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Generally I oppose the stimulus checks and I oppose windfall taxes.
However, I also oppose the billions in subsidies and tax considerations that the oil industry gets in a time when they are hugely popular.
My idea is that you create stimulus packages (industry) that have the caveat that in future more successful times you will pay back, with a sliding scale based on time taken between sucking at the government teat and showing profit. So you can choose to take help to get over a rough hump but if you eventually soar you give back the help. This also doesn't prevent new competition since they would enter the marketplace without that debt and would encourage industry to think carefully before taking any and all government money available.
In other words, I don't think that the oil companies should be punished for their success now, but they should repay the fact that many of them only still exist because of government assistance in the '80s.
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