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Higher Oil Prices Are Starting To Bring Jobs Home

penguin_dance notes a report up at ABC News that high oil and gas prices in the US may be moving jobs back home in a trend that some economists are calling "reverse globalization." It's becoming more and more expensive to ship finished product from other countries, so some companies are moving the manufacturing back to the US. The article hints that this trend may spill over soon to raw materials such as steel. One economist is quoted: "It's not just about labor costs anymore. Distance costs money, and when you have to shift iron ore from Brazil to China and then ship it back to Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh is looking pretty good at 40 bucks an hour."

6 of 777 comments (clear)

  1. Fuel is still CHEAP in the USA ! by shimmyshimpson · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    Fuel is crazy cheap in the US, so what are you whining about ? Do you think it's your God Given Right (tm) to drive 8mpg gas guzzlers filled up with 40c/litre fuel forever????? Who are you kidding?
    Most other countries (exclude major producers like Suadi, Venezuala) have heavy taxes on fuel and drive more fuel efficient cars. Stop whining America, you've shoved cheap oil into your veins like it was going out of fashion for the last 50 years, those days are now over. A billion and a half Indians and Chinese now want their time in the sun and they're starting to guzzle too.
    If the USA wasn't run by Big Oil you'd be a lot better off. So instead of whining about how *shock horror* you can't just pee oil up against the wall anymore maybe you could DO something about it.
    Start by asking why you can't start to wean yourselves off it, so you don't NEED to foul your own backyards to extract every last drop of the black stuff. And vote to INCREASE taxes on fuel (I know, pipe dream but hey...gotta try..) so reduce demand.

    NEWSFLASH ---- You've had it too good for too long, now comes the pain, and this is only the beginning.

  2. Re:Interersing trend... by jlarocco · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    Get a clue. The drillable sections of ANWR are artic tundra. This is ANWR. And so is this. And also this. The environmental impact of clear cutting forests on Crete is irrelevant, to say the least.

    People like you reinforce my opinion that people against drilling in ANWR are idiots.

  3. Re:Interersing trend... by FishWithAHammer · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    The funny thing is that the areas in which they want to drill are barren icy waste. But we can't drill there, we'll hurt some microbes. O NOES!

    --
    "You can either have software quality or you can have pointer arithmetic, but you cannot have both at the same time."
  4. Re:Interersing trend... by shmlco · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    Then again, according to all of the doom-and-gloom ZPG naysayer's back in the '60s and '70s we were all supposed to be eating each other by now. Fact is, the birth rates in most of the industrialized "first-world" countries are already at or BELOW replacement rates. (US included.) Let China and India continue to move up the prosperity ladder, and in all likelyhood they'll join the club too (though China is already coming at it from another angle).

    Over-population is a boogieman that too many people haul out of the closet when they want a convenient rationalization as to how nothing that THEY do matters in the long run.

    --
    Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
  5. Re:Interersing trend... by hax0r_this · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    As an Alaskan myself, I can't understand why any Alaskan would want to drill ANWR right now. If you had an investment that had been doing this for the past three years, and you had every reason to believe that it would continue to do so, you would have to be out of your mind to sell now. Environment or not.

  6. Re:And you're obviously not honest by biolysis · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    "I cannot predict the magnitude of the change"

    So, it could be zero then.

    I agree, I was right from the start. Thanks for admitting it.

    "There is no contradiction."

    In this case I agree, there was the admission I was not expecting your pathetic lying ass to make, that there could conceivably be NO CHANGE WHATSOEVER.

    Thanks for admitting I was right.