[Oneaboveall]

I figured you guys would appreciate this:

Cheap Oil Built 'The American Way' but All the Cheap Oil is Gone:

In 1981 Merle Haggard wrote a song with the rhetorical question "Are The Good Times Really Over For Good?" With the benefit of hindsight-we now know the answer was "yes."

There were two reasons America dominated the 20th Century:

1) America had cheap and abundant oil and figured out how to use this resource to make American labor the most productive in the world.

2) America has vast fertile fields for agriculture many nations don't possess and America is located at a beneficial place on the equator to make the production of agriculture easier than in most other places.

http://voices.yahoo.com/yes-merle-good- ... html?cat=4

Interesting stuff.

[dsula]

I went to the grocery store. Quite some trucks and SUVs standing there, running engine, running AC, nobody inside.

Yeah, gas is way to cheap. I'm still waiting for this expensive oil everybody is talking about. Where is it?

[Lore]

Yeah, gas is way to cheap. I'm still waiting for this expensive oil everybody is talking about. Where is it?

It's already here. You're not going to change driving and spending attitudes in a relatively short time without a real oil shock.

[evilgenius]

The article brings up the fact that worker's wages in the US have not seen an increase, adjusted for inflation, since the 70's. The article blames peak oil for this, essentially saying that the way that business has to be organized to make a profit prevents any raise when the cost of energy is taking up the money that would go to fund said raise. There are other complicating factors, such as a major changes in American managerial structure and a major change in attitudes toward investment vis a vis ownership of capital and enjoyment of the profits of capital, which aren't mentioned.

All in all, I agree with the article. Higher energy prices are a large part of the picture. What has not happened, developmentally, is that the ideals concerning return on risk have not pared down at the same time as potential return has. In fact, those ideals have become bloated and obese. In a very real way it is what John Michael Greer was talking about when he suggested the way to go is to collapse first, before the rush. Collapsing in this case meaning realizing that the game would forever have less potential return on risk and therefore the logical thing to do would be to accept less return in favor of continuing to pump the necessary reinvestment, in the form of increasing worker's wages, back into the economy. Instead of doing this the opposite happened, a restructuring of corporate management with an eye toward maintaining the order of a global system (an imperial leadership), not seeing that the global system would eventually have to answer to the same dynamic. Now we have CEO's making tens if not hundreds of millions of dollars a year and going about as if those numbers were justified. Now we have an entire investment structure that has bought into the same koolaid. Shareholders these days don't say, 'if that guy is making that much then why can't he make less and I get more dividends?' Additionally, and perhaps especially, they don't say, 'if there is so much wealth to go around instead of fattening the top why don't we reward our workers?' Certainly, you can chalk up a lot of this attitude to the same human characteristics that Marx eloquently complained about long ago, it will be human for the capitalists to squeeze. What the US social discourse lacks is the space for a critique of this sort that doesn't immediately become mired in old Cold War rhetoric. There seems to be no real 'market' balance at all in place within the US Social Dialog. The lack of adequate channels for efficient push back, the closing of which has been bought and paid for by the work and money of the interested class, has caused the paralysis we enjoy today. Instead of a market we get hammer blows of ideology which even a three year old can tell are lies, but in the absence of the truth and any way to banish the lies, they keep on going and going, feeding the next generation of lies on and on.

[dsula]

Yeah, gas is way to cheap. I'm still waiting for this expensive oil everybody is talking about. Where is it?

It's already here. You're not going to change driving and spending attitudes in a relatively short time without a real oil shock.

If it's so cheap that people can afford to waste it, it means it is TOO cheap. It's so simple.

[furrybill]

The article brings up the fact that worker's wages in the US have not seen an increase, adjusted for inflation, since the 70's. The article blames peak oil for this, essentially saying that the way that business has to be organized to make a profit prevents any raise when the cost of energy is taking up the money that would go to fund said raise. There are other complicating factors, such as a major changes in American managerial structure and a major change in attitudes toward investment vis a vis ownership of capital and enjoyment of the profits of capital, which aren't mentioned.

All in all, I agree with the article. Higher energy prices are a large part of the picture. What has not happened, developmentally, is that the ideals concerning return on risk have not pared down at the same time as potential return has. In fact, those ideals have become bloated and obese. In a very real way it is what John Michael Greer was talking about when he suggested the way to go is to collapse first, before the rush. Collapsing in this case meaning realizing that the game would forever have less potential return on risk and therefore the logical thing to do would be to accept less return in favor of continuing to pump the necessary reinvestment, in the form of increasing worker's wages, back into the economy. Instead of doing this the opposite happened, a restructuring of corporate management with an eye toward maintaining the order of a global system (an imperial leadership), not seeing that the global system would eventually have to answer to the same dynamic. Now we have CEO's making tens if not hundreds of millions of dollars a year and going about as if those numbers were justified. Now we have an entire investment structure that has bought into the same koolaid. Shareholders these days don't say, 'if that guy is making that much then why can't he make less and I get more dividends?' Additionally, and perhaps especially, they don't say, 'if there is so much wealth to go around instead of fattening the top why don't we reward our workers?' Certainly, you can chalk up a lot of this attitude to the same human characteristics that Marx eloquently complained about long ago, it will be human for the capitalists to squeeze. What the US social discourse lacks is the space for a critique of this sort that doesn't immediately become mired in old Cold War rhetoric. There seems to be no real 'market' balance at all in place within the US Social Dialog. The lack of adequate channels for efficient push back, the closing of which has been bought and paid for by the work and money of the interested class, has caused the paralysis we enjoy today. Instead of a market we get hammer blows of ideology which even a three year old can tell are lies, but in the absence of the truth and any way to banish the lies, they keep on going and going, feeding the next generation of lies on and on.

+1

One big factor has been our tax structure. Income and wealth inequality have followed in lockstep with the reductions in taxes on the rich that have been inexorably occurring since Kennedy in the 60's. Capitalism is awesome but extreme capitalism [like just about any other extreme] sucks.

[dsula]

One big factor has been our tax structure.

Exactly, rediculous high taxes on corporate income pretty much make the US landscape very non-competitive. Add endless burocracy, a boatloads of 3rd world immigrants who are less than educated and on top of that a 'feel-good-everybody's-a-winner' educational system and you got all you need for a successful nation.

[FarQ3]

If it's so cheap that people can afford to waste it, it means it is TOO cheap. It's so simple.

Dsula,

I think that it will get a lot more expensive in the not too distant future. But I also might add that many people haven't come to the conclusion that they cannot afford the luxuries they still allow themselves today, hence the increasing credit card balances.

Regards

[careinke]

I didn't know the US "is located at a beneficial place on the equator." I thought we were a little north of the equator. Once again the public schools failed me...sigh.

[Pops]

I didn't know the US "is located at a beneficial place on the equator." I thought we were a little north of the equator. Once again the public schools failed me...sigh.

I stumbled there too, LOL! The guy is from TX tho...


So many things happened in the 70's (so I've read) that have had long legs. Of course the embargoes were a big deal but the US peak merely accelerated our growth of imports which was already o the way up




That impacted our balance of trade no doubt but that didn't really go into the toilet till "Free Trade" and global inventory control via computer and net really took off in the 90's taking advantage of little Chinese girls to make our underwear and electronics.





You can name all sorts of other structural changes that started in the 70's:
Automation, computers, robotics, computers and computers.
Union decline of course
Working women (paid work that is)




Container freight changed the world in the 60's, the rate was once 25% of the value of the item shipped, today it's virtually nothing (not as nothing as it once was but still cheap).

Great Society/Equal Rights/hippies (leading to the Great Resentment/Reaganomics/TEA Party)

He has a good rant but there were lots of things going on.

[Leutnant]

I went to the grocery store. Quite some trucks and SUVs standing there, running engine, running AC, nobody inside.

Yeah, gas is way to cheap. I'm still waiting for this expensive oil everybody is talking about. Where is it?

dsula, the national average price of gas two months ago was $4, 99.9% of the American people thinks thats super extremely off-the-charts expensive!