[bluejekyll]

Am I misquoting that? I read that report as saying that the implicit costs are about $7 trillion dollars, and the explicit subsidies are $1.3 trillion, which is the number I used in the quote because, I agree, the implicit costs are harder to understand.

[vel0city]

I double checksd the source and you're right that isn't a misquote, but it isn't quite accurate in the end. A lot of the "undercharging" is essentially not making new taxes. Most of the explicit subsidies are subsidies that pretty much any large business gets, nothing special about the oil industry there. Things like local tax deferments for plants that supposedly bring jobs to an area are common for just about any large employer. Maybe we shouldn't be doing this in general, but it's not something special to oil industries.

We should probably just end all of those "subsidies" and loopholes in general.

Sorry for misunderstanding and missing what you were quoting. My overall point still kind of stands though, a lot of these "the government is subsidizing the oil industry trillions of dollars" is usually talking about these implicit costs that aren't taxed like they'd like.