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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.
... by The Invisible Hand.
Adam Smith strikes.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
It's almost like there was some kind of invisible hand at work.
It should be bringing nuclear wessels. With the cost of oil to fire a ship being what it is, the Savannah would have been competitive back in the 70's. The only problem to solve is that high seas piracy still exists and the US government doesn't want the nebulous "bad guys" to steal a nuclear wessel and reuse its atomic fuel for something nasty.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
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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.........
"The 163 pounds of uranium she consumed is estimated to have provided the equivalent power of nearly 29 million gallons of fuel oil."
That just put everything in perspective. Holy hell. For the amount of money you saved you could hire a small army to arm your vehicle. US Government could nationalize some ships.
29 million gallons of fuel.
Damn. Just Damn.
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.
my dad owns a drycleaning plant. steel hangers are one of his biggest supply expenses now. a few years ago a hanger might have been $0.10 or so, then 2 or 3 years ago it doubled overnight to $0.20, and a few weeks ago *that* doubled.
some of the larger hangers are 50 cents each. 50 cents for a metal coat hanger. he needs several hundred of these in a given week, nevermind the price of all the other supplies going up. it hurts, bad, and he has had to raise prices because of it (though not enough to actually cover the added cost)
By and large, language is a tool for concealing the truth. -- George Carlin
my dad owns a drycleaning plant. steel hangers are one of his biggest supply expenses now. a few years ago a hanger might have been $0.10 or so, then 2 or 3 years ago it doubled overnight to $0.20, and a few weeks ago *that* doubled.
some of the larger hangers are 50 cents each. 50 cents for a metal coat hanger. he needs several hundred of these in a given week, nevermind the price of all the other supplies going up. it hurts, bad, and he has had to raise prices because of it (though not enough to actually cover the added cost)
Perhaps your dad could provide a discount for customers who provide their own hangers.
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.
Thank you, Mr Checkov. Mr Sulu, lay in a course for the 1970's.
Oh, yeah, it's not easy to pad these out to 120 characters.
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
My dad has worked in steel for the past 38 years and he says they are busy as hell because the fuel cost and weak dollar has been making US steel cheaper for a while now.
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.
The problem with telecommuting is that your job is basically dependent on the quality of the IT staff to a much higher degree. My employer tries to do telecommuting, but somewhere between cost cutting in IT, draconian security restrictions, and a dodgy network connection, it fails to be useful for getting real work done.
We've been looking to move out of our high cost of living area for quite some time, but the rising cost of gas has put that on hold. I would like to buy a house - and can afford one on the edge of the suburbs, but alas, any saving in mortgage payments would be consumed by the cost of fuel. Even though I'm just a fifteen minute commute from work, I spend nearly fifty dollars a week getting there and back.
So yeah, it might bring some manufacturing jobs back home. But those of us who have become used to working in the city and commuting out from the cheaper communities are finding themselves in quite a bind. I can't afford a house in my current area, and I can't afford the gas to drive from the places where I can afford a house.
I'm slowly coming to the conclusion that I'm going to have to wait another 5 to 10 years for the next housing market crash before I'll be able to move into a house. When my Dad was my age, the loan on his (our) house was up - and he was a factory worker. Today, I make almost four times what he did, and can't even afford a three bedroom house. So much for the American Dream.
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The EU is doing just fine dealing with $5+ for a gallon of gas,
Are you kidding? So far Europe has had truck drivers go on strike against fuel tax, fuel delivery drivers go on strike for a 14% pay increase, annual electricity/gas bills rising at 40%/year threatening to push a quarter of all households (5 million families) into fuel poverty, councils raising the cost of school meals due to the expense of transportation. Even the police are having to cut back on front line staff due to the additional expense. Food bills have risen by 20% since the start of the year.
The advertisements on the sides of public transport buses read "Fed up of paying fuel duty to go nowhere, take the bus instead and stop your wallet from going empty". Otherwise many people are choosing to cycle in to work, especially university staff.
All of this is predicted to send house prices down by at least 10%, and then one minister tells people that should stop being so miserable about the rising cost of living.
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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?
Real problem is still TOO MANY PEOPLE.
Hmmm, so maybe going nuclear IS the solution...
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).
Who cares about the environment, it can recover in 20-40 years.
Where do you get this crap? Take a look at the island of Crete. This island used to be almost completely covered in forest. Then the Minoans began clear-cutting it for lumber to build ships. This continued for several generations. When the forest was clear cut, there was no longer any mechanism for the top soil to be held in place. It washed into the sea. The isle of Crete is now a wasteland in terms of the ability to grow forest -- solid forest has not grown there in thousands years.
You are naive, ignorant, short sighted, and have an offensive disregard for the natural world.
Environmentalists have been hoping for high fuel prices, to encourage use of less fuel.
They weren't expecting the return of blast furnaces to Pittsburgh, however. So we burn a little less gasoline, and dump tons of coal and limestone in the steel furnaces.
Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
"You can either have software quality or you can have pointer arithmetic, but you cannot have both at the same time."
Oil was $10 a barrel in 1999.
That's down from $34 in 1982 (about $80 in 1999 inflation-adjusted dollars).
http://www.ioga.com/Special/crudeoil_Hist.htm
Why would the saudi's sell oil for $10 when they could sell it for $34?
Because they can't.
Every day this goes on, the longer oil prices will be low.
Every day, more people start carpooling, move closer to work, replace a 13mpg truck with a 31mpg (or higher) car, start riding public transportation, start working from home 2 days a week, start working 9/80 schedules.
My morning commute is now consistently 5 minutes faster in the morning and 15 minutes faster in the evening because the number of cars on the road has dropped that much.
Already, Iran is stacking up tankers because their online storage tanks are full.
Already our national gas usage is down about 4% in one month.
The current prices are caused by speculation. The same bubble of excess wealth passing through it that passed through the stock market in 1996-2000, housing in 2002-2005, and commodities now. The true "last barrel" cost of producing oil right now is about $50 a barrel. Everything over that is excess.
Once demand drops like a stone, then the oil companies STILL have to pay the bills. A lot of them are spending money like water. A very few of them are investing the current profits wisely.
They will sell oil to whoever will buy it- because just like the average salaryman in the U.S., they are just a couple paychecks from being homeless.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
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.
Actually Canada isn't just talking about it, they're furiously producing it. We've quietly become your primary supplier of crude.
Yet with all this new supply pouring in from the north the price of oil hasn't dropped a bit.
How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
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.
Just don't have any children.
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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.
> we haven't figured out what to do with the tons of nuclear
> waster we have NOW,much less if we did like McCain wants and
> added 45 new plants.
Of course ``we'' have:
http://www.eoearth.org/article/Fast_neutron_reactors_(FBR)
Prohibited by the Carter Administration in the USA, but used
throughout the World. Breeder reactors use the output of
conventional fission plants as fuel and the resultant waste,
once reprocessed, has a half-life of a few centuries instead
of hundreds of millenia.
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.
Check out this article which details exactly what this lease and usage entails.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121391719487790187.html?mod=rss_opinion_main
In other words, the politicians are using word play to infer that the oil companies are drilling on the lands relying on public ignorance that a lease of oil producing lands does not equate to a guarantee of oil.
So basically, the process is.
1. Secure the lease
2. Get the permits to do test drilling
3. Do test drilling
4. Determine if its economically feasible to recover the oil
5. Get permits to actually to set up a site to manage it
6. Get permits to drill on the site
7. Go to court to keep your permits after being sued by every other environmentalist group
8. Drill for oil
9. Profit?
Remember the first rule : If a Congressman's lips are moving he is 99% of the time telling you a lie or a falsehood by omission.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Guess what's different from 1999...
- the US dollar is worth ~40% less than it was in 1999
- there are over 2 billion people whose economy, and therefore demand for energy, is surging.
- there is an oil supply graph that, rather than increasing every year, has been roughly flat for the past three years (not coincidentally, the time when the price has skyrocketed)
Oil, in our lifetimes, is a finite commodity. It has an energy return on investment higher than anything else out there right now. There is still a lot in the ground, which is to say, we're not going to run out any time soon. But we have skyrocketing demand and a constrained supply. In the past, high prices have led to exploration and increased production. Well guess what. The large deposits of easy to retrieve oil have been found. We've reached a point of diminishing returns. Oh, there's still a lot of oil. The Saudis continue to pump almost 10 million barrels of it a day, more or less the same amount they've been pumping for the past 5 years. But in that time, they've been bringing new drilling projects online, in order to make up for declining production out of their old fields. And their oil exports have dropped by over 10% in just the past 2 years, due to increased domestic demand from a booming economy.
You can tell yourself it's all speculation, if it makes you happy. But the supply of oil to global markets is no longer increasing, while demand remains high, globally. And there are a whole lot of people in Asia who will gladly buy any oil that we don't.
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?