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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."
Now if companies would pull their heads out and either/or/both go to a 4 day work week and re-implement telecommuting...
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If high fuel cost continues, it will only bring back the sail-boats, not the off-shore jobs.
With the high price of fuel....and everything else going up along with it..I could safely bet that the avg. person in the US does not have the environment topmost on their heads. If they could come up with cheap energy for running cars, etc...I think many people in the US would now be comfortable strip mining the Rocky Mountains and The Applachians down to nothing without a 2nd thought. This has hit the general public in a way they never really ever imagined before, and they are shocked. I'd say they'd be prepared to do about anything if the price keeps increasing at this rate.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Also, a nuclear ship can sustain high speeds much longer than conventionally-powered ships. Makes you harder to capture.
I think it might be an interesting development to bring back the "Q-ship"... troll for pirates, then blow their asses out of the water by surprise.
The meek may inherit the earth, but the strong shall take the stars.
I highly, highly doubt that. With the mortgage crisis here in the US home prices are falling not increasing. And I doubt that that will stop anytime soon. Another thing is, North America has only been explored within the last 500 years, it lacks the shortage of land which is part of why Europe has such high prices for houses, mix that with the fact that home prices are falling and people with a lot of land are cashing it in to get some cashflow... You get the picture. While this may make large buildings such as new arenas and skyscrapers more pricey, for the average person home prices will only keep falling.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
I don't care so much about the environment in Alaska. Well, I do, but it's not my primary concern. I'm against drilling there for other reasons. Even the highest estimates say we'll only get about a 10 dollar reduction in the price per barrel of oil. That translates to a few cents per gallon. I think the money and time are better spent trying to figure out how to get us off fossil fuels than just postponing the inevitable decline of oil. And as a bonus, all that territory in Alaska can remain untouched by man.
If you build it, nerds will come. Soylentnews.org
Really ?
Most days I part with my money because I'm trapped between two evils, and I try to pick the lesser. Telecoms, overpriced food (even staples), services done to the lowest possible standards... Greed is spiraling out of control, because those who spend wisely are impossibly outnumbered by the ravenous fools of our society.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
The fact is, for all the environmentalists out there screaming to put regulations on carbon emissions, etc., the price of energy is the only thing that's going to have a substantial impact on the amount of fuel we use. People are actually considering more fuel efficient vehicles, and at my place of work people are taking advantage of opportunities to work from home once in a while. Especially when their commute is over one hour. If we keep it up, people might move closer to work.
"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." - Mark Twain
Umm... Most of the cost that Europeans pay for fuel is in the form of taxes, which they have voluntarily inflicted upon themselves, and not some kind of relationship to status as a world power. Oil is traded in a world market, whoever pays more gets the oil.
Also, the housing prices you linked to are in cost/square METER. Given that there are roughly ten square feet in a square meter, the costs are 2x, not 24x as you suggest.
What part of "shall not be infringed" is so hard to understand?
I say, save the oil in alaska and use it for truly priceless stuff when it runs out everywhere else.
Given all the yammering-- it's clear if oil was 300 a barrel, alaska would be covered with pipes. so we *will* drill there someday. just a question of when .
Who cares about the environment, it can recover in 20-40 years.
Real problem is still TOO MANY PEOPLE.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
That is still no reason not to demand value for the value you offer. In a system where fools have no safety net, which is paid for now by those who spend wisely, we wouldn't have this problem. The greed you speak of is not capitalism. The greed you speak of is the one where people want value they have no right to, and force value from those who do have it. Whither those who hold value now have come about it 'justly' or not is of little consequence to the morality of taking it from them now. That becomes a chicken and egg argument. And also indicates that if you yourself will trade in value, instead of trying to swindle, cheat and steal, the cycle may be broken. But the theft of value has become institutionalized by the welfare state. To do the most good, where do you think think we should start then? I think the government should stop stealing from us and giving to ravenous fools, plain and simple.
Money is the root of all evil?
Already there are people complaining that 1/4 of their take-home pay is going to gas. Houses that kind of made sense at $1/gallon, just aren't worth it any more. Better to pay a bit more (you can afford it from the gas savings), live closer to work, and reap the additional benefits of more free time and less wear and tear on your car tp boot.
Even if there were no foreclosure crisis, $5/gallon gas would be lowering the value of houses that were built too far from any commercial center. This is just a happy coincidence - let the get-rich-quick house flippers, speculators, and everyone who lied on their mortgage application "because they just had to have their overpriced dream" eat shit and die. I have zero sympathy for realtwhores crying about how they're going to lose their own homes because they can't find anyone else to drink the kook-aid (no, that's not a typo - too many of them were were kooks, con artists, fraudsters, hucksters, etc. and they made the mistake of believing their own lies).
Myth said:
"Oil companies have leases all over America to drill for oil. They are currently only using 20 percent of these leases."
I agree. I remember back in the 80's after the Oil Boom, there was many a domestic sweet crude well capped due to low prices on the oil market. I'll bet some of those wells are due to be uncapped in the near future if they haven't been already.
There is a possible additional source in the Barnett Shale in Texas. The offshore sites could be increasingly utilized.
Also, Canada has that oil bearing sand they've been talking about. Extracting that oil is becoming economically feasible.
I'm not too keen on the ANWR drilling idea. We've already despoiled just about every pristine and beautiful place on earth... something needs to be preserved.
Bottom Line: There's oil to be had here without sending the wealth overseas.
It's time for a change though... I'm looking forward to additional advances in Fuel Cell and Solar Technology and other efficient ways to convert energy.
High oil prices, while tough on the buck, just might be the incentive we need to better explore alternatives. It's a bitter pill.
Codifex Maximus ~ In search of... a shorter sig.
You're assuming that OPEC and other sellers won't decrease output to keep production (and therefore, prices) exactly where they are.
All drilling in Alaska is guaranteed to do is to screw up Alaska.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
Then maybe if steel gets high enough, your dad might stop pointlessly giving away an endless supply of free hangers that end up in the trash. A principle of consuming only what you need, rather than all you possibly can. But then this sort of thing is well overdue.
IMHO nuclear should be the LAST resort,and with new methods like molten salt and super black materials for solar,ever more efficient designs for wind,geothermal,tidal,etc it is simply not the right course at this point and time. There are simply too many problems we haven't fixed as far as treatment and disposal of waste to make nuclear a good idea at this time. But as always this is my 02c,YMMV
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
I believe the point is that it can be made safer, but never totally safe. Your own point about AC vs DC supports this idea. Yes, electricity is used every day by about a bajillion people (it's a technical term)). The VAST majority of them use it safely, but every day somebody, somewhere does something stupid and gets themselves fried. Electricity is far, far safer than it was, but it is still dangerous in the hands of imperfect humans. Humans make mistakes. Some people think this doesn't apply to them, but they are mistaken.
The difference between a dude who stands in his hot tub to work on the filter pump and the guy who spills soda on the reactor control panel, is that hot tub boy only kills himself and at most a few of his friends.
For the record, I am in favor of nuclear energy (Go Isotopes!), but let's not kid ourselves about it being TOTALLY safe.
Oddly enough, it's when we think something is totally safe that we are most likely to screw up.
You suggest the "natural world" should forever be a snapshot of when you first noticed it. An environment is not an entity of its own accord. It is a result of all its inputs, and we are a very large input on the environment. The only difference between us and other inputs is our self-awareness.
The impact we have on the "natural world" becomes part of that world. Are there not birds, rats, cockroaches, etc. that thrive on the fruits of human progress? What makes them less important than the flora and fauna in a tropical rainforest?