The worldwide market is at work, and traders and speculators are driving up the price, based on uncertainty of supplies and inventories, and presumably becoming very rich in the process (at least some of them). That's the market at work. It's not up to the government to set the price or to fix the situation except by opening more space for exploration, and even that may not help.

Image Credit... Philip Anderson

In the same way, even I was startled when I read about the pay of Lee R. Raymond, the former chief executive of Exxon Mobil, who recently retired. His retirement package was in the neighborhood of $400 million  a breathtaking sum, even for those of us who admire the job that Big Oil does and think that the industry gets a bum rap.

Still, that's between him and his stockholders, not a matter for Congress. And it would not even remotely be addressed by a windfall profits tax  an idea that has been tried and has failed miserably.

The real problem is the difference between the rich  including rich oil people, of whom there are not many, but there are enough  and the poor. It is up to the government to redress this extraordinary difference in incomes of the rich and the nonrich, even at the margins.

What Congress can do, and should do, is address the stunning underpayment of military men and women and the staggering budget deficits that will be a burden on our posterity for decades, by raising the taxes on the rich. It's fine that there are rich people. It's even fine that there are superrich people.

But if they are superrich, they derive special benefits from life in the United States that the nonrich don't. For one thing, they can make the money in a safe environment, which is not true for the rich in many countries. It is just common decency that they should pay much higher income taxes than they do. Taxes for the rich are lower than they have been since at least World War II  that is to say, in 60 years.

This makes no sense in a world at war, in a nation with so many unmet social needs, in a nation with so many people without health care, in a nation running immense and endless deficits.