earning is ridiculous. Historically, oil companies have had a lower profit margin than many other industries. People see numbers they don't understand and they believe it must be wrong and they get angry. This past quarter Exxon Mobil posted a profit of 9.9 billion dollars. Most of us have difficulty comprehending 10 digit numbers. Now consider that the 9.9 billion dollars of profit is based on 100 billion dollars of revenue. That obviously equates to a 9.9% profit. For comparison basis, lets look at another large company in a different field. Procter and Gamble had 7.29 billion dollars of profit on 57.79 billion dollars of revenue. That works out to about 12.6% profit. The biggest difference between the two companies is in how we tax the consumer for using their product. P&G sells consumables such as toothpaste and deodorant which gets taxes at the local sales tax rate. Exxon Mobil sells motor oil and gasoline which is taxed rather onerously at an average of 45.9%. This varies from state to state. Alaska is the lowest at 26.4% and New York is highest at 62.9%. If anyone is gouging you at the gas pump it's your friendly politician.