White House Explains Transport-Energy Future

blair1q writes "Today on the White House Blog, the President (ok, his staff) released an infographic showing various facts about transportation energy, and how current gas prices need not be so worrisome. Highlights include rapidly increasing domestic production and rapidly decreasing prices for electric-car batteries, requesting Congress to shift tax breaks from oil producers to wind/solar/geothermal energy producers, and increasing domestic oil production (yes, there's a conflict there)."

Comments

Domestic production?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you magically shifted to 100% domestic production overnight, at the current burn rate of 20 million barrels a day, the known reserves of 20 billion barrels would be all gone in 1000 days. Also known as "about 3 years". All gone forever. So be careful what you wish for.

Re:Domestic production?

[Surt]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_reserves_in_the_United_States

134 billion barrels known, just requires more work/legislation to get at some of it. So 18 years. Still, your children would get to experience a Mad-Max style collapse of civilization.

Re:Domestic production?

[biek]

Also running with the 20mil/day consumption figure, having one million electric vehicles on the road by 2015 will save us less than two days' worth of consumption per year

Re:Domestic production?

[countertrolling]

Yeah, then we can use the oil to run the power plants... But it really doesn't matter, because it will all be sold to China, probably three or four times by the time it's actually consumed

Re:Domestic production?

[blair1q]

Replace 2/3 % of the gas guzzlers with non-gas guzzlers and you end up saving 2/3 % of the gas.

Is that not supposed to work out that way? You're expecting some amplification?

Re:Domestic production?

[lgw]

And that's not including oil shale and oil sands (which we'd need to annex Canada to get most of, but that's just a minor technicality).

Re:Domestic production?

[ArcherB]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_reserves_in_the_United_States

134 billion barrels known, just requires more work/legislation to get at some of it. So 18 years. Still, your children would get to experience a Mad-Max style collapse of civilization.

Well, with the increase of production, oil prices would drop substantially. With lower oil prices, we could tax imported oil by the barrel and still have us paying less at the pump. Take the money you make from taxing imported oil by the barrel and invest that money into "green energy" research. With that much money invested, we will either find a cheap, sustainable energy source or it there's not one to be found and we're all screwed anyway.

*Note: The reason you tax imported oil only is to spur domestic production and offer some protection to those who are bit nervous about drilling. See, many years ago, the price of oil tanked (see what I did there?). It was so low, it actually cost more to pump it out of the ground than it was worth. Many wells were permanently capped off and investors lost their shirts. Investors have long memories and are still reluctant to drill for the hard to get at oil. Taxing imports will force a minimum price that will give investors some confidence to go ahead and drill without fear of prices dropping below their break even point.

Re:Domestic production?

[0100010001010011]

What cars use is a drop in the bucket compared to ocean going vessels, powerplants, plastic production and everything else Oil is used for.

Re:Domestic production?

[blair1q]

Mad-Max style collapse

Disagree.

That sort of future didn't seem to have any alternatives. Just an ever-dwindling supply of go-juice.

We, both deliberately and through natural economic forces, are moving towards energy systems that can give us mobility without raising the cost of a gallon of gas to a literal arm and a leg.

The most important stat on that graphic is the learning curve of pricing for the car batteries. It's got a half-life of about 2 years. About 3-5X as fast as I thought it might be. That's an implosion of the cost of being alternative, and it's going to overtake traditional in a hurry.

Passenger cars with combustion-only drivetrains may in a decade be as quaint as typewriters.

I think we're well ahead of the front of fear that peak oil was sweeping our way.

Re:Domestic production?

[Anonymous Coward]

Oil shale is the Thunderdome of oil production: two barrels of oil go into making one come out.
-Masterblaster!

Re:Domestic production?

[h4rr4r]

1. Ocean going vessels burn bunker oil
2. powerplants don't burn oil normally, that is the most expensive thing you could use coal and gas are far cheaper
3. plastic can be made from other sources, or more likely glass will make a comeback

Re:Domestic production?

[Rei]

It's also not including the fact that the known global reserves keeps growing, not declining, despite our huge rate of consumption. In 1920, the world estimate was 60 billion barrels of reserves. In 1950, 600 billion barrels. From 1970 to 1990, estimates increased from 1,500 to 2,000 billion barrels. In 1994, the USGS estimated world reserves at 2,400 billion barrels. In 2000, the same estimate was raised to 3,000 barrels. Note that these estimates are not limited to "proved reserves" and only cover conventional crude. In short, we've been finding conventional crude faster than we've been taking it out of the ground, and faster than we've been expecting to find it -- at least in the long term.

There's a lot of distortion about oil reserves from the doomer crowd. For example, doomers love to point to graphs like this:

Link

Dear god! Run out and panic, right? Well, no. This graph is about as distorting as a graph can get. It's all based on backloading data. For each field, its current proven size is marked at the point in time when the field was discovered. What that should tell you is that regardless of however the actual rate of oil discoveries, you'd expect that shape on the graph! Oil fields aren't suddenly proven at their maximum capacity they're discovered. An oil field isn't proven until you start to produce from it, and there are even supergiants out there that we haven't started producing from yet. And the proven size continues to grow as you expand and explore the field. So for example, Ghawar, when it was first discovered in 1948, it was estimated to have "billions" of barrels. This grew to "60 billion barrels" in the 1970s. It's now produced 65 billion, and is estimated at 100 billion. Graphs like this backload that whole 100 billion to the 1940s.

It's trivially easy to disprove graphs like this. Let's just list some of the more noteworthy discoveries of the past decade or so. Jack 2 (3-15B), Noxal (~10B), Azadegan (~42B), Ferdows/Mound/Zagheh (~38B), Sugar Loaf (~25-40B), Tupi(5-8B), Jupiter(5-8B), West Kamchatka (10.3B), Tahe (29B), Jidong Nanpu (7.5B; potentially 146 in all of Bohai Bay), Kashagan (9-13B), and on and on. See those on the graph? But I guarantee you that a graph like that made a few decades from now will have them all conveniently showing up for this point in time.

There's this notion that "the biggest fields are found first, then everything else goes on the decline". Really? The US drilled its first well in 1859. It took us another 109 years to find Prudhoe Bay. And today we've got the absurdly massive Bakken field looming which back in the 1970s was assumed to be small and impossible to extract (Elm Coulee has proven otherwise). The same can be pointed to all over the world. Just simply pointing to Ghawar is not a counterexample. Look at coal; a single subsea coal deposit found off Norway in 2005 more than triples the world's known coal reserves. Or natural gas -- Israel has spent pretty much its whole existence in a vain search for sizeable deposits of oil or natural gas, only to hit the motherlode last year. How is this sort of thing possible? Simple. New exploration tech beats the pants off old exploration tech; new production tech makes far more things that used to be unviable, viable; there's always more "down" (especially with advancing technology); and most of the world haven't even been surveyed at all or has been only poorly surveyed -- sometimes even in known oil-rich areas (a good example of this is Iraq, which due to decades of war and sanctions is poorly explored and has just been living off its earlier finds).

Hubbert Peaks are the epitamy of fitting a particular curve to whatever arbitrary dataset you want (sometimes by hand) and the insisting that it matches. The US is a popular one, but the best-fit curve for the US is closer to a poisson than a normal (the US oil production

Re:Domestic production?

[Culture20]

That sort of future didn't seem to have any alternatives. Just an ever-dwindling supply of go-juice.

Barter Town used a different kind of gas.

Re:Domestic production?

[Wyatt Earp]

Power plants in the US don't generally run on oil. They run on hydro, natural gas, coal and nuclear.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_generation

1% from petroleum.

Re:Domestic production?

[Wyatt Earp]

Bunker oil is from petroleum, it's real difference from what is used on land is that it can be high sulfur and exhausts aren't filtered, so it throws out all sorts of crap.

Re:Domestic production?

[h4rr4r]

No shit it is petroleum. The difference is you do not need light sweet crude to get it. We have plenty of the sour heavy stuff left.

Re:Domestic production?

[Wyatt Earp]

46% of petroleum goes to gasoline, 9% jet fuel, 26% Diesel and other fuel (bunker fuels, LPG, etc), 3% asphalt, 4% heavy fuel oils (another bunker fuel source), 1% lubricants, 11% other products, like plastics, medicine

Re:Domestic production?

[Americium]

It's impossible to get cheaper prices by increasing prices (taxing imports). With the current rate of monetary expansion it's impossible for oil prices to go down. Unless the dollar stops falling in value we won't be getting cheap oil anytime soon.

Re:Domestic production?

[WillAffleckUW]

You'd be wrong. Texas is actually a purple state, slightly blue, that was gerrymandered into a red state.

(but then I'm a Texan)

Re:Domestic production?

[cdrguru]

Sorry, can't tax imports. That would be against WTO rules.

Some idiot thought it would be a good idea to put our collective futures into the hands of the WTO in the name of open and free trade. We have seen now how free trade works - it is neither open nor free when your trading partners simply have a complete block on importing most anything for various cultural and quality reasons. So we have this huge trade imbalance that can't ever be resolved.

And for some reason, we are still in the WTO. Until we get out there is no taxing or tariffing foreign or imported anything.

Re:Domestic production?

[couchslug]

"Still, your children would get to experience a Mad-Max style collapse of civilization."

Just move to Detroit and beat the crowd!

Re:Domestic production?

[WillAffleckUW]

Using turboprops or fuel-sipping planes like the Boeing 787 cuts energy usage by more than half, provided you take the existing "too old to fly safely" fleet out of operation.

Re:Domestic production?

[arkenian]

In other words we use 15% of our oil and burn the rest. So why should we go to all the effort of digging out our oil just to burn it, when other countries are willing to do it for us? Oil in the ground is just going up in value, a good investment in the long term wealth of our nation. Once all the other countries in the world have burned all their oil, and oil is much too expensive to burn, then we can start talking about using it properly.

And, of course, a side benefit to all this is that in the meantime we'll probably figure out more environmentally safe ways of getting at lots of that oil, so we can have our cake and eat it too!

Re:Domestic production?

[cavreader]

One of the advances in oil shale recovery is in situ extraction. Drill a shaft, lower a heating element down the shaft, apply heat, pump up the liquefied shale and take it to the refinery. Over simplified but you get the basic idea. This method is easier on the environment because strip mining and huge amounts of water are not required. I certainly don't expect large scale shale oil operations until the price becomes cheaper than importing. Oil shale reserves are a safety net in case oil imports become to expensive or the current producers become unreliable.

Re:Domestic production?

[TapeCutter]

There's a lot of distortion about oil reserves from the doomer crowd.

Of course there's no distortion from oil companies who's stock price is partially based on the size of the reserves they control. Nor is there any distortion from the Saudi's and other oil producing hell-holes, who's only leverage in international politics is the size of their reserves.

Re:Domestic production?

[LrdDimwit]

Bullshit. Gasoline accounted for 45% of US oil usage in 2004. See the referred-to graph for details. Most electricity is not generated by oil in the USA, and more than twice as much oil was used for gas than for industrial applications (e.g. plastic).

As for tankers, there are an estimated 250 million cars on the road, and that's just in the United States. The number of tankers is about four orders of magnitude lower. Given the vastly different population sizes, there are simply too many cars for tankers to dwarf them.

Re:Domestic production?

[Samantha Wright]

Nope. However, Alberta has this obnoxious habit of producing persuasive conservative candidates that then go on to wreak havoc elsewhere in Canada. Culturally, however, there's a lot to do with the American midwest, and much moreso the southern portion than the north: rodeos, cowboy hats, gun violence... you know, the works.

Re:Domestic production?

[Sulphur]

If you magically shifted to 100% domestic production overnight, at the current burn rate of 20 million barrels a day, the known reserves of 20 billion barrels would be all gone in 1000 days. Also known as "about 3 years". All gone forever. So be careful what you wish for.

http://www.reformation.org/energy-non-crisis.html

Re:Domestic production?

[lightknight]

So, offer to sell them something that they do want.

Uranium to the Chinese.

Re:Domestic production?

[ArcherB]

You'd be wrong. Texas is actually a purple state, slightly blue, that was gerrymandered into a red state.

(but then I'm a Texan)

Yeah. That's why the state has voted for Republican candidates in statewide elections like senator or presidential for the last... what... 30 years?

Actually, I looked it up. The last time Texas went Democrat in a Presidential election was 1976.

Now, sure. No state is completely red or completely blue, but I think it's safe to say that Texas is has a LOT more red than blue mixed in.

Re:Domestic production?

[ArcherB]

It's impossible to get cheaper prices by increasing prices (taxing imports). With the current rate of monetary expansion it's impossible for oil prices to go down. Unless the dollar stops falling in value we won't be getting cheap oil anytime soon.

Re-read my post. I said that prices will go down due to INCREASED PRODUCTION. Production goes up as a result of an artificial price floor.

Re:Domestic production?

[ArcherB]

Sorry, can't tax imports. That would be against WTO rules.

OK, then tax all oil and give however much you make off of domestic oil back to domestic oil companies in the form of subsidies. You know, like every country in the world that has state owned oil companies.

Re:Domestic production?

[drsmithy]

Well, with the increase of production, oil prices would drop substantially. With lower oil prices, we could tax imported oil by the barrel and still have us paying less at the pump. Take the money you make from taxing imported oil by the barrel and invest that money into "green energy" research.

Who would be buying the foreign oil when the local oil is so much cheaper ?

Re:Domestic production?

[Americium]

So increase prices now by taxing imports, which is a tax on Americans at the pump, which will spur production, eventually (takes at least 5-10 years to come online) leading to slightly lower prices.

I'd much rather see a tax break on the energy companies and their workers salaries domestically. Instead of the money for gasoline going abroad, it goes to domestic workers. So by not taxing them at all the government doesn't lose revenue, Americans don't pay more, and their profit margins would be similar to your plan. Your plan's goal of higher profit margins to spur growth is good, except in your plan massive amounts of money are funneled to the US government from every American buying gas.

If it's not profitable now, don't subsidize it with my money, into something YOU think is the correct investment path in future energy production, let the market work. Even tax breaks across all energy production doesn't interfere with market forces and keeps a balanced playing field.

Re:Domestic production?

[MtViewGuy]

A lot of the "doomsayers" as assuming the end of crude oil production based on _past_ technology.

With the arrival of fractional cracking and using proven technologies such as CO2 gas/high-pressure steam/special detergent fluid injection into the well (much of which was originally developed to pump out highly-viscous California crude oil), supposedly "tapped out" oilfields can suddenly be viable again. That right there could potentially double the world's known oil reserves without drilling a new well! And don't forget that the due to the unstable political situation in Iraq and Iran, those oilfields--which are said to be even bigger than the Saudi Arabian oilfields--are way under-exploited.

In short, technology has out-run the naysayers all over again. :-)

Re:Domestic production?

[fractoid]

You're expecting some amplification?

Where the amplification comes in is economies of scale. You can build enough cars to fill 0.1% of the market but they'll be custom builds which cost a lot. When you've expanded to 2-3% of the market, you're in mass production and costs drop dramatically, by 30-50%. Once prices have dropped, people who would be in that 2-3% if it were only 30% cheaper will suddenly decide it's worth buying, and that 2-3% becomes 5-8%, and prices drop further... et voila.

Re:Domestic production?

[sanjosanjo]

I don't think that oil prices would drop if the US ramps up production. Shell says (http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-02-10/u-s-has-capacity-to-boost-oil-production-40-hofmeister-says.html) that the US could increase production from 8 to 10 million barrels per day. I would expect OPEC, at 30 million barrels per day, would decrease production to keep oil prices stable.

Re:Domestic production?

[haruchai]

If I had a mod point to spare, I'd give you two.

Re:Domestic production?

[haruchai]

Are you referring to Wall Conduction in situ extraction? How much electricity and water is required?

Re:Domestic production?

[haruchai]

Just because the technology to do it is available DOESN'T MAKE IT CHEAP. Our current society / world was built on the back of cheap oil; the days when you could drill a few hundred feet down and hit a gusher are long gone. And, even if the production costs come down, what are the environmental costs going to be?

Re:Domestic production?

[haruchai]

Electric cars, equipped with vehicle-to-grid, have benefits beyond reduced petroleum consumption. But, I don't see what point you're getting at - if we reach the 1 million goal, do you think we'll stick there? By the time we have that many in service, the demand would(should?) foster an explosive growth and the need to compete would lead to greater fuel efficiency for gas cars.

Re:Domestic production?

[rubycodez]

The U.S. has over 2 trillion barrels of recoverable shale oil, what's the problem?

Re:Domestic production?

[lgw]

I'm old enough to remember "smog days", and the good days having more pollution than by far than the worst days in the worst cities today. Technology solves problems, even environmental problems.

And the solution to high commodity prices is high commodity prices. This always works out, largely because technology solves problems.

Re:Domestic production?

[haruchai]

Not if no one is willing to pay for it. I know that, IN TIME, even the morons will come around because they have no other choice, but that could be a long time. I'm old enough to remember the Carter administration. What would the world look like if America had bought into his vision and risen to his challenge? I think he was wrong on nuclear but very right on getting off of the foreign oil dependence, at any cost.

Anybody believe this?

[operagost]

How do we expect to continue increasing oil production when he's not approving permits? The fact is, people are not going to be able to afford heating oil and gas for their home this winter.

Re:Anybody believe this?

[Anonymous Coward]

How do we expect to continue increasing oil production when he's not approving permits? The fact is, people are not going to be able to afford heating oil and gas for their home this winter.

the good news is, if all the poor people freeze to death next winter we can finally hear about something else whenever domestic policy is discussed.

much as you "progressives" like to talk about your love and compassion for the poor fact is, if there were no poor you wouldn't have a political platform. something that would actually help the poor stop being poor would mean no more winning elections for you. do the math. who benefits from poverty more than politicians who use it as their core campaign issues? it's like Jessie Jackson and Al Sharpton - they don't really want racial harmony because that would destroy their livelihood and deny them TV time.

oh yeah and about the "tax the rich" etc. ok. so right now the top 10% income earners pay 73% of federal income taxes. the bottom 40% not only pay no taxes but actually get credits, so they pay negative taxes. you progressives, just answer me this one simple question. what is your goal? at what point will you say "ok, the rich paying their fair share is now a solved problem, time to stop talking about this and move on to other issues"? do you even have a goal that you'd like to achieve?

Re:Anybody believe this?

[countertrolling]

No problem.. Hugo 'Boss' Chavez's got it covered

Re:Anybody believe this?

[Anonymous Coward]

No one believes this. They know these plans are nonsense, they know they're driving up prices and that's how they want it. So do their supporters. Speak up people. Tell the truth. You like energy spiraling up and fucking everyone because you loath the people around you.

Try to develop energy in the US and they pick out some bit of local wildlife, stick it on the endangered species list and have some judge ban the construction. In Colorado it's the sage grouse. In New Mexico and Texas it's this 'sand dune lizard.'

The primary cause of endangered species is proposed development.

Re:Anybody believe this?

[MyFirstNameIsPaul]

And this is a bad thing? I'm sure not approving permits when prices are sky high will get him elected?

Re:Anybody believe this?

[rwa2]

How do we expect to continue increasing oil production when he's not approving permits? The fact is, people are not going to be able to afford heating oil and gas for their home this winter.

Yeesh!

Better stock up on insulation!
http://www.energystar.gov/index.cfm?c=tax_credits.tx_index

Re:Anybody believe this?

[causality]

so right now the top 10% income earners pay 73% of federal income taxes. the bottom 40% not only pay no taxes but actually get credits, so they pay negative taxes. you progressives, just answer me this one simple question. what is your goal? at what point will you say "ok, the rich paying their fair share is now a solved problem, time to stop talking about this and move on to other issues"? do you even have a goal that you'd like to achieve?

Someone modded this down to -1 but honestly, I'd like an answer to this question myself. It really is a simple question. It's also a legitimate question. Answering a legitimate question would be much more respectable than modding it down and hoping it goes away like an insecure person. So, is anyone of the Progressive persuasion willing to put numbers to this?

Of course, I say that knowing that in politics you don't advance your career by actually solving problems so that they aren't problems anymore. There's not much "political capital" to be gained in coming up with solutions, particularly not practical and relatively simple solutions that don't require the creation of new bureaus to perpetually administer. But I'm not a politician and neither is anyone who is likely to respond, so I am hoping to receive a real answer here that I won't see in the media anytime soon.

What I want is for someone who truly believes in Progressivism to attempt a real answer at this question, even if you sincerely feel that no politician is adequately representing your position: at what point would you be satisfied and feel that you have gotten everything you wanted with regard to the tax code?

I usually try not to be this blunt but it's appropriate this time: anyone who knee-jerks and feels an overwhelming temptation to respond with something like "but the other party did so and so" should frankly shut up because the adults are talking. Tired of wading through the "us against them" noise whenever a serious question is asked.

Re:Anybody believe this?

[Rei]

so right now the top 10% income earners pay 73% of federal income taxes.

1) They have approximately 80% of the wealth.
2) Income tax is a giant red herring. Income tax its those who are well-off hard, but not the super-wealthy. It's capital gains that hit the super-wealthy, and only at a measly 15 for long-term capital gains. Anyone here remember the challenge to Fortune 500 CEOs to demonstrate that their secretary pays a lower percent of their net income in taxes than they do?

the bottom 40% not only pay no taxes but actually get credits, so they pay negative taxes

1) Have you ever even filed your own taxes? Do you not know how tax credits work? You make it sound like you think that the government cuts you a check if you come up negative.
2) The actual number of people who pay no income tax is 47% (at least for 2009), but this is not "the bottom 40%" of wage earners -- it's the bottom 47% of tax payers. You can make a lot of money, but if you get enough deductions or credits, to pay no income tax.
3) That's only income tax. Said people still pay payroll taxes, property taxes, sales taxes, etc.

you progressives, just answer me this one simple question. what is your goal?

It's really simple: taxing luxury at a higher rate than necessity. That's what it really comes down to. Now, in a perfect world, this would ideally be done on the sales tax side. But apart from discouraging spending, there's a problem. How much luxury is -- and thus at what rate do you tax -- a head of lettuce? Canned button mushrooms? Fresh button mushrooms? Fresh oyster mushrooms? Truffles? Pretty much every consumer product would require its own "luxury assessment", which would be the most absurd of bureaucracies.

Instead, one can tackle this on the income side. A poor person *can't* spend a large portion of their money on luxury; necessities eat up too much of their budget. A rich person *can't* spend a large portion of their money on necessities (what are they going to do, stockpile diapers by the millions?) -- excepting that they spend their money charitably on necessities for others. Which is -- you guessed it -- tax deductible. This is the rationale for higher tax rates for higher income earners -- to tax luxury at a higher rate than necessity.

Re:Anybody believe this?

[d34thm0nk3y]

How do we expect to continue increasing oil production when he's not approving permits? The fact is, people are not going to be able to afford heating oil and gas for their home this winter.

Obama administration approves fourth Gulf deepwater drilling permit

Re:Anybody believe this?

[causality]

1) Have you ever even filed your own taxes? Do you not know how tax credits work? You make it sound like you think that the government cuts you a check if you come up negative.

They do, actually. If you come up negative, the tax return you receive after filing is greater than the sum total of income taxes you paid that year. Though technically they probably won't cut you a check. In most cases they will deposit the money electronically into your account. So maybe that was your point?

Jests aside, it's a form of welfare though we strongly prefer not to call it that. It'd be easier for us all to admit that there's something seriously wrong with our economic system if mass media openly acknowledged that some 40% or more of all adults are receiving a type of federal welfare. Most people who work for a living, pay their bills, etc. would like to feel independent, and would not like to think of themselves as welfare recipients.

A more neutral (though also loaded) term would be "redistribution of wealth". Euphemisms like that help keep the average person from realizing that we're seriously doing something wrong. That, in turn, preserves the status quo and that seems to be the only thing that matters to the people who run the show.

Re:Anybody believe this?

[Culture20]

1) Have you ever even filed your own taxes? Do you not know how tax credits work? You make it sound like you think that the government cuts you a check if you come up negative.

Have you ever filed a 1040ez? The Earned Income Credit says just that:
"The Earned Income Tax Credit or the EITC is a refundable federal income tax credit for low to moderate income working individuals and families. Congress originally approved the tax credit legislation in 1975 in part to offset the burden of social security taxes and to provide an incentive to work. When EITC exceeds the amount of taxes owed, it results in a tax refund to those who claim and qualify for the credit."
http://www.irs.gov/individuals/article/0,,id=96406,00.html
I've gotten free money from eic before. Felt dirty but I needed it at the time.

Re:Anybody believe this?

[SnarfQuest]

Don't worry. Obama is donating $10 billion to Brazilian oil exploration. Of course, they'll generously sell any oil found to China in appreciation for our donation, so we can continue to shop at WalMart.

Re:Anybody believe this?

[gtbritishskull]

Someone modded this down to -1 but honestly, I'd like an answer to this question myself. It really is a simple question. It's also a legitimate question. Answering a legitimate question would be much more respectable than modding it down and hoping it goes away like an insecure person. So, is anyone of the Progressive persuasion willing to put numbers to this?

It was posted AC. They are guilty until proven innocent as far as trolling is concerned.

What I want is for someone who truly believes in Progressivism to attempt a real answer at this question, even if you sincerely feel that no politician is adequately representing your position: at what point would you be satisfied and feel that you have gotten everything you wanted with regard to the tax code?

I believe in income redistribution when it comes to the tax code. Let me get that out right up front. Globalization has been very good to the United States. I have not seen any economists argue that we should have or should now economically isolate ourselves from the rest of the world. But, the middle class and lower class has not benefited from Globalization. All the money and power has gone to the Upper-Middle and Upper classes. That is why income inequality is so high in this country. In the 60s and 70s, the difference between a CEO salary and the average worker salary was something like 20:1 or 30:1. Now it is somewhere around 300:1. They are getting most of the benefits from our system of government. Why should they not shoulder the higher tax burden?

My view of the "American Dream" is that it should not matter where you start in life. If you are the best, smartest, and hardest working then you should be able to become one of the richest. And you can measure this by measuring Intergenerational Mobility. And you find that the US ranks pretty low on the list. If you are rich in the US, then your descendants probably will be as well, no matter how stupid or lazy they are.

The tax system that I would theoretically like to have (though would have no idea the best way to actually implement it) would be one that aims to have a income distribution in the population (most likely would be a poisson distribution). If the rich are getting richer, and the middle class is getting left behind, then the rich should be taxed more (relatively). If there are not enough poor people, then the middle class should be taxed more (relatively). I am leaving out of the discussion how much taxes we should aim to collect. I am positing a system that stays revenue neutral. Now, I still want poor people. I think that we should build in opportunities for them to make something of themselves, but I still want people to be motivated to work knowing that if they don't their life will be uncomfortable. But, I also want the working man to have the incentive to work real hard, knowing that a few rich families at the top do not have a monopoly on real wealth. I do not want to assign an arbitrary tax percentage that is "enough". It is enough when it makes this a better country.

Also, I want to correct the previous post. The 40% do not "not only pay no taxes but actually get credits". They get a credit on their federal income taxes. They still pay FICA taxes (medicare and social security) which account for 15% if you count what the employer has to "match". They also pay sales taxes, possible state income taxes, gas taxes, property taxes, and whatever other taxes there are. I would also like to point out that those taxes tend to be regressive taxes. So, as a percentage of income, the middle class and below pays a much higher amount of tax than the upper class does.

I hope that was the kind of response you were asking for.

Re:Anybody believe this?

[urbanRealist]

At he height of of our prosperity, the top marginal tax rate varied from about 70% to about 90%. I feel about 50% is fair, and I also support a new bracket beginning at somewhere between $500,000 to $1 million annually to which the 50% marginal rate would apply. Moreover, Social Security contributions should not be capped. Spending should then be reduced below revenues until the debt is paid off.

Re:Anybody believe this?

[Anonymous Coward]

In the last decade, I've gone from paying $3,000/year in income taxes to $20,000/year by a mere tripling of my income. Please explain how I am getting more benefit now than I was before.

Re:Anybody believe this?

[cavreader]

"The US has some of the lowest corporate taxes in the world." No that statement is unsupported. The US corporation taxes are ranked #1 in the world. Currently, the average combined federal and state corporate tax rate in the U.S. is 39.3 percent http://www.taxfoundation.org/publications/show/22917.html

Re:Anybody believe this?

[causality]

It's interesting that at this time you have a "Flamebait" mod, albeit a score of 3.

Apparently, stating your views in a non-inflammatory way, without demanding that anyone must agree with you, is offensive flamebait material.

I hope everyone sees how transparent that is. And how pathetic it is.

Re:Anybody believe this?

[Rei]

Unless you're talking about the EITC, no, they don't. They simply refund you what you had withheld, nothing more. If you're talking the EITC, that's not anywhere *close* to 40% of the public. In 2004, it was about 7% of the population who claimed it, and most of those did not receive more back than they spent on income tax alone, let alone all taxes combined (EITC was designed to offset payroll taxes). The number of people getting more back than they spent on all taxes combined, including local and state taxes, is probably zero or close to it.

Concerning bracketed income taxation in general, we're not talking "redistribution of wealth". We're talking taxing luxury spending at a higher rate than non-luxury spending. Do you have a problem with that? if not, do you have a problem with the argument as to why it needs to be addressed on the income side rather than the expenditure side?

Re:Anybody believe this?

[Noughmad]

The question:

Please explain how I am getting more benefit now than I was before.

The answer:

by a mere tripling of my income

Re:Anybody believe this?

[BlueStrat]

You want an answer? It stops when there are no rich people or poor people.

I want unicorns and ponies to fly out of Janet Napolitano's ass too. Just about as likely to happen. You want a change in basic human nature. As long as humans are human, there will always be rich and poor.

Capitalism is actually the best system ever known for lifting poor people out of poverty and empowering them. It has lifted more people out of poverty and given more of them a higher standard of living and greater economic power than any other system in the history of mankind. It's what enabled the US to go from a joke as a world power to become the most powerful nation on Earth with the highest standard of living for even it's poorest. You can't argue with success.

Capitalism is the only system where wealth is a renewable resource and wealth-creation is possible for anyone regardless of where they start on the economic scale.

Too many people believe falsely that anyone becoming rich takes wealth away from others. It's not a zero-sum game.

Strat

Re:Anybody believe this?

[causality]

The problem here is that when the tax code is revised and the revision is made law, it must have specific requirements and obligations spelled out. That means numbers. I am thankful that you have given a thorough explanation of your position and your beliefs, but how does that translate into practical application in the form of a bill that Congress could pass? It is most difficult to meet a goal that is nebulously defined.

Re:Anybody believe this?

[riverat1]

Yes, the nominal tax rate for corporations is high in the US but in practice, especially for larger corporations there are usually enough loopholes to reduce their tax rate to less than half the nominal rate. How much federal income tax are corporations like General Electric and Exxon-Mobil paying after all in recent years?

Re:Anybody believe this?

[gtbritishskull]

I cannot give you an absolute number. I do not believe in absolute numbers. But the good thing about the american government is that it is flexible. While it would be nice if I could give you a formula to implement my ideal tax system, I do not know what that formula is, and even if I did, I do not think it would be a good idea to use it. I think, as you say, we should have a defined tax rate that is set by congress. But, congress should not be striving to find the "perfect" tax rate. Instead, they should adjust it over time based upon the results of it. Here is what I think we should do now. Simplify the tax code and close all of the loopholes that allow the rich in this country to avoid paying taxes. Ideally make unearned income be taxed MORE than earned income. But, a first step would be to just tax it the same as earned income (instead of 15%). Also, repeal the Bush tax cuts for the highest tax bracket (I actually would be in favor of repealing all of them so that we could actually balance the budget). Or maybe even increase it by a point or two. Also, drop the estate tax from $5 million to between $1 and $2 million and close the loopholes.

Is that specific enough for you?

Now that I have told you what I believe, it is your turn? What level of income inequality do you believe in? How little taxes should the rich pay? What do you think is "fair"?

Re:Anybody believe this?

[cavreader]

The earlier post definitively stated that the US had the lowest tax rate which was incorrect. If you look at the link I provided you would see the tax figures was the combination of both Fed and State taxes.

Re:Anybody believe this?

[causality]

Now that I have told you what I believe, it is your turn? What level of income inequality do you believe in? How little taxes should the rich pay? What do you think is "fair"?

What I want is a small minimal government and for almost all of a regular person's interaction with government to come from the state and local levels. Hopefully some fool won't chime in and try to play games with the word "minimal" there. If a government cannot keep order, cannot defend its borders, cannot enforce its laws, then it is less than minimal. It is not the place of government to tell consenting adults what they may or may not do, to try to be the world's police, etc.

I also would like to scrap the Social Security system entirely. I want them to continue to take the same amount of money from everyone's paycheck and then deposit that into an interest-bearing account the person owns. The only taxpayer burden would be the administration of this fund, much like the costs associated with administrating privately-owned mutual funds and annuities. Even right now, if you start a modest fund when you're 18 or in your 20s and you regularly contribute small amounts of money to it, you could easily retire a multimillionaire at 65. Imagine how much better this would work if it were done with the current Social Security taxes as a mandatory part of earning a paycheck. Unlike the current system, this would be sustainable and would not require a gigantic federal budget to administer.

I also want the federal government to stay out of any matter that can be handled by the states. Education is a big one. I'd love to abolish the NEA and all federal agencies related to education. It's nothing but a political machine and the education and welfare of children is its very last priority. Not just education but any and every thing that a state government could handle, the feds need to stay out of. That would leave national defense, national treaties, federal interstate roads, and crimes and disputes which are truly interstate in nature.

Achieve that and the total national tax burden becomes small enough that who pays it is far less of an issue. I would then want to scrap income taxes entirely and replace them with the Fair Tax, a national sales tax. One flat rate for everyone, nearly impossible to cheat, and able to take revenue from illegals and from foreigners who are only visiting. I'd also like to entirely eliminate the private bank known as the Federal Reserve and go back to a representative currency such as a silver standard. This would remove a majority of domestic government debt. That would eliminate the ability to finance government through inflation, and inflation is the biggest hidden tax of them all. Then government would have to fund all of its budget through tax revenue and could not do it by devaluing currency, something that is quite regressive I might add.

This is where you and I would disagree the most. I am not rich by any measure. Not remotely. Yet, I am not bothered in the slightest if a wealthy person spends much less of a percentage of his income on taxes or on basic necessities like food and shelter. Some people are materially more well-off than I am; I don't see that as some crime against me that must be remedied. For that matter, some people have more dates with attractive women than I do -- should the government do something about that too? I'd rather make things more equal by elevating myself instead of dragging someone else down.

At a 20% tax rate, the person who spends (spends since Fair Tax is a sales tax) only $15,000 a year would pay only $3000 in taxes. A person who spends $250,000 a year would pay $50,000 in taxes. I don't know the actual figure, but for the sake of illustration I will assume the poverty level is $15,000 for a single adult. Assuming that, the first person would actually pay $0 in taxes due to the Fair Tax's pre-bate that is indexed against the poverty level, while the second person (who also receives that pre-

Re:Anybody believe this?

[riverat1]

Yes, I saw the earlier post and knew it was wrong. And I was only talking about federal taxes. I took a look at your link. Those again are the nominal rates. I'm more interested in the effective rate which is considerably lower for many if not most corporations. But I wasn't really replying directly to you so much as making a general comment.

Re:Anybody believe this?

[operagost]

I'd like to see that progressive math that says 3 x $3,000 = $20,000.

Re:Anybody believe this?

[operagost]

At he height of of our prosperity, the top marginal tax rate varied from about 70% to about 90%.

Ronald Reagan eliminated most of the loopholes that made that tax rate workable. I believe he also signed off on the AMT, just in case.

Re:Anybody believe this?

[operagost]

Wow... FOUR? That is so close to 60... which was the average number of approvals per year before BP.

Re:Anybody believe this?

[Noughmad]

Your previous pay: $x/yr
Your previous taxes: $3k/yr
Your current pay: $3*x/yr
Your current taxes: $20k/yr

Your benefit: $(3*x - 20k - x + 3k)/yr = $(2*x-17k)/yr.

So the progressive math is the assumption that your previous pay was greater than $8500 per year. Was the assumption incorrect?

Um... It is about EROEI

[Colin Smith]

The amount of energy you get out compared to the amount you put in.

Oil from Saudi huge. Oil from Canada, not so much.

The lower EROEI is, the larger the proportion of the economy must be dedicated to energy production.
 

Re:Um... It is about EROEI

[Hatta]

Good. Consider it a jobs program. The benefits of efficiency accrue only to the wealthy anyway, so what should the rest of us care?

Re:Um... It is about EROEI

[BBnet3000]

The oil industry puts lots of money into expensive equipment, not much into jobs. The benefits of efficiency do NOT accrue to the wealthy....

Re:Um... It is about EROEI

[wiggles]

There's a lot of labor going in to that expensive equipment, much (most?) of it to American manufacturers like Caterpillar. Jobs will be created one way or another.

Re:Um... It is about EROEI

[jdgeorge]

The GP is saying the amount of energy you get out compared to the energy used in extraction is greater for Saudi oil than for Canadian oil.

This has nothing in particular to do with how much oil we buy from either country.

Re:Um... It is about EROEI

[h4rr4r]

Go look up the word fungible. After that come back and talk to the grownups.

Re:Um... It is about EROEI

[Dasher42]

"The benefits of efficiency accrue only to the wealthy anyway"

You are so very right in this in any system where a bit of "green" technology is swapped in like a spare part for a broken, crazy machine. We're not going to get anywhere by switching a bulb or an appliance or a way to keep doing something with a huge waste of electricity.

If we designed our homes with the mind for convection and efficiency that we're designing our servers, and took advantage of the energy that's already there, we'd not need to waste electricity the way we do. I'm pushing land and compost and soil-building instead of 401Ks, cob building with passive solar design. I know this works because I've stood outside of a straw-bale house on a 90-degree summer day, and in the shadow of its northern wall, with a solid fence around me and plants, I was cold enough to have goosebumps. I was effectively standing in a bowl which caught the air cooled by contact with a large thermal mass which had been largely kept from the sun, and cooled further by the respirating food and comfort - I mean live plants - around me. If we remodeled or rebuilt our buildings with that in mind, we could kick fossil fuels to the curb.

I further know that this is accessible to us because I've seen young couples have a good old-fashioned house raising with friends building over the course of two weekends with cob - a mixture of clay, sand, and straw - on a foundation for just $5000. What? You think people in times past lived chained to a mortgage just to have a roof over their head? Imagine what else your energy could go to, and it'd be helping you instead of Wall Street.

I refuse to think that we must merely be more efficient about burning the world down with gas, coal, and nuclear when comfort is there to be had by intelligently harmonizing with the extant properties of the world. Only the profiteers who would be middlemen between us and some plunder going on in a poor part of the world wish it so.

Re:Um... It is about EROEI

[cdrguru]

All that works great when you have a bit of land to put the house on. While I won't say that when you are trying to fit a 1200 square foot home on a 1400 square foot lot only current construction techniques are possible, I will say that having walls two feet thick isn't going to work out all that well.

I think the first step is to empty out the cities and reduce the US population to around 10 million people. Then we can start talking about sustainable construction and green, environmentally friendly living. Trying to do this with city population density with 330 million people isn't going to work out so well.

Yes, it is pretty clear it is as simple as that. You want to have lots of people, build power plants and start building them soon because we haven't been and are going to run out of electricity. Or you can have conservation, sustainability and green living with a lot fewer people.

Understand that with 10 million people everyone could dig a hole and use it for an outhouse. When it filled up, dig another hole and move the outhouse. Natual processes and nothing more will take care of all of our farm, food, energy and human wastes. However, trying to do that with 330 million people will turn the entire country into a stinking cesspool. You have to understand what sustainability means and where the limits are. In India they are still practicing "open defecation" in rural areas, meaning taking a dump in a field which worked for them for thousands of years - only problem is they are still doing this with 100 times the population and it is in fact turning the country into a stinking cesspool.

Re:Um... It is about EROEI

[ustolemyname]

EROEI seems immaterial if the country with higher EROEI is still the one supplying the oil - after all, they're the one's taking the economic hit for that loss, not the importing country.

Re:Um... It is about EROEI

[Dasher42]

Expand your ideas of the possible, friend.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lg9qnWg9kak
http://7d.blogs.com/stuckinvt/2008/11/tiny-houses-105.html

A 22-inch wall of cob is great even at that scale if it's keeping you comfortable. If you need to build tiny, there are ways to make it quite livable. If that means being free from a huge mortgage, I'm all for it.

Can we please get bicycle tax credits?

[mallyn]

Lets get tax credits for every mile that we ride on a bicycle. That should help solve these problems. Mark

Re:Can we please get bicycle tax credits?

[ArcherB]

Lets get tax credits for every mile that we ride on a bicycle. That should help solve these problems.

Mark

Great idea! You could put an odometer on my bicycle and pay me for every mile I ride and save the world!

Pay no attention to that modified lawn mower engine hooked up to that bike over there.

Re:Can we please get bicycle tax credits?

[rwa2]

Lets get tax credits for every mile that we ride on a bicycle. That should help solve these problems.

Mark

Already done since 2009: http://www.bikeleague.org/news/100708faq.php

Ask your employer about it!

Something blowing (in the wind)

[penguin_dance]

And then charge us for how many miles we drive because gas consumption decreases. As discussed yesterday. Move us to clean energy and then tax the wind.

Re:Something blowing (in the wind)

[oGMo]

And then charge us for how many miles we drive because gas consumption decreases. As discussed yesterday. Move us to clean energy and then tax the wind.

Or not, for those with a clue. But sure, if those conspiracy theories are what give meaning to your life, keep believing them.

Re:Something blowing (in the wind)

[penguin_dance]

FYI, this is not a conspiracy theory unless you've been hiding under a rock.

Several states are testing plans to tax mileage as more people move to green or high mileage vehicles. They have become dependent on gas tax like they did on tobacco tax. When people change their habits, suddenly the government finds itself cash strapped.

And of course this isn't going to replace the gas tax...

Is there anything in there about suburbs?

[istartedi]

I don't see anything in the graphic about urban planning. If they incentivized development near light rail hubs and discouraged car-dependant suburban development it would do a lot.

First, there's the carrot of new development projects. There's the houses themselves, and the light rail. Secondly, don't tax the suburbs as that would be very unpopular and counterproductive. Instead, simply give Federal money to jurisdictions based on their ability to reduce non-walkable development. This would reduce the *supply* of this type of development. Buyers who still want 0.25 acres of grass and a 5 mile drive to the store would see their home values increase due to the supply side effect.

Done right, we could kill two birds with one stone: The real estate slump, and gasoline consumption.

Re:Is there anything in there about suburbs?

[couchslug]

Just use the Reverse Pol Pot method, forcibly relocate the population to hives, and empty the countryside.

Re:Is there anything in there about suburbs?

[Anonymous Coward]

That would require local government not whoring themselves out to developers w/ no fee incentives to build like rabbits, and cooperation and planning beyond the county boundary among power hungry city and urban planners.

Local government, when put under a microscope, can be as corrupt, or worse than the Federal and State Governments.

My cynicism runs deep. Especially since I live in Texas.

Re:Is there anything in there about suburbs?

[roman_mir]

I am a bit tired of making the same point, that it is government taxes and subsidies that destroy the economy, but this is the correct story for it and your comment is a good way to enter the discussion.

Taxes destroy infrastructure.

Infrastructure suffers due to government involvement. Imagine if there was no FDR, the recession of 1929 could go the route of the recession of 1921 and there would be no public projects and no Great Depression (which is not going to seem so great once the current one really hits with the debt and currency crisis). Imagine the federal government did not build the highway system, did not tax the airlines and did not destroy profitable private rail while laying down the roads.

There would be no subsidies to the auto industry in form of the roads, there would be much fewer people relying on personal cars for transportation. Trains and air travel would dominate and within cities there would be healthy market for profitable private transportation as well.

There would be no suburban sprawl. People would drive to work for 2 hours, they wouldn't waste those 2 hours on the road. There would be many fewer accidents and deaths and much less illness associated with sedentary life style. People and places would be within walking distance, the infrastructure would be actually sustainable without government subsidies.

The oil would not be needed in such enormous quantities. There would be much less possibility of a housing crisis, and the newly built areas would have to also build the necessary infrastructure for easy public access via rail/air/bus/etc/cab/etc.

There would be much less need for oil, so foreign policy could be much more relaxed and there could be much fewer conflicts with and within the oil rich nations.

The pollution could be much lower than it is today.

There are all these obvious benefits to NOT having government in doing business and designing and building the infrastructure if only the government could let go of the money and power that these projects bring with themselves..... but they cannot.

The highway system gives the government huge leverage against States and municipalities, allows them to dictate their local policies and politics. There are all these oil and other companies that come to the government with all this money... No way a politician could ever resist.

--

As to all this nonsense about oil making huge profits and 'not paying fair share' - lets see. Per Exxon site:

Less than 3 percent of ExxonMobilâ(TM)s earnings are from U.S. gasoline sales
ExxonMobilâ(TM)s earnings are from operations in more than 100 countries around the world. The part of the business that refines and sells gasoline and diesel in the United States represents less than 3 percent â" or 3 cents on the dollar â" of our total earnings. For every gallon of gasoline, diesel or finished products we manufactured and sold in the United States in the last three months of 2010, we earned a little more than 2 cents per gallon. Thatâ(TM)s not a typo. Two cents.

So on their US business, Exxon makes 2 cents per gallon. Do you know how much the government of USA makes on each gallon? 48 cents. NO WAY a government would give up such a lucrative racket, and all it took was to build a bunch of public unsustainable subsidized highways with all these other perks - like leverage against States, and all of this is done by taxing somebody else via direct taxes as well as indirect inflation tax, which hits anybody actually owning / earning US dollars, as with every new printed dollar, the value of all dollars go down. That's why it was important for the US government to get off the gold standard, they could not print it.

But did the public really get something good for it? Well, clearly, somebody got s

Re:Is there anything in there about suburbs?

[Dasher42]

The existing concept of the suburb is crazy and wasteful, especially with all the irrigated and chemically sprayed lawns, but you have only to turn those lawns into food gardens, to get neighbors talking, to set up things like "tool libraries" to share resources that a lot of people are up to their ears in, and make some space for people to enjoy being - and then, you get zero food miles, reduced transportation costs, and given good land management an eco-positive development.

Most of our best soil is covered with suburbs, and this is both the biggest problem and the biggest opportunity.

Re:Is there anything in there about suburbs?

[Americium]

Why do people want more expensive houses? Falling prices are good, think of electronics.

Re:Is there anything in there about suburbs?

[kenh]

How would making suburban homes more expensive help the housing market? If you imagine families leaving the suburbs for the mass-transit nirvana of urban living (because it's cheaper), who is going to buy their .25 acre of grass and 5 mile drive to the store house?

Re:Is there anything in there about suburbs?

[aztektum]

You offer an awful lot of conjecture and little empirical data to backup your arguments.

Not saying things do not need to be fixed. Just saying going backwards 100 years is not going to fix them.

Re:Is there anything in there about suburbs?

[Beyond_GoodandEvil]

lawns into food gardens, to get neighbors talking, to set up things like "tool libraries" to share resources that a lot of people are up to their ears in, and make some space for people to enjoy being
I like your ideas, perhaps we could have a cultural revolution to launch a great leap forward and get all this done in say 5 years? May I subscribe to your newsletter? Does it come in a small portable format like a book? Perhaps in red?

Re:Is there anything in there about suburbs?

[HeckRuler]

I was skeptical at first, and then I hit this:

Imagine if there was no FDR, the recession of 1929 could go the route of the recession of 1921 and there would be no public projects and no Great Depression (which is not going to seem so great once the current one really hits with the debt and currency crisis).

Which just shows that you're out of your gourd.

You're just a fear-mongering conservative trying to push your agenda, or have succumb to that ilk. Who modded this up?

Re:Is there anything in there about suburbs?

[istartedi]

Why do people want more expensive houses? Falling prices are good, think of electronics.

Because houses are leveraged. The solution to this problem is diversified non-leveraged REITs and options. Alas, I'm not aware of any non-leveraged REITs. Options are also a bit too sophisticated for some, or abused by speculators.

Long story short, most homeowners have a concentrated position in a leveraged asset. It's like having a $500k stock account, and putting $450k on FOO, with margin. It works great as long as FOO rises steadily. When FOO falls, you can lose everything so nobody wants FOO to fall.

A housing finance system based on a diversified non-leveraged REIT would solve a lot of problems. Even the options are not really necessary--they're just a "nice to have" so you can insure your "house". When you sit down and do the math on all this, you come up with a system that solves an awful lot of problems. It would take banks and insurance companies out of the equation for most people. Instead of spending the next 30 years watching your interest/principal ratio fall to zero on mortage payments; you'd watch your dividend/rent ratio approach 1 (and even exceed it) on REIT shares.

Combine this with a DRIP, and then finally people would actually welcome falling housing prices (I've been through this with a DRIP on a utility company--compounding rates trump share price. Once again, it's counter-intuitive until you do the math).

Radicly reducing the roles of banking and insurance would obviously not sit well with certain corporate elites; but I don't think there's a conpiracy here. I reallly think the plan just doesn't have much knowledge or advocacy behind it, and I bring it up whenever I can. Certainly there are some details to work out; but I think it has inherent benefits and can compete along with the traditional bank-financed purchase system.

Re:Is there anything in there about suburbs?

[NeutronCowboy]

Go live in Somalia. Please. It should be a paradise in your eyes.

Re:Is there anything in there about suburbs?

[Americium]

Just let the prices fall, let the banks fail, let people lose money. I didn't overpay for a house, so don't force me to subsidize their loss.

Re:Is there anything in there about suburbs?

[roman_mir]

Somalia is actually doing better now, after the civil war, that was brought upon by its former Communist government, so I am CONVINCED that Somalia is better in terms of future growth than the USA.

However if you want to compare the affairs of USA to somebody in the similar situation, you should really take a look at Zimbabwe or Argentina or former USSR.

Re:Is there anything in there about suburbs?

[roman_mir]

Maybe you should be more specific, when you are asking for something.

Here is a little something from last October, when I posted THOSE numbers:

October 1 2010

Gold: new high
Silver: new 30 year high
Gold stocks hit 52 week high
Oil: strong day and strong week
Dollar: dropped 13 percent from peak 3 months ago

September is done, media says: this is best September in 71 years. Dow gained 7.7%, SMP gained 8.8%.

However this month of September.

CRB Index (commodities): gained 8.7% - beat DOW and just under SMP
Soy beans: up 9.5% - beat SMP
Copper: up 10% - beat SMP
Rice: up 10% - beat SMP
Oil: up 11% - beat SMP
Corn: up 12% - beat SMP
Silver: up 13% - beat SMP
Frozen concentrated orange juice: up 13% - beat SMP
Cotton: up 17.5% - beat SMP
Sugar: up 19.3% - beat SMP

Currencies:
Swiss Frank: up 4.6%
Euro: up 7%
Australian Dollar: up 9% - beat SMP

---

Did anything change from back then, to today?

Nope. Same trends, same thing happening.

Re:Is there anything in there about suburbs?

[NeutronCowboy]

I have noticed though that you haven't moved there. Or to any other of your social utopias. I wonder if that has anything to do with the fact that they're utter shit holes with life expectancies that make the dark ages look advanced.

Re:Is there anything in there about suburbs?

[deapbluesea]

No, we're sorry, that would be a violation of the Agriculture Adjustment Act of 1938 and under the interstate commerce clause, we're going to have to force you to quit. -- Congress

Re:Is there anything in there about suburbs?

[roman_mir]

I have noticed though that you haven't moved there. Or to any other of your social utopias. I wonder if that has anything to do with the fact that they're utter shit holes with life expectancies that make the dark ages look advanced.

- bzzzzzzzt. Wrong. I am in one of the 'utopias' and no longer in North America, though I spent 16 years in Canada and USA. What else have you noticed?

Re:Is there anything in there about suburbs?

[Americium]

REITs are for rental properties or income producing properties. It's impossible to receive dividends on money you owe unless there's a negative interest rate. Buying a house is no different than buying anything else.

Re:Is there anything in there about suburbs?

[NeutronCowboy]

Really? You're living in Somalia? Maybe one of Afghanistan's/Pakistan's tribal areas? Oh, I know, I know - Antarctica? Because outside of those, there's plenty of government to go around. Even Haiti has more government now than Somalia has had in the last 20 years. You're not? Didn't think so.

Re:Is there anything in there about suburbs?

[istartedi]

I'm not sure if I follow you here. You're not being paid on money you owe. You're being paid a substitute for the interest that you'd ordinarily get from a bank. Instead of your money coming from interest paid by other borrowers, it comes from rent paid by other tenants.

Truly, "neither a borrower nor a lender be" under the system I envision. If you like, you may think of it as a form of money backed by real estate. The Rentenmark that rescued Germany from 1920s hyperinflation was, BTW, backed by real estate. The big problem with making it a true currency is that it's backed by something that's not fungible.

Re:Is there anything in there about suburbs?

[roman_mir]

Lucerne, my friend. A decentralized system, bent on reducing income taxes year to year. Something USA should have been.

Re:Is there anything in there about suburbs?

[istartedi]

Just use the Reverse Pol Pot method, forcibly relocate the population to hives, and empty the countryside

Just use the Reverse Typing method the next time you reply to a post, take a screwdriver, and pry up the letters on your keyboard in the appropriate order.

Re:Is there anything in there about suburbs?

[Americium]

So it has nothing to do with people buying a house to live in, it's for people buying houses to rent out. Rent would be lower if house prices were allowed to fall and foreclosures were foreclosed on. So how is this a solution? Unless you concern is that the inflation isn't going into houses fast enough. By tying houses to dollars, then when you print dollars, house prices go up immediately.

The gold standard worked just fine, Germany just didn't have any gold, so they were forced to use real estate, land, and other goods.

Re:Is there anything in there about suburbs?

[couchslug]

If you look at OLD suburbs ("satellite view" is useful) many of the lots were sized for the large family gardens which were commonplace. That's one of the reasons "Victory Gardens" during WWII were so effective.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victory_garden

Re:Is there anything in there about suburbs?

[couchslug]

Light rail solved the suburban commuting problem more than a century ago, before cars were commonplace. There is a reason MANY passenger rail stations in the Northeast are very old.

Rail enabled the comforts of suburbia and allows people to escape the people they didn't want to live with in the crowded cities. (Remember slums? I do!)

Rail enables convenient suburban living throughout Europe too.

Re:Is there anything in there about suburbs?

[NeutronCowboy]

Switzerland? That's your no-government utopia? ROFL. It's really hard to take you seriously when you're so fricking delusional.

Re:Is there anything in there about suburbs?

[roman_mir]

One of the few places actually, and yes, it is much freer in terms of personal freedoms and taxes than USA is.

As to your logical fallacy, of 'taking me seriously' rather than looking at the message, I already noticed it, but I am sure you are unfamiliar with the concept.

Re:Is there anything in there about suburbs?

[istartedi]

So it has nothing to do with people buying a house to live in, it's for people buying houses to rent out

You can cash your REIT shares in and buy a house after 30 years; or you can enjoy the fact that you have enough shares to pay your rent until you die. It's your choice.

Rent would be lower if house prices were allowed to fall and foreclosures were foreclosed on. So how is this a solution? Unless you concern is that the inflation isn't going into houses fast enough. By tying houses to dollars, then when you print dollars, house prices go up immediately.

My plan is not designed as a solution to the current crisis. It's a plan designed to prevent the crisis from happening again.

Plans for the current crisis are a bit irrelevant at this point anyway. It is what it is. We are stuck with too much leverage, and not enough time to unwind it.

Re:Is there anything in there about suburbs?

[ErikZ]

What's wrong with gasoline consumption?

You know we can make all we want until the sun burns out, right? It's just a string of hydrocarbons.

Re:Is there anything in there about suburbs?

[cdrguru]

We have maybe 25% more houses than are needed right now, so bulldoze them. Anyone with an "underwater" mortgage is just a delayed disaster, so we might as well move those up the schedule a bit - tell the people to just walk away from their unsellable house and force the lenders to take the hit. This will push the economy over the edge, but it is coming anyway and nothing is going to be done about it.

Might as well happen this year instead of 2014... unless you believe the world is ending in 2012. But be assured, there is no market for houses with too big a mortgage on them now and nothing can be done because the bill is over 2 trillion dollars. So having the government start a program to rescue everyone with 20 billion is a joke.

Then take all the vacant houses and bulldoze them. Nobody would buy them anyway for maybe 20-30 years until immigration maxes out all available living space again. So no more suburbs. All done. Everyone can move into the inner cities and engage in the turf war. Because it will be a shooting war if that many people move into the cities.

Re:Is there anything in there about suburbs?

[NeutronCowboy]

Hey, I like Switzerland too. One of my favorite places in the world. Government is a bit distrusting of the outside world, but people are nice. Oh wait, did I say it had a government? Surely from all your comments that government kills everything it touches, Switzerland can't possibly be any good place to live. I mean, it has an official Chronometer agency. Surely that means that all swiss chronometers are the dregs of the watch world? Or the fact that there's a motorway tax designed to fund roadways means that there are nothing but suburbs and everyone drives 2 hours to work? And are you sure you don't resent the government telling you what kind of tires to equip when? And that's just government interference I can quote from the top of my head.

The fact that Switzerland is less idiotic about its laws than the US has nothing to do with the amount of government in play and all to do with what citizens consider important when voting for politicians.

And in case you haven't noticed: your message is what makes it impossible to take you seriously. Man. Are you sure you mentioned to your neighbors what you think is the ideal government? They might want to have a word with you.

Re:Is there anything in there about suburbs?

[roman_mir]

Hey, when people vote here, they always vote to decrease income taxes, without a failure. I expect another decrease by half next year as well.

Government exists because the void is always filled with something. Did I say anything about anarchy? No. I said government must have as little power as possible and not to meddle with business and economy and not to print money.

Here is something for you: the Frank, it's around all time record high, somewhere around USD1.14. It used to be maybe 25 cents about 20 years ago.

Anyway, enjoy your regulation and money printing paradise.

Re:Is there anything in there about suburbs?

[rsclient]

Imagine a world with no government interference -- with no long private railroads (no eminent domain, no free land parcels out west, no westwards expansion). Imagine a world where cars are always slow (no roads mean no cars; no cars mean no roads). Imagine a world with no sewers, and no telephone (telephones are possible only because of telegraphs; telegraphs are only possible because of the railroads).

But imagine a world with lots smallpox, diptheria, and polio. A world with short, nasty lives. A world with plenty of Victorian virtues like polluted water and air, and childen living and dying in poverty.

Yup, that's the world for me!

Re:Is there anything in there about suburbs?

[Americium]

Oh, so you just mean make the down payment requirement 100%. The only point of requiring your savings to be in REIT shares, as opposed to any other savings method, would be to artificially skyrocket the price of houses, which would then make them unaffordable.

Re:Is there anything in there about suburbs?

[Americium]

Furthermore, it's no different than car loans. If the people can't pay back the loan, and the car drops a lot in value, the lender loses money. That's all the happening with houses.

All the big banks are insolvent, because they loaned to people that can't pay back the loans. Unless you were speculating in houses, it makes no difference to you that your house lost value, you bought it thinking it was worth the money. Unless you plan on selling it now, which means you're a speculator, the current price doesn't matter.

The solution is to let them all go bankrupt, and let all the firms that didn't make these horrible loans come in and buy up the pieces. Let Capitalism work.

Re:Is there anything in there about suburbs?

[currently_awake]

There is no shortage of food, and subsistence farming won't pay the rent/taxes. Either we lower the cost of living to match our (new, lower) income or we increase our income to pay the bills.

Re:Is there anything in there about suburbs?

[istartedi]

Oh, so you just mean make the down payment requirement 100%

You're totally not getting this. When you exchange $300k of REIT shares for a $300k house, you're not making a 100% down payment. You're exchanging a real-estate backed instrument for physical real estate.

It would be like accumulating GLD, and then selling GLD, and buying a gold bar.

I'm not suggesting requirements either. I'd simply like to see highly liquid, diversified, non-leveraged residential REITs made available.

Re:Is there anything in there about suburbs?

[dr2chase]

Where do you get these crazy ideas about "cities"? I live in a place that is not-quite-urban, that has adequate density for mass transit, walking, and cycling (the area matches Dutch towns and cities with about 50% bike ride share). Not a lot of shooting.

And as it happens, the correlation between lack of exercise and early death is huge, and it is actually more dangerous (as near as I can tell, looking at the numbers) to not get enough exercise (i.e., driving everywhere) than it is to not just live in a city, but to live in a the US cities with the highest murder rates. You might die from a non-violent heart attack instead of a stray bullet, but dead is dead, and truckloads of people die from heart disease (and stroke, and complications of diabetes, and cancers that are negatively correlated with exercise) than from violent causes.

Re:Is there anything in there about suburbs?

[Americium]

I'm getting it, put savings into stocks in the physical item you want to purchase. Of course this assumes you won't change your mind, and aren't concerned in price fluctuations due to technological advancement and other factors. It doesn't matter what instrument you use to purchase a house, both the asset and the equity are priced in dollars.

I think you are also forgetting house prices usually follow inflation IF maintenance is done. This means the physical asset loses value in real terms.

Highly liquid, diversified, non-leveraged REITs would be far too low yielding to be profitable. Unless leverage is used, the dividend payouts would be ridiculously small. Basically, if it's leveraged 20:1, the profits are 20 times higher - interest payments.

Re:Is there anything in there about suburbs?

[istartedi]

Forget about the dollars. It could be priced in gold, silver, Drachmas, or Quatloos. The currency doesn't matter.

Leverage isn't a profit amplifier. It's a price fluctuation amplifier. It's like taking cocaine to wake up and heroin to get to bed at night. Most of us would rather drink coffee and warm milk. It's healthier in the long run.

Of course maintenance has to be done. You factor that into rents. I think you're overestimating how much leverage can boost your gains. Also, with less leverage in the game, asset prices will stay lower and more stable. The cost of insuring against falling prices will be lower, because volatility will be lower.

The precious metals ETFs are non-leveraged, produce no income, and have an expense -- 0.4% for GLD. That doesn't prevent them from being a worthwhile part of an investment plan. They also have very liquid options markets.

Now, what would that market be like if you could only buy a whole London Good Delivery Bar, and everybody was taking out loans to do it?

Re:Is there anything in there about suburbs?

[Black Gold Alchemist]

The problem with this idea is that public transit consumes a lot more energy than people assume. For example, the cleanest electric light rail in the united states consumes approximately 3 times as much energy per passenger mile as driving a Tesla Roadster electric car. The best transit rail system I have reviewed is in Japan, where the system uses approximately as much energy as the average electric car would. High speed intercity trains can consume much less than cars but they are a drop in the bucket for overall consumption. Buses also use a lot of fuel, the average Bus gets around 36 MPG per person. The average car gets 23 MPG (and rising) but contains 1.54 people, so it gets around the same MPG as well. Here is a link to my source (further links in article).

Re:Is there anything in there about suburbs?

[Americium]

Of course maintenance has to be done. You factor that into rents. I think you're overestimating how much leverage can boost your gains. Also, with less leverage in the game, asset prices will stay lower and more stable.

Say you can build 1 house and make 1% profit with rents. Now say you can borrow money, leverage up 20:1 and build 20 houses. That's 1% profit on each house, or 20% profit now. All that money spent building new houses increases supply and reduces prices.

The cost of insuring against falling prices will be lower, because volatility will be lower.

This cost is the down payment, but you wanted no leverage, or 100% down payment, so there is no insurance cost involved.

The precious metals ETFs are non-leveraged, produce no income, and have an expense -- 0.4% for GLD. That doesn't prevent them from being a worthwhile part of an investment plan. They also have very liquid options markets.

Houses bought to use are not meant to be investments. There are plenty of leveraged ETFs, but you're right, they aren't investments, it's speculation or gambling that the price of a particular commodity will increase. Investments pay dividends or interest. Buying precious metals is hedge against inflation, but if we had the gold standard people would just put money in the bank and earn interest on their gold.

I don't know why you think houses are some special asset that should be treated differently than any other product I could buy or rent or lease.

Re:Is there anything in there about suburbs?

[Dasher42]

In 1943 it would have been your patriotic duty as an American: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victory_garden

It's sad to see people demonize anything outside of rampant corporate-sponsored consumerism.

Re:Is there anything in there about suburbs?

[istartedi]

This cost is the down payment, but you wanted no leverage, or 100% down payment, so there is no insurance cost involved.

Nah, nah, nah. I'm talking about averaging into something with cash purchases. If you want to call that "100% down payment", be my guest. How do you say there is no need for some form of insurance? Averaging in is a form of insurance in and of itself; but at some point you'll want to insure your investment. Option collars, for example, are a way to sell some upside in exchange for downside protection. It's a form of insurance.

I think we just have very different ways of looking at the world. It's like you were raised in a foreign country or something. I'm a 43 yo white male who was raised on the East Coast of the US, FWIW.

Anyway, ther channel of communication is just poor here. This may or may not be easier to hammer out if we were in person. I don't think we'll resolve it on this thread. I don't view houses as special. I don't buy into the gold standard either. It's got serious flaws, and that might be part of our dissonance here. Anyway, I'm hanging it up for tonight. No need to answer my questions. They're rhetorical. I'm done with this. I wish you well though.

Re:Is there anything in there about suburbs?

[roman_mir]

Imagine a world with no government interference -- with no long private railroads (no eminent domain, no free land parcels out west, no westwards expansion).

- oh, the world where actual property rights are respected you mean?

The world where cost of infrastructure would have been real and not subsidized? So that industries would have to account for the real costs and be as profitable only as the markets let them?

Imagine a world where cars are always slow (no roads mean no cars; no cars mean no roads).

- actually, it would have been the world where cars would go as fast as possible on some roads, while slower on others based on competition. Ever heard of private highways? It would be the world, where people would have to bear real costs of their habits, and more public transport would exist rather than the subsidized unsustainable infrastructure, polluting environment and causing tens of thousands of deaths and starting oil wars and destabilizing entire regions for its addiction to cheap fuel.

Yeah, that would be terrible - fewer wars, fewer deaths, fewer sickness, more efficient public transit, an actual sustainable infrastructure.

Terrible.

Imagine a world with no sewers, and no telephone (telephones are possible only because of telegraphs; telegraphs are only possible because of the railroads).

- Quite an imagination you got there.

Obviously people would just shit right under themselves, rather than allow private businesses compete for the best way to remove sewage.

Clearly (only to you) it would be impossible to develop telegraph and telephone and radio, because people are not interested in long distance communications. Who needs to be able to speak to somebody a few miles away without going there.

But imagine a world with lots smallpox, diptheria, and polio.

- oh, because people like dying from those diseases, so clearly the people (market) would not have competing solutions for the delivery of the vaccines. Vaccination idea, which started at the end of 18 century, clearly, that would not have caught on without the massive government intervention. It must have been the government officials who came up with all the different vaccines and not companies looking for profit.

So companies looking for profit would not be advertising there services, clearly. Yeah, makes so much sense.

A world with short, nasty lives.

- right, because the capitalism and industrial revolution did not reduce child mortality in 19 century by 75%. Because capitalism and industrial revolution did not increase the wealth of US in that century so much, that the standard of living went up more than any time in history before than, allowing people to eat better and safer food (cheaper too), with all that automation and efficiencies in agriculture and such nonsense ideas such as refrigeration, and that same capitalism and industrialization did not cause creation of cities and appearance of the middle class - small businesses and professionals, and did not create the need for more education, due to increased automation and specialization and it did not cause people's education to go up, and as we all know, the more educated people are not living longer, right?

A world with plenty of Victorian virtues like polluted water and air, and childen living and dying in poverty.

- right, because we all know that it is the poor nations, with all sorts of government that actually have solved their pollution and poverty problems, but of-course it is the capitalism and lack of government that caused increase of poverty and increase of pollution, why, all those improvements in efficiencies in energy usage and all those ideas about reuse of energy and materials, it would have never happened in societies that have competition in the markets. No, that's impossible.

Re:Is there anything in there about suburbs?

[Beyond_GoodandEvil]

In 1943 it would have been your patriotic duty as an American:
So was locking up the Japanese
It's sad to see people demonize anything outside of rampant corporate-sponsored consumerism.
It's sad to see people w/ no sense of history think that everything that went down during WWII as the best of ideas.

Re:Is there anything in there about suburbs?

[riverat1]

Local governments cost far less to buy than the Federal government
.

Re:Is there anything in there about suburbs?

[HeckRuler]

Dude, you are OUT OF YOUR GOURD.
It's not from 1972, that coinage act is from 1792. We have since moved away from the gold or silver standard. You know, somewhere in 200+ years since. Also, I believe the price of gold and silver have fluctuated since then. Just a little bit.

Now, onlookers and all, please notice the political stance of the OutOfGourdian. Please note how ball-to-the-walls wrong he is. If you could associate one with the other on later dates and not mode him to +4 insightful, that would be appreciated

Re:Is there anything in there about suburbs?

[Dasher42]

You're not even sticking to the topic, just blowing smoke by political association (Maoist insinuation) and discounting US history where something like victory gardens was a significant and effective solution. You seem to be trying to invent the Chewbacca offense. Do you have anything to actually say?

By your words you're liable to catch yourself in a public library calling the girl behind the counter Bolshevist, and ignoring Thomas Jefferson's opinion on her work. Now study a bit about rational thought as opposed to calling someone red so you can mindlessly bait them:

http://www.examiner.com/skepticism-in-national/carl-sagan-s-baloney-detection-kit-logical-fallacies ...and come back when you have an on-topic point.

Don't worry, be happy!

[Anonymous Coward]

I never thought I'd see a President pretty much ACTUALLY SAY THAT.

Obama's an amalgam of the worst of Jimmy Carter, Bush I, and Bush II.

Does that mean we're going to be lucky enough to have Hope and Change limited to four years?

Re:Don't worry, be happy!

[imric]

Of course! The right will ensure that we are all without hope, forever and ever, world without end, amen.

Hopeless and changeless. That IS your goal, right, righty?

Re:Don't worry, be happy!

[NeutronCowboy]

Obama summarily executed Bin Laden, and even has apparently gone so far as to mark US citizens abroad for the same summary execution.

I just knew some right-wingers would find something at fault with the way that Obama handled bin Laden. I wasn't quite aware though that it would go to this level of delusion and flat-out lies.

Restrict oil speculation

[Dracos]

If the commodities speculators weren't running amok, the price of gas (and every other commodity) would come down. I read somewhere recently that oil speculators add $.70 to the price of a gallon of gas at the pump.

Re:Restrict oil speculation

[maxume]

I read it in a Slashdot comment.

Is your source more reliable than that?

(A company like Southwest Airlines is a huge oil speculator, they spend money today to make sure that a certain amount of their future supply is available at a predictable price. Is the benefit Southwest gets from that activity really such an evil thing?)

Re:Restrict oil speculation

[roman_mir]

Government loves to blame everybody else for the inflation the government is causing by printing money.

Speculators enter markets that are hot, they do not create these markets. The markets for commodities become hot because of all the money that the government prints.

The real culprit - Federal reserve of USA as well as other national banks, which peg their currencies to the US dollar (what a joke of a 'reserve' that is.)

Sure, speculators can increase volatility in the market, but they also do at least 4 other things that are actually important:

1. They are taking other sides of the bet, they provide liquidity, which means in many cases they actually slow down the jerking movement of prices.

2. They are creating clear signals to the market what is hot, so market can respond by doing what is necessary to provide more of that product/service.

3. By shorting, the speculators bring attention to what is dangerous, what is likely to go down, so market can move resources out of that product/service.

4. Speculators are NOT all on ONE side of the trade. That's why it is NONSENSE that speculators are the CAUSE of prices going up. As many speculators are on one side of the trade, as there are on the other.

--

The actual REASON for the prices going up is the increased demand and this literally means MORE CASH that is in the system. Money = demand. When the central bank prints money, it increases the demand.

Think about it this way: if the market has 100 participants, each one has 10 dollars, then prices for things cannot actually exceed 10 dollars. If each participant has 1000 dollars, then prices cannot exceed 1000 dollars. But prices will rise to the top limit, of what people have on them to spend, this is basic stuff, it's like a law. However when the money is provided by government for free (think 0% interest rates, when the actual inflation is definitely over 9%), then there is all this high demand based on the money that is really not even earned.

Stop the money flow from the government printers and you will in fact cap the prices on commodities, products, etc.

Can you fathom this simple idea?

--
As to the prices of oil and gas being record high, I am bringing another thing to your attention:

Prices for the gas are in fact record low.

I repeat: the prices for gas have NEVER been lower than they are today.

One gallon of gas can be bought with 10 US cents. Of-course the 10 US cents must be real money, minted prior to 1968 out of silver.

That's right - if you actually had real Constitutional money, and not this worthless fiat paper, that the Fed is printing, you'd have prices for gas be around 10 cents right now, and the actual lowest price recorded was 25 cents back than, so in fact today there is DEFLATION in terms of commodities but inflation in terms of fiat money, which is my point - if you have real money, you are doing OK.

Re:Restrict oil speculation

[fahlesr1]

Speculators get blamed a lot, but they aren't the real problem. They are a convenient distraction from the real issues that government doesn't want to address, like drilling more domestically. I found John Stossel's opinion on speculators to be rather interesting. He typically does his homework.

Re:Restrict oil speculation

[Americium]

Yes, it has nothing to do with the falling value of the dollar. People should just accept less money for commodities and not raise prices in nominal terms. Gimme a break.

Re:Restrict oil speculation

[kenh]

Don't confuse the spot market price of one particular form of crude oil for the price most refineries pay for oil - the spot market is where people without options buy oil to feed their refineries.

It's like saying the commodities market is out of control because 7-11 charges so much for a bag of cookies.

Re:Restrict oil speculation

[non0score]

Yes, and it's called "hedging." Southwest doesn't "speculate" -- they "hedge" (for the visible part anyway).

Re:Restrict oil speculation

[maxume]

So what's the difference?

Re:Restrict oil speculation

[dr2chase]

And you know, if everyone decided to try as hard as they could, for one month, to not burn much gasoline, those speculators would probably lose their shirts. Car pool, ride a bike, hypermile, check your tire inflation, do whatever it takes. Even, try to run your gas tank always less than half full (we store a lot of gasoline in our tanks and drive it around). The success of their speculation depends on continuing levels of consumption, they are heavily leveraged. Talk is cheap.

Re:Restrict oil speculation

[cbeaudry]

So we do this, they come close to loosing their shirts and then... they get a bailout.

How does it help?

Re:Restrict oil speculation

[toddestan]

Speculating is buying something with the intent of selling it later for a profit. Hedging is buying something now to lock in the price.

Re:Restrict oil speculation

[ikirudennis]

This comment (and others in reply to it) are talking about cents. The price of gas is DOLLARS more than it was in the late 90s. Anyone trying to say that one factor can be eliminated to solve the problem is not understanding the whole problem.

Re:That's fuckin' ingenious!!!

[FatAlb3rt]

STFU Donnie!

Side note

[netdigger]

I just want to put it out there that this energy crises that we are having has as much to do with our habits as it does with the conflict in the middle east. We are stuck in a rut with our large cars. How many of you can fill up for under $40 and have that last for the month. We need start to drive smaller cars. You will find that your wallet will stop hurting as much.

Im not saying that we all have to go out and buy a hybrid or electric vehicle. I would caution against it. It is still expensive to manufacture those batteries and i dont think that the technology isn't there yet. Wait a few years.

Just as a tip for saving money, don't drive as much. Carpool, dust off that old bike in your garage, take the bus or train, even walk. These are all alternate modes of transportation and are a lot cheaper then driving. I personally make the effort to ride my bike more miles then I drive in a week and as a result i can fill up about once a month.

Re:Side note

[calmofthestorm]

I blame moronic urban planning for much of the late 20th century that forever locked us into the suburban, car-addicted model.

Re:Side note

[Culture20]

I used to live within three minutes of my job in the suburbs. I could easily fill up for less than $40 and have that last for a couple months back then. Then I got a better job downtown, and gas prices started rising. I thought about moving downtown, but the housing downtown is either in bad neighborhoods or too expensive (or both). The gas prices still don't force me to buy a house downtown even though they're now over $50 for a fill up once a week. No Train. No Bus. Bike, are you kidding? Walk, impossible. Carpool is out of the question with my hours. Maybe when smaller cars stop costing $10,000 more than the larger ones I'll buy one.

Re:Side note

[h4rr4r]

A mazda2 can be had for $10k or so, are you suggesting that larger cars are free?

Re:Side note

[Rei]

How many of you can fill up for under $40 and have that last for the month.

I don't know about you, but at $4/gal, that's about 600 miles for me. :)

Re:Side note

[SuricouRaven]

Gas was cheap, and the promise was too good to resist. All the convenience of city life - the ready access to jobs, entertainment, shopping - and yet with the clean air, parks and community of country life.

Re:Side note

[couchslug]

The multi-vehicle solution works well for me. Ride a motorcycle when that's the best choice, drive the F-150 when that's the best choice, or use the 460-powered F-250 for heavier hauling.

One new hybrid would cost more than many years of fuel and wouldn't be nearly as versatile. I'm a mechanic and would love to have a hybrid or PHEV to play with, have the cash to buy it outright, but that's not an economic choice at the moment.

Re:Side note

[deapbluesea]

I recently moved to a location that is within 1/4 mile of where I work. The cost of housing is so much higher that, counting my gas savings over my previous commute, I'm still losing money on rent over what I paid in gas usage. With the current economy, I'm not going to be able to buy a new car any time soon and expect to drive my truck until it hits 250k (it's halfway there now). The reason I moved was purely a safety/better neighborhood issue. When inner city housing becomes affordable relative to suburban housing, people will make the move and save gas. Until that happens, rail all you want at all those irresponsible people driving big cars, but they're probably saving money over the Prius owner that lives in downtown San Francisco and walks to almost everything they need on a daily basis.

Consequently, a little math:

Consider a car that gets 20mpg on a 15 mile daily one-way commute.

That equates to $0.20 per mile or $6 per day or ~$168/mo.

Rent near work is ~$350/mo more than 15 miles away.

This means that I would either need a car that gets less than 10mpg or gas would have to increase to $8.33 per gallon at 20mpg to make it economically feasible to move downtown. If I bought a Prius instead (assuming 40mpg), the cost of gas has to get up to $16.68 before it's economically feasible. The economic incentive to save gas doesn't really exist when the supply and demand of urban housing is factored in.

P.S. before all the pedants start pointing out cost of driving to the grocery store, etc. due to excessive anti-development activism in this area, I'm actually the same distance from all of those things as I was before. There are no stores in walking or easy biking distance. I still drive 7 miles to get to the main commercial area of town as I did before, so that really isn't a factor. It is also the anti-development fervor that has driven costs up. Go figure.

Re:Side note

[dr2chase]

How far, what city? Seriously, people are awfully quick to dismiss bikes ("are you kidding?") -- I can't tell if you're talking about a 10-mile commute, or a 30-mile commute. And yes, past a point, your only option is car.

Re:Side note

[dr2chase]

I note that the time you spend driving to work is worth nothing, so you should have no problems with the time it takes to ride a bike 7 miles to the shopping area :-).

Seriously, it's not just the cost of gasoline. You ought to be able to get a reduction on your auto insurance for the lower miles. It's not linear in distance, but it's not complete chickenfeed. If you made the effort to ride a bike whenever possible (and "possible" will expand as you spend more time on the bike) you will get a minor collateral benefit of much-improved health and physical fitness. Surely, that is worth something. Not even starting your truck some days each week, will do a lot to prolong its life, especially if you can avoid driving the little crappy trips that bikes do best.

It is probably a bit of a stretch, but a bike with an E-assist, should make those 7 miles pretty tolerable. A good cargo bike with e-assist is expensive for a bike, but really really cheap compared to a Prius, and if it takes you from 20% of trips by bike, to 80% of trips by bike, it might be worth it (it helps a lot that you're driving a truck; my car is a 18-year-old Honda Civic with busted power steering, speedometer, and AC).

Re:Side note

[FrankieBaby1986]

We are stuck in a rut with our large cars.

Agreed. Boggles my mind when I think about how, 20 years ago, a 2.0 liter four-cylinder engine in a smallish car (but heavy per today's standard) produced 80 horsepower and averaged in the tens of miles per gallon. Today a modern engine of the same size can produce around 130 to 150 HP, is in a lighter vehicle, and gets twice the mileage. How is this not enough today, when it was enough 20 years ago? Do you really need to accelerate that hard every day? Because, let's face it, you don't need a 250 HP 6 cylinder sedan to get back and forth to work.

Re:Lower Taxes & Cut Regulations. Poison the E

[lgw]

There are no "tax handouts" to the oil companies. Oil companies can depreciate their oilfield assets just like any industrial company can depreciate long-term tangible investments (factories, mines, etc). That's all.

Timing

[black6host]

If the tax breaks are eliminated, or decreased, before we are fully prepared with alternative energy sources what do you think will happen. We will pay the difference at the pump, is my opinion.

Re:Timing

[robot256]

If there is no market pressure to actually prepare the alternatives, then the government will have to pay the full cost of research, development, and deployment of the alternatives. Reducing the subsidies on gas prices will gradually push the market in the right direction so that economic forces can decide the best alternatives, rather than the politics of research and development grants. Artificially-low gas prices only perpetuate the current state of using more fossil fuels and depressing investment in alternatives.

Do you honestly think we are going to get out of this mess without paying a price closer to the actual cost of the energy we use?

Re:Timing

[Americium]

The gas prices are high, artificially high from all the inflation. Have you not noticed the billions upon billions invested by private companies in alternative energy? I would rather wait another decade until there are CHEAPER alternatives, rather than be forced to pay MORE for alternatives that aren't yet ready and use toxic materials and produce waste.

This will all be solved shortly...

[XxtraLarGe]

...as soon as Obama's High Speed Bus Plan gets put into place!

Re:At least it's a plan

[countertrolling]

Then you should fire your broker... Smart people are making billions from it

Rare earth minerals?

[hawguy]

I didn't see anything in his presentation about the rare earth minerals that are (currently) needed to produce all of those "green" electric cars. Does the US have enough rare earth reserves to put all of these cars on the road, or will we be dependent on China?

Re:Rare earth minerals?

[JonySuede]

you have more than enough but due to some Nimby's you cant mine them....

Re:Rare earth minerals?

[michaelwigle]

... and that's not likely to change any time soon. So far as I know, there isn't any way to mine for them without doing some pretty significant ecological damage to region where you mine. China has gotten away with it by pretty much ignoring the health hazards to the workers and the surrounding area. That's not as likely to fly in the U.S. This also brings up the dramatic drop in cost predicted. Seeing as how China pretty much controls the market, we can't predict future prices without asking them what they intend to charge us in the future. We're just changing one foreign dependence for another.

Re:Rare earth minerals?

[kf6auf]

You necessarily don't need lots of rare earth elements to make an electric car. Sure, when Toyota was designing the Prius in the mid 1990s, they chose to go with rare-earth magnets in their motors because they were the latest, fanciest, lightest magnets you could buy. On the other hand, Tesla Motors (and other companies) in the 2000s took a more cautious direction and built their propulsion motors without permanent magnets, therefore using no rare-earth elements there (the power windows probably still have rare-earth magnets, just like in every other modern car). Instead, Tesla Motors went back to the induction motor, originally invented by, you guessed it, Nikola Tesla in 1888. Rare earth problem solved.

References: http://www.economist.com/blogs/babbage/2011/04/induction_motors

Re:Rare earth minerals?

[SuricouRaven]

They might do like OPEC does with the oil. As soon as some non-Chinese companies are getting production onlined, China can drop the price down and force them out of business. Then raise the price again once the threat of competition is over.

This entire graph is built on a series of lies

[WillAffleckUW]

First, we already know from various scientific papers, that you can use wind energy to provide power for full scale freight trains in Canada, using fuel cell engines, and do so while reducing both carbon emissions and particulate pollution. Economies of scale kick in, you just split the H20 into fuel cell engine components at the wind farms along the route, which also allows you to handle the variable nature of wind.

Second, it supposes that our insane blockade of Cuba and other countries cane ethanol will continue, and that we will continue to divert corn food/feed crops to ethanol with massive farm and energy subsidies that are unsustainable - the most anti-capitalist thing we could be doing.

Third, it assumes that our country won't shift from using mostly air travel (high energy) to rail travel along the dense urban corridors in the East, South, and West. It also ignores Boeing's and SA's and Airbus higher mpg planes and jets and the use of turboprops and algae/switchgrass biodiesel to get twice the air miles using mostly alternative non-oil-based jet and turboprop fuels.

It is an insane plan written by deadenders who fail to understand that the world has already changed, and that all our exports and imports already have a carbon tax imposed on them - when we sell to NZ, Australia, Canada, Mexico, South America, and the EU we get charged for our lack of a carbon tax and end up paying a higher amount of taxes on the exports - and the imports already have a carbon tax built into them, which we don't get a refund for, since we lack a carbon tax.

EPIC FAIL.

Re:This entire graph is built on a series of lies

[hawguy]

First, we already know from various scientific papers, that you can use wind energy to provide power for full scale freight trains in Canada, using fuel cell engines, and do so while reducing both carbon emissions and particulate pollution. Economies of scale kick in, you just split the H20 into fuel cell engine components at the wind farms along the route, which also allows you to handle the variable nature of wind.

Can you point to some of these papers? In particular the wind-power one. Large scale wind farms are just that - large scale so I'm curious how maintenance of a thousand turbines fits into the economics. Plus I'd like to see studies about environmental effects of these large scale wind farms.

Second, it supposes that our insane blockade of Cuba and other countries cane ethanol will continue, and that we will continue to divert corn food/feed crops to ethanol with massive farm and energy subsidies that are unsustainable - the most anti-capitalist thing we could be doing.

Agreed - using food crops for fuel is a bad idea in many ways and is likely a net loss in energy.

Third, it assumes that our country won't shift from using mostly air travel (high energy) to rail travel along the dense urban corridors in the East, South, and West.

The graph only goes out to 2030 - there's not likely going to be a large scale shift to rail by then because there's likely going to be the infrastructure. California's much touted high speed rail project isn't scheduled to be done until 2020 at the earliest, and I'm certain that it will be be completed by then (only 9 years from now). There's still plenty of political, economic, and environmental wrangling that will go on before the first shovel hits the ground. And that's just one project among many that would have to be completed before a large scale shift can happen.

Re:This entire graph is built on a series of lies

[h4rr4r]

There is not much maintenance on wind turbines these days. The environmental impact is damn low since the blades are honking huge so the birds avoid them.

Re:This entire graph is built on a series of lies

[WillAffleckUW]

Can you point to some of these papers? In particular the wind-power one. Large scale wind farms are just that - large scale so I'm curious how maintenance of a thousand turbines fits into the economics. Plus I'd like to see studies about environmental effects of these large scale wind farms.

I could if you had ScienceDirect or some university alumni access to online scientific journals. I get autofeed of various scientific papers in my Energy and Power default searches. Otherwise, you need to go to a college or university library like everyone else.

We're already shifting to rail in a big way - the highest ROI in stocks has been for rail lines, and you can see it in the US job creation numbers too, split out by sector (caveat: I own broad energy mutual funds and direct investments in coal firms)

Re:This entire graph is built on a series of lies

[WillAffleckUW]

oh, as to Cali's high speed rail - there is already increased rail ridership, but most trains (transportation sector) are used to move goods, which is way up (stock sector analyses, mostly proprietary to various investment firms, but rebroadcast on CNBC, CBC, Bloomberg, etc).

Re:This entire graph is built on a series of lies

[drinkypoo]

Wind power is the easy part. Practical fuel cells have yet to be demonstrated. They either cost too much, don't last long enough, are too fragile, or some combination thereof.

Re:That's fuckin' ingenious!!!

[W1sdOm_tOOth]

He peed on the Dude's rug!!!

Oil company "subsidies"

[Kohath]

Detailed here:

1) oil depletion allowance, [which is only available to smaller, independent companies, not "big oil"]
2) expensing indirect drilling costs, [which is an accelerated expensing schedule. It changes the timing of expense writeoffs, not the amount.] and
3) a tax credit for taxes paid to foreign nations during foreign operations (foreign tax credit) [which every multinational company gets, not just oil companies.]

When you hear about oil company "subsidies", this is what they're talking about.

Re:Oil company "subsidies"

[fred fleenblat]

4) free military interventions in oil-rich but politically unfriendly nations.

Re:Oil company "subsidies"

[Ichijo]

Don't forget minimum parking requirements and non-user fees (sales taxes, etc.) used to finance freeway construction!

Re:Oil company "subsidies"

[Solandri]

Those subsidies are literally a drop in the bucket. Obama stated the petroleum industry gets $4 billion/yr in subsidies and tax breaks. In 2009, the U.S. used 18.7 million barrels of oil per day. That's 6.83 billion barrels per year. The subsidy works out to $4 / 6.83 barrels = $0.586 per barrel. From one barrel of oil, we get 10 gallons of diesel, 19.4 gallons of gasoline.

So ignoring all the other uses for the oil, the subsidy works out to $0.586 / (10 + 19.4 gallons) = 2 cents per gallon of diesel or gasoline. While getting rid of them may be the right thing to do, they're not going to change the cost nor demand for petroleum energy in the slightest.

[Insert Relevant 1984 Allusion]

[TemperedAlchemist]

This is the biggest piece of propaganda crap I have seen from the US government in a long time. They're telling us that century-old energy should still be used because of some shitty evidence and the reasoning of a drunk toddler. Talk about depressing. Basically, they're simply advertising their anti-science stance.

You want to know why Skynet took over the world and tried to blow it up? You would too if you saw how bloody stupid the US government is.

Save $3000

[Sporkinum]

I like the fact they post that the more efficient mileage will save $3000 over the life of the car. So I should spend $15000 more than I just spent so I can save $3000. Doesn't sound like a good deal to me.

BTW, I went from car that averaged 30 mpg to one that averages 20. I enjoy having 300hp vs 130hp, and not having car payments.

Re:Save $3000

[kenh]

Notice how "life of car" is not defined, nor is the cost of the fuel saved over the life of the car. At todays oil prices $4/gal) and with an average car life of 10 years, that's 75 gallons less a year. If we project oil will cost $6/gal in 2020, that makes the savings about 50 gallons per car per year

I wonder what gas prices will be in 2020? The white house must have numbers they used for this info graphic, right?

Re:Save $3000

[Americium]

Don't forget that's $15,000 taken out of the economy that could be used to invest in future technologies, so you really lose twice.

Re:Save $3000

[NeutronCowboy]

Fair enough. You also just lost your right to bitch about gas prices.

Re:Save $3000

[ErikZ]

Interesting. Using that logic, truck drivers don't have the right to bitch about gas prices.

Re:Save $3000

[NeutronCowboy]

Not quite. Truck have certain job requirements that make it impossible to use a Yaris. However, making the choice that you want the gas guzzler to transport you and your groceries around instead of the Yaris does mean that you accept gas as a significant part of your motoring cost. You knew what you were getting yourself into, and need to live with your choice instead of forcing me to subsidize your lifestyle.

Re:Save $3000

[Sporkinum]

I wasn't bitching. The point is that even getting worse mileage, I'd spend less than buying a new econo car.

BTW, our 30 mpg car, a Saturn, we bought new in 2000. Right after buying our "new" car this year, a 2002 Cadillac STS, we gave the old car to my mother in law since her old one died. She didn't have to spend anything, and we spent way less than the cheapest new car.

The same thing applies on houses. If I sold my house and moved closer to my job, I would never get back the difference in gas money it would cost me to buy a different residence. (daily commute is about $7 in gas at current rates.)

Re:Lower Taxes & Cut Regulations. Poison the E

[causality]

If Obama's energy strategy doesn't involve tax handouts to the oil companies and shortsighted environmental rules then I don't support it.

Of course, I'm retarded so I was probably going to vote for a Republican anyway...

The retards (or if you want to be polite, the misled) are the ones who keep supporting this Democrat-Republican duopoly that's gotten us nowhere, eroded liberty, and steadily run the nation into the ground for the last several decades. They don't even pretend to be our servants anymore.

Granted, it's a masterpiece of social engineering because it exploits a few simple principles without trying to be overly elaborate. It's classic divide-and-conquer: get the voters bickering over relatively trivial issues, each "side" thinking the other "side" is a bunch of morons who don't understand the facts, meanwhile all of the important decisions are made by the corporatocracy which can afford media campaigns, lobbyists, and real representation. It exploits the baser facets of human nature that date back to our hunter-gatherer days: members of my group good, outsiders bad, us against them. Isn't it funny how the status quo never really changes, it just becomes more so, just moves farther down the path it's already on? This is why.

Here's the failure of basing an educational system on memorization and authority instead of principle and discovery: most people would recognize why a duopoly with a stranglehold on an entire market is undesirable, why it guarantees that customers get screwed. Those same people need to have it pointed out to them that a duopoly with a strangehold on the entire political process is worse, that with money and power the stakes are higher than with money alone, that the voters get screwed quite badly.

Not a speculation problem

[Quila]

Speculation does not exist in a magic vacuum. For every point speculated for higher prices, there's essentially someone else who speculated a point for lower prices. You can't make a bet with no one, you need someone to take that bet.

Don't believe the excuse of the day meant to distract from the government's failures.

If you want to lower price, think taxes. Direct taxes on gas average 50 cents per gallon. On top of that, the oil companies are heavily taxed, Exxon alone paid over $26 billion last year in taxes, half its profits. Who pays corporate income tax in the end? You do, by paying more for that corporation's products.

Re:Not a speculation problem

[h4rr4r]

Sounds great, gas will be cheap and we will have no roads on which to drive our cars. Any other genius ideas?

Re:Not a speculation problem

[xaxa]

If you want to lower price, think taxes. Direct taxes on gas average 50 cents per gallon.

In my country, the tax is about US$5 per gallon.

Your government failed by tying you to your cars. For many people in Europe a car is a common luxury, a convenience, but not a necessity.

(Also, where do you thing those 50s go? They don't just disappear, if there was no gas tax the money would need to come from somewhere else.)

Re:Not a speculation problem

[Americium]

And think of all the new exploration Exxon could do with that money, so we really lose twice. Once for the current price, and again in the future because of the reduced exploration.

Re:Not a speculation problem

[Zan Lynx]

I just found out this week that the US government has been spending money from the gas taxes on mass transit while letting the road infrastructure suffer at the same time they're bleating about not having enough tax money to keep the roads in good repair. So in a sense that 50 cents did disappear. It hasn't all gone into road maintenance, that's for sure.

The federal government needs to stop wasting the money on mass transit that no one rides. If that mass transit was, you know, actually useful and desirable it wouldn't need tax money to prop it up. In a corporation it'd be a criminal waste of money to keep funding buses and trains that have less than 10% ridership. It'd be more efficient to have a fleet of taxi vans on call. Trains could be cut down in size, run by computer and routed on demand like internet packets. This would save money. But, funnily enough, you never see a government project ask for fewer tax dollars or fewer employees.

And what is the federal government doing wasting its money on local mass transit subsidies anyway? Interstate stuff like the highways makes sense. California benefits from Wyoming having good interstates, but California has no interest in New York having high-speed rail. If high-speed rail is so great, commuters will be lining up to pay the unsubsidized ticket prices and investors will be lining up to put their money in for a share of the massive profits.

Re:Not a speculation problem

[currently_awake]

When gas hits $12 a gallon I expect you'll be out riding the bus, along with all your rich neighbors. Gas companies don't spend a fixed percent of income on exploration, they figure out how much to spend to maximize their profits and set gas prices to pay for it. If you lower gas taxes they will just pocket the new money.

Re:Not a speculation problem

[dr2chase]

References for your claims, please. What I've read suggests that gas taxes do not cover the expenses of maintaining and operating the roads (Road Work, Brookings Institution). In addition, the mass transit where I live not only runs full, when they plan to work on the Longfellow Bridge, they will close car lanes to keep the subway line running, because it has higher capacity and carries more people. Where mass transit works, if it were not for mass transit, we would need far more roads (expensive eminent domain) or have worse traffic jams (Boston, famous for its smooth and polite traffic) or perhaps all switch to bicycles, Chinese style (works for me, but not for most people).

I am told, also, by a colleague, eminent computer scientist, MIT grad, and long-time area resident, that the T in Boston appears to be carrying as many people as it can at rush hour -- the trains are as long as the platforms, and they appear to be running on minimum headway. Acela between Boston and NYC appears to cover its operating costs (not sure about debt service), charges a relatively high price for a ticket (there are busses that are much cheaper), and on the days that I have taken it, runs full or nearly so.

Re:Not a speculation problem

[slashqwerty]

Who pays corporate income tax in the end? You do, by paying more for that corporation's products.

The price is set by supply and demand. When demand far exceeds supply, as it does with oil, taxes don't figure into the price, they just cut into the oil company's very substantial profits.

I don't know where you come up with the $26 billion figure. What I have found is Exxon claiming they pay substantial taxes and proving it by pointing to sales taxes and payroll taxes.

Re:Not a speculation problem

[Anonymous Coward]

Exxon paid taxes? Who is their accountant? Can't be very good.

"Exxon tries to limit the tax pain with the help of 20 wholly owned subsidiaries domiciled in the Bahamas, Bermuda and the Cayman Islands that (legally) shelter the cash flow from operations in the likes of Angola, Azerbaijan and Abu Dhabi. Exxon has tens of billions in earnings permanently reinvested overseas."
http://www.forbes.com/2010/04/01/ge-exxon-walmart-business-washington-corporate-taxes_2.html

Well - maybe not so bad after all. Exxon apparently got a refund in 2009, but

"In any case, the original story is wrong in this respect: According to the 10-K, a screenshot of which is provided below, ExxonMobil didn't have a zero-tax liability in 2009; it was actually owed $46 million by the IRS, against $15.1 billion in foreign taxes owed. As Jeffers says, that may not be the case; but it's what ExxonMobil told the SEC, its shareholders, and the world. And since the firm refuses to share its actual tax numbers with the public, it's all we have to go by."
http://motherjones.com/mojo/2010/04/exxon-mobil-paid-zero-income-tax-offshore%20shelter-wal-mart-general-electric-forbes

Re:Not a speculation problem

[maxume]

Their cost of revenues is about $0.70 on the dollar, and they have further expenses of about $0.15 on the dollar. Any talk about their profits or income taxes causing high gas prices ignores the fact that those things are only potentially 20% of the total wholesale price of oil/gas.

Re:Not a speculation problem

[cbeaudry]

They pay taxes, but not in the USA and as you stated, sales taxes and payroll taxes do not count as Exxon paying taxes in my book.

http://money.cnn.com/galleries/2010/news/1004/gallery.top_5_tax_bills/2.html

Re:Not a speculation problem

[slashqwerty]

Taxes add to the price

You blindly make this statement without backing it up. That general rule is true in most industries but when it comes to oil the price is mostly profit to oil companies. When there is a huge discrepancy between the cost to produce and the sale price, a small tax will have no effect on the sale price. It will simply cut into oil company profits.

Re:Lower Taxes & Cut Regulations. Poison the E

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course, I'm retarded so I was probably going to vote for a Republican anyway...

Why are such childish arguments usually made by those attacking Republicans? I wonder if it's simply the age disparity; kids tend to be liberal, adults conservative.

How far we (should) have come...

[geekmux]

It still floors me how far we've come in the last 20 years in the computer industry. By comparison, we should be beam-me-up-Scotty teleporting by now, or at least running 1000% more efficient than 30MPG. Gee, I wonder which one of the greedy fuckers in the oil industry is paying off anyone and everyone to keep all that technology under wraps.

Oh, and nice collection of industry-stifling patents you got there too...

Re:How far we (should) have come...

[kenh]

"Oh, and nice collection of industry-stifling patents you got there too..."

Patents are public documents, care to point them out?

Maybe you should stop listening to 'Coast-to-coast' every night...

Re:Lower Taxes & Cut Regulations. Poison the E

[lowflying]

So how do I parse these "liberal guys" from CATO, published in Forbes, saying that oil and gas firms get special tax breaks?

"Another significant tax break allows companies to accelerate the deductions of the costs of labor and various other inputs associated with drilling oil or gas wells. Now, there's nothing wrong with deducting the cost of doing business from one's tax bill. In other industries these expenses would be capitalized and deducted over time as income is earned. But in the oil and gas sector, the tax code allows oil and gas firms to deduct 70% of these expenses in the very first year of a well's operation and the remainder over the next five years."

Or this guy over at The Volokh Conspiracy claiming that:

"The best example is the percentage depletion allowance which, as applied in some cases, enables oil companies greater depreciation than the value of the initial investment."

Because, I wouldn't want to look dumb and uneducated, thereby hurting my claim.

Re:Lower Taxes & Cut Regulations. Poison the E

[Shompol]

$ perl -p -e 's/liberal/OTHERGUY/g; s/conservative/liberal/g; s/OTHERGUY/conservative/g;'
Hey don't let facts get in the way of a good liberal rant. If you backup their claims with facts they will look dumb and uneducated. Thus hurt their primary claim that I am liberal because I am smarter then the conservatives.

Hey don't let facts get in the way of a good conservative rant. If you backup their claims with facts they will look dumb and uneducated. Thus hurt their primary claim that I am conservative because I am smarter then the liberals.

Re:Lower Taxes & Cut Regulations. Poison the E

[h4rr4r]

Kids can't vote so I don't believe you are correct on that one.

Who made that graphic?

[vanyel]

I got my Leaf a few weeks ago, and that graphic looks like it came right off the Leaf customer web site (where you login to see all the data the Leaf uploads about energy usage etc, "Carwings"): the colors, the style, the fonts.

Not that I disagree with it...just sayin'...

Yet these jerks were crawling up GWBs ass

[Shivetya]

about prices when they exceeded $3 and nearly had a cow when they were at $4.

Just wow.

They don't concern themselves with current gas prices; watch this change in months leading to the election; because it doesn't fit their model. See, we, the public are too ignorant, too stupid, etc, to do what is right so those who are obviously much smarter than us have to "hurt" us because they love us so much, even though we don't really deserve it.

The sad part is, the people who propose policies rarely would ever adhere to them for their personal consumption. Thats for the little people, leaders need exceptions to rules and laws to be effective, y'know, after all they are so much better and smarter.

Re:Lower Taxes & Cut Regulations. Poison the E

[tripleevenfall]

What's retarded is that we can be virtually assured any new strategy will be devoid of meaningful investment in viable alternative fuels.

We might see more good money thrown after bad (ethanol) but we aren't going to see a Manhattan/Apollo project around cheap full electric vehicles and corresponding upgrades to the power grid, which is what we really need.

Re:That's fuckin' ingenious!!!

[sydsavage]

You think the rug pissers did this?

I'll bite

[Daetrin]

I can currently fill up my tank for about $40 (9 gallons * $4.20 or so a gallon.) With my Prius (which apparently i shouldn't have bought) that gets me about 400 miles a tank, which lasts me around two weeks.

Now i certainly could get that down to one refill a week if i tried some alternate forms of transportation. Let's see, the commute to work is definitely well over half of my fuel usage so i'd have to start there. I don't have a bike, but if i was willing to buy one and learn how to use it Google maps says i could get to work in.... a little over an hour and a half (although the suggested route is two hours for some reason.) Okay, scratch that, how about public transit? Google says... two hours and ten minutes.

So if i wanted to save $40 a month in gas i could spend over three hours a day biking or over four hours a day riding the bus. I actually had to do the bus thing for a week or two between when my old car got totaled and when i bought the Prius. It really sucked. And even if that wasn't far longer than i'm willing to spend on my commute google says the bus fare would come to $5 each way, and from what i can tell getting a pass would cost more than $40 a month.

I could move closer, but it would be hard to find anyplace as cheap where i'm living now that was closer, and anyways any distance i cut off my commute would just lengthen my girlfriend's commute by a similar amount, providing a net gain of nothing.

I'm obviously not in the best situation for alternate forms of transit, but i don't think i'm in the worst case either. If you want large numbers of people to use public transit or bike we'd have to entirely restructure our cities or actually spend money on building more public transit. As it is i'm saving far more money from having switched to the kind of electric/hybrid car you say isn't worth it than i would from the alternatives you do suggest.

Re:Lower Taxes & Cut Regulations. Poison the E

[rsilvergun]

Pffft! Facts! You can use facts to prove anything that's even remotely true!

Already hit peak oil... Mad-Max didn't happen

[grassy_knoll]

Saw this recently:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/may/02/environmental-fixes-all-greens-lost

Last week something astonishing happened: Fatih Birol, the chief economist of the International Energy Agency, revealed that peak oil has already happened. "We think that the crude oil production has already peaked, in 2006." If this is true, we should be extremely angry with the IEA. In 2005 its executive director mocked those who predicted peak oil as "doomsayers". Until 2008 (two years after the IEA now says it happened) the agency continued to dismiss the possibility that peak oil would occur.

But this also raises an awkward question for us greens: why hasn't the global economy collapsed as we predicted? Yes, it wobbled, though largely for other reasons. Now global growth is back with a vengeance: it reached 4.6% last year, and the IMF predicts roughly the same for 2011 and 2012. The reason, as Birol went on to explain, is that natural gas liquids and tar sands are already filling the gap. Not only does the economy appear to be more resistant to resource shocks than we assumed, but the result of those shocks is an increase, not a decline, in environmental destruction.

The problem we face is not that we have too little fossil fuel, but too much. As oil declines, economies will switch to tar sands, shale gas and coal; as accessible coal declines, they'll switch to ultra-deep reserves (using underground gasification to exploit them) and methane clathrates. The same probably applies to almost all minerals: we will find them, but exploiting them will mean trashing an ever greater proportion of the world's surface. We have enough non-renewable resources of all kinds to complete our wreckage of renewable resources: forests, soil, fish, freshwater, benign weather. Collapse will come one day, but not before we have pulled everything down with us.

Article goes on a bit, but the point seems to be expectations of a mad-max style scenario may be misplaced.

Re:Already hit peak oil... Mad-Max didn't happen

[bunratty]

I don't think anyone expected an immediate horrible crisis upon hitting peak oil. When we hit peak oil, we would see prices rise dramatically as supply cannot keep up with demand. Isn't that what we're seeing?

Re:Already hit peak oil... Mad-Max didn't happen

[HeckRuler]

Yeah, and then the world economy collapsed. When shit starts to fall apart, the weakest links break first. We find where the bubbles are. Everything takes a hit and our economies cool down. Enough so that oil demand slacks off too. But oil is assuredly going to go back up. Until the next bubble.

This is going to be a pretty viscous cycle for a little while until a) There are no more real bubbles and everything is priced more or less accordingly, b) the economy doesn't cool in the downtime. Then the rising price of oil is REALLY going to tighten belts. Like, I'm going to have to finally get that electric car.

Re:Already hit peak oil... Mad-Max didn't happen

[Surt]

Passing peak oil doesn't mean a mad max scenario. I don't know who thought it would, and obviously it wasn't anyone with much sense. Actually running out (or, let's say, worldwide production dropping to 10% of today's level) is what would (potentially) trigger that. And even then, it depends on the extent to which we've been able to move our transportation economy to function on a different energy supply before it happens.

Re:Already hit peak oil... Mad-Max didn't happen

[rubycodez]

no, the only thing making prices rise is speculators. ,br/>
there is no shortage of fossil cheap fuels on this planet. It was a laughable lie during the 70s oil embargo, it is still so now.

Smart to Import Oil

[retroworks]

Accepting as fact that oil reserves are finite, we should be importing more, not less. The reserves will be more valuable later. When the Arab oil runs dry, they can buy oil from us at a much higher price based on the scarcity. If there were only two canteens available for a hike across the desert, would your policy be to consume your own canteen of water first?

Re:Smart to Import Oil

[Americium]

So we should waste money that could be used for research to stockpile old technology, with the hope that new technology doesn't replace it before we can sell it and turn a profit? If this was in anyway a good idea, there would be plenty of private companies offering these services.

Re:Smart to Import Oil

[Databass]

The analogy is closer to, you are in a desert. You have $1000 on you. Do you give the other guy the $1000 for his canteen, or do you spend it on a solar-powered moisture condenser from local Jawas?

Re:Smart to Import Oil

[Confusador]

Welcome to the world of futures speculation! What if, instead of your scenario, we instead work to decrease the demand for oil in the future, thereby dropping the price. In that case, we'd be better off using our oil now while it's expensive, and buy theirs once it's cheap. Or we could do some of both, and hedge our bets. How you want to allocate your resources depends entirely on how effective you think the renewable energy crowd is going to be in coming up with competing solutions, and since there's likely to be someone who disagrees with you, you can actually put up money to make that bet.

Re:Smart to Import Oil

[currently_awake]

The arab countries won't be importing oil, most of their population is making minimum wage or less and the rich will move to where the new oil is found. We know the oil will run out eventually, it's just a matter of the price of gas when we switch. I'd rather switch before the price becomes too high to afford than after, it will hurt less.

40% clean energy?

[Sir_Eptishous]

The graphic says electricity generated today is 40% "clean energy". With a number that high I assume they are including nuclear and natural gas power plants, hydroelectric, etc.

credentials?

[hort_wort]

I notice a lot of the comments here are getting modded up for putting down this plan. Here's my question: if you don't like the plan, what are your qualifications and how much time did you spend studying the problem?

The current Secretary of Energy is a Nobel Laureate and it's his job to make these plans. Is the claim that he's incorrect or purposefully lying to us?

Re:credentials?

[ErikZ]

"Hey, people are bitching about high gas prices, bang out a paper showing them that it's not a bad thing."

If anything, ivory tower credentials would work against you in such an endeavor.

Re:Lower Taxes & Cut Regulations. Poison the E

[Culture20]

Kids can't vote so I don't believe you are correct on that one.

Kids these days are kids until they're in their late 20's. I kid you not.

About half of federal gas taxes go to roads

[Quila]

The rest goes to other pet projects. The federal gas tax revenue is a classic source for pork funding. I doubt the states are much more concerned with spending the money where it's supposed to be spent, on roads.

And that doesn't count the other built-in taxes that go straight to fund the spending sprees of the politicians.

Re:About half of federal gas taxes go to roads

[h4rr4r]

So they have all this money to spend, but for some reason have to keep borrowing more and more?

So is there too much tax money collected or not enough? From what I see if they have to borrow that means not enough.

Re:About half of federal gas taxes go to roads

[deapbluesea]

So is there too much tax money collected or not enough?

Wrong question. Look at the deficit instead. http://gailtheactuary.files.wordpress.com/2011/04/government-receipts-and-expenditures.png. Note the mostly steady increase in expenditures as revenue dropped. Also note the drop in revenue does not correspond with any tax cuts or "spending in the tax code". The problem here is that we are willing to count 1% reductions in the growth of spending as a spending cut when the actual tax revenues have dropped as a result of the financial meltdown. This is what happens when the real world intrudes on politics. They ignore the real world and keep playing games as usual.

Tax increases aren't going to fix a steadily increasing expenditure unless you propose steadily increasing taxes or you have a steadily increasing economy. Since we currently have neither, the answer is to spend less. If you tax more, the economy grows more slowly and that upward trend becomes a horizontal or downward trend instead. If you spend less, the upward expenditure trend become horizontal and everything will be fine eventually. It's the idea that we can grow our way out of a deficit by having higher growth rate that spending increase rate that has failed us here, not tax receipts.

Re:Lower Taxes & Cut Regulations. Poison the E

[h4rr4r]

Only because you are now in your 30s or 40s. People have been saying that crap since we have kept records. Let us remember Socrates was put to death for corrupting the youth.

You know what a grant is, right?

[kenh]

"(Allison Transmission) It’s a business that is creating jobs making transmissions for hybrid vehicles after a boost from a matching grant out of the President’s clean energy investments."

So the President is trumpeting the creation of jobs through the use of Gov't grants? The matching grants make the transmissions Allison makes cost significantly less, because the taxpayer is GIVING Allison free money to make them cheaper - what happens when we stop giving Allison free money? Will their transmissions be competitive then?

Giving companies free money subverts the market, causes companies to do things that otherwise wouldn't make economic sense, and the companies will stop the activity once the subsidies end and they must bear the full cost.

Take a look at all the subsidies the Gov't is heaping on buyers of hybrids, and now add to that the subsidies the hybrid manufacturers are getting and you see quickly that they make no economic sense - if they did, the subsidies wouldn't be needed.

Re:You know what a grant is, right?

[Americium]

And 5 years ago it was subsidies for SUVs, which helped increase the gas price. Now that's it's high, let's subsidize technology that isn't ready yet. They certainly are good at wasting money.

Re:You know what a grant is, right?

[SuricouRaven]

The idea is to get economy of scale to kick in. Use the subsidies to get production up until the unit-cost comes down enough that the subsidies are no longer needed. Doesn't usually work out so cleanly in practice, but that's the idea.

Oil

[frisket]

...requesting Congress to shift tax breaks from oil producers...

Why the fuck do oil producers get tax breaks? Apart from the fact that their puppets (Bush père and Bush fils) ran the show for so many years.

Re:Oil

[ErikZ]

For the same reason states get federal highway funds.

Control.

Re:Lower Taxes & Cut Regulations. Poison the E

[WillAffleckUW]

Mod Parent ROFLMAO +42 Funny

Summary for the TL;DR

[istartedi]

It's a long screed. The relevant part is the first paragraph in his linked post. His claim is that "taxes kill infrastructure" because FDR subsidized auto companies at the expense of rail.

The auto corporations lobbied the government. That's what killed the rails, not taxes. These Libertarians would have you blame government for the fact that government is corrupted by corporations!

The answer is not to play into the corporation's hands, but to build a bulwark against further corporate influence, before they dismantle the only thing that has ever defended us against them.

If they have their way, we'll be back to unlimited workweeks, no minimum wage, no pollution controls, etc.

Re:Summary for the TL;DR

[roman_mir]

These Libertarians would have you blame government for the fact that government is corrupted by corporations!

- yes. It is the fact that a business will always try to find the easiest route to make money.

If the easiest route is to lobby the government, than that's what it will do. In absence of that, the companies must compete for customers, as the government will not be there supplying the customers to them via various laws/subsidies/taxes/regulations.

What do you think is better for a customer, more or less competition among the businesses that supply him with products/services? The mere presence of government force, which makes the economy its business, which prints money, which sets interest rates, which creates regulations (and yes, regulations include minimum wage, pollution controls, subsidies, taxes/tax breaks, everything), the mere presence of such a government around is an open invitation not to compete on the market, but instead to compete in the halls of high government offices. Why do you want that?

As to minimum wage, etc. - those should not exist.

Very few people actually work at minimum wage, but there are millions of unemployed people who could find jobs if there were no regulations such as that one and there was no money printing.

Do you know what minimum wage really does? It only does one thing: removes certain types of jobs, that cannot be profitable at whatever the rate, that the minimum wage is set at. The losers? People who cannot get the products/services that such jobs would provide. People who cannot find their first job and are stuck jobless. Society, as it has people who are unproductive and are not working and seek government support.

--

Do you know who the real enemy is? It is not "Libertarians", who are against minimum wage.

It is the government, which on one hand sets the minimum wage and on the other prints money, so that the money loses value.

Do you know what the minimum wage was before 1970s? $1.50. Do you know what that bought? 6 gallons of gas, or 1.5 ounces of silver. Do you know how much you need to make today to buy that? Do you know why the prices are going up in dollars?

Do you understand that in real money - gold/silver, the prices for gas are lowest in history of USA? 10 cents per gallon of gas (well, if the dime is silver and minted prior to 1968).

--

As to oil prices - do not let the government to set the tone, it is not the speculators or oil companies who are to blame. It is not even the increase in global demand or instability in the Middle East.

It is money printing only.

It is not the increase of demand, because the market responds to the increase of demand by increasing of the supply.

It is not the speculators because the speculators enter hot markets and on each bet there are 2 parties - for and against (and speculators provide liquidity to have smoother price curves in fact).

It is not oil companies, as Exxon only makes 2 cents per gallon in USA (and government makes 48 cents per gallon, plus whatever corporate and personal taxes that are taken from Exxon itself and its workers).

It is the dollars printed by the Fed.

Re:Summary for the TL;DR

[istartedi]

When "government by the people, for the people" goes to sleep, this is anarchy. Anarchy is against human nature. Power accrues and consolidates. That which arose out of the initial consolidation was the first form of government--monarchy.

Do tell, dear hard money advocates, what the price of gold is when one king has all the gold?

Of course it has no price--it ceases to function as currency. You don't need to have one king hoarding for this to happen. A cadre of royals is sufficient. That's what's happening in this country. A cadre has hoarded more and more dollars, and paid fewer taxes on them.

Inflation is the government's attempt to replace lost tax revenue. It's a regressive tax.

I know it's absolutely galling to conservatives to suggest that money is anything more than a reward for hard work justly beloning entirely to those who have obtained it lawfully; and certainly it is in part. At the margins though, money is a moat, a barrier to entry, a multiplier of power.

Without progressive taxation, wealth concentrates in the hands of the few, the economy polarizes, and we are back to monarchy. The epithet "Robber-barron" applied to 19th century industrialists was not too far off the mark.

Re:Summary for the TL;DR

[roman_mir]

Of course it has no price--it ceases to function as currency. You don't need to have one king hoarding for this to happen. A cadre of royals is sufficient. That's what's happening in this country. A cadre has hoarded more and more dollars, and paid fewer taxes on them.

- dollars are not gold, that's first.

Secondly, before 1913 dollars were gold and people did NOT pay income taxes, the poor poor government managed somehow with all those alcohol and excise taxes.

Thirdly, the gold is always money, regardless of where it is stored - kings coffers or anywhere else.

Inflation is the government's attempt to replace lost tax revenue. It's a regressive tax.

- it's not 'lost' tax revenue, if it was never collected before, it's the kind of revenue that is collected without acknowledging the need for paying for the programs with actual taxes, because people love their free cheese, bread and circuses, but ask them to pay for it and you may not be elected.

I know it's absolutely galling to conservatives to suggest that money is anything more than a reward for hard work justly beloning entirely to those who have obtained it lawfully; and certainly it is in part. At the margins though, money is a moat, a barrier to entry, a multiplier of power.

- money is a store of value, unit of accounting and means of exchange.

Everything else is irrelevant, as people do not want money, they want THINGS they buy with the money.

Money in itself is meaningless, maybe Communists should think about what they actually want - things or money.

Without progressive taxation, wealth concentrates in the hands of the few, the economy polarizes, and we are back to monarchy.

- wealth is created by those, who earn more, because they are the ones who actually build businesses and they are the people, who make it possible for society to have the benefit of all those products, that the businesses provide.

Secondary to it is the fact that people work for those businesses.

An average 'rich person' is much more deserving of his money than an average 9-5 person, as the average 'rich' person provides many jobs that are 9-5 to various interchangeable people and the average 'rich' person provides the society with the actual fruits of the work of the business - products and services, which are the end result of the work and are the reason that the person becomes rich.

The epithet "Robber-barron" applied to 19th century industrialists was not too far off the mark.

- thank your government for that one, without the government intervention there wouldn't have been robber barons.

Re:Summary for the TL;DR

[istartedi]

without the government intervention there wouldn't have been robber barons

Without government intervention there wouldn't be an Internet, and thus, no Zuckerberg. I find your ideas intriguing...

Re:Summary for the TL;DR

[roman_mir]

Without government intervention there wouldn't be an Internet, and thus, no Zuckerberg. I find your ideas intriguing...

- not true. Without government the Internet would have been anyway, just like telegraph was and telephone was and radio was and TV was.

The TCP/IP was basically a rip off from the telephone switch board ideas, so nothing impossible. Besides, the computer networks existed prior to TCP/IP, they were small, within walls of one building, but they did exist. More interesting is the question: what would have been if government stayed out of the telecommunications altogether and did not proclaim monopolies 'strategic to national interests', such as they did with AT&T.

Re:Summary for the TL;DR

[Miamicanes]

> Without government the Internet would have been anyway, just like telegraph was and telephone was and radio was and TV was. Yes... the internet today would be like Viewtron was, but faster.

Re:Summary for the TL;DR

[roman_mir]

Yeah, because obviously there would have been no competition without government intervention (which by the way, only really meant some grant money to some people, to the same people who also worked in the private sector).

Amount of shortsightedness is staggering.

Re:Summary for the TL;DR

[riverat1]

... as the average 'rich' person provides many jobs that are 9-5 to various interchangeable people and the average 'rich' person provides the society with the actual fruits of the work of the business - products and services ...

The 'rich' do not create jobs, they are created by demand for products or services. A 'rich" person is not going to hire people for jobs just because they have money or out of the goodness of their heart. They invest their wealth where they think there will be enough demand for a product or service to make a profit. Otherwise they quickly become not rich. In the US around 70% of our economy is based on consumer consumption and the vast majority of that is by people who are not wealthy. As the wealth disparity increases in this country people who are not rich have relatively less to spend therefore creating less demand especially for things that are not the basics. That doesn't help a wealthy person who wants to open/expand a business.

Re:zounds wall of text

[lgw]

all the easily accessible, cheap energy has been found

Rei posted some real facts to the contrary. You reply by just blindy asserting this - is this a religion to you or something? Cause this reads so much like the posts asserting the evolution must be BS.

is it reasonable to argue that peak oil is a bit further out than now? sure. but you seem to be arguing that oil/gas/coal are infinite in supply.

Rei is arguing that for all of human history the "oil peak" has moved out by more than one year per year. That's a simple, checkable fact. That's not saying it will never come, only that there's no data about when it wil come.

The "oil peak" isn't necessarily a problem - eventually there will be some source of power so cheap that no one would dream of using oil for power. The interesting question is whether a marvelous new power source is invented before or after the ultimate limit on the oil supply matters. One thing's for sure the more expensive oil becomes, the more motivation there is to fins/use somehting better. The solution to high commodity prices has and always will be high commodity proces.

What alternative universe are you living in?

[Biff Stu]

When the stock market crashed in October of 1929, Herbert Hoover was in office. Other than the notable exception of the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act, his response to the Great Depression was for the most part to do nothing and let the economy take care of itself. He refused to run a budget deficit, and didn't use federal money to stimulate the economy. In fact, he was such a deficit hawk that he ended up raising taxes in order to keep the budget balanced with declining revenues.

FDR was inaugurated March 4, 1933, and by this time the economy was a complete basket case. This was over three years and three months after the market crash of 1929, so your suggestion that FDR's policies turned a small correction into the Great Depression is simply wrong. The US was already three years into the depression, and Hoover's relative inaction, which for the most part would have made today's Ann Rand acolytes happy, clearly didn't allow the economy to heal itself as you suggest.

Re:What alternative universe are you living in?

[roman_mir]

You are correct, that following the market crash of 1929 the US stopped printing for a little while and that Hoover was in office.

However the monetary expansion just before the crash was the largest in US history, as USA was propping up UK pound and buying UK debt.

Also do not forget what the Federal reserve did in 1929 right after the crash. The Fed doubled the holdings of government securities, added over $150 million in reserves and discounted $200 million for member banks. They bailed out the wall street, son. You know, like they did in 2008. They stopped the market from restructuring.

What do you think is happening now, past the 2008 crash?

They also expanded money supply by 10% a week, so do not be gullible to think the government stayed out of the 'cure' (to the illness it created itself.)

The Fed lowered the interest rate from 6% to 4.5% in the fall of 2009.

In November of 2009 Hoover starts public works programs.
Hoover started with various subsidies 'stimulus packages' to ship building companies.

also in 1929:

Agricultural Marketing Act was passed with $500 million in loans by the Treasury to farms, etc.

FFB lent $150 million to wheat coops and establishes the Farmersâ(TM) National Grain Corporation with $10 million capital.

in 1930 Hoover added 100 million to FFB and he creates the 'Grain Stabilization Corporation'

ALL THIS IS TO KEEP PRICES UP!

The same way they are trying to keep the house prices up today. Any similarities?

What about the overstock? GSC accumulated 65 million bushels of wheat by June 1930. Any similarities to the banks, not liquidating the houses and Freddie/Fannie and FHA today, and Treasury with all the holdings on the books?

Do you know what the real debt of USA Treasury is? Except for everything else, it contains the debt that the Treasury bought from the bailed out banks, think about that.

In November GSC actually bought another 200 million bushels of wheat. Can you believe this shit?

The Treasury lost $300 million by 1931 in wheat and cotton alone.

There were other programs like that - for life stock and grape and who knows what else.

In 1930 they started with the $915 million dollar public works program.

The discount rate was taken down by the Fed from 4.5 to 2%

Any similarities you see to today?

In 1930 they passed the Smoot-Hawley Tariff law, raising import tariffs to highest ever. Well, at least in those times the USA actually HAD a production base.

NYSE was hit with exchange controls - no more shorts were allowed - this was by Hoover himself :) So markets were NOT allowed to correct.

In 1930 employment fell by 16%, manufacturing fell by 20%.

Government pushed expenses up from 14.3% GPP to 18.2% in 1930.

1931: the crisis also hit Europe: bank of England.

Government pushed expenses up from 18.2% to 24.3% in 1931.

Bacon-Davis act was passed, maximum daily working hours were set at 8, minimum wage was enforced for public works projects, unemployment went higher.

1931: National Credit Corporation is established and banks are bailed out with another $153 million.

1932: sales taxes on gas, bank checks, bond transfers, phone, telegraph, radio messages and other stuff were introduced.

Income taxes were raised from 1.5%-5% to 4%-8%, corporate tax was raised from 12 to 14%, gift tax of 33.3% was instated.

Government spending went up from 24.3% of GPP in 1931 to 28.9% in 1932

1932: Congress establishes Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC), with $500 million reserve and debt allowances up to $1.5 billion.

In the first 5 months, RFC loans out $1 billion of loans, 60% of the money went to the banks and 20% to rail roads.

In 1932, RFC is allowed to loan another 1.8 billion.

NOW FDR comes into the office.

So now starts the first unemployment relief authority, etc.
Glass-Steagal act is passed to offset the damage of FDIC.

1932, the Fed increases reserves by $660 million to $2.51 billion.

etc.
etc.
etc.
etc.

Tell me more about the Great Depression, please.

Re:What alternative universe are you living in?

[roman_mir]

Oh, when I said "2009" talking about Hoover :), I should have proof read it, but it's 1929.

Re:zounds wall of text

[conspirator57]

i did provide some sources, just not for that claim which i think is fairly uncontroversial given the expense and difficulties involved in extracting oil from shale and tar sands(certainly not the easiest of endeavours.) If there were still vast amounts of easily accessible oil then it wouldn't be economical to produce fromoil sands. since it is economical, i'd suggest you're wrong here.

you took exception because you disagree with the general premise and didn't even read my sources wherein the IEA (hardly a mouthpiece of the peak oil advocates) admits that peak oil has probably already occurred in 2006. here's another.

http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/11/14/is-peak-oil-behind-us/

i confronted his claims of reserves with the guardian story about the wikileaks cables. do you have a rebuttal to that? no i thought not.

who's the religious zealot again?

The Wrong Plan

[David Greene]

How disappointing. Production is not the problem, consumption is. Here's how to get energy under control: use less of it!

We've known for a very long time that the most cost-effective way to have the energy we need for the future is through conservation. Insulate houses. Replace windows. Use mass transit. As much as Republicans may hate it, President Carter was exactly right.

It's extremely disappointing to see the administration push hybrid/electric cars without making even more of a push for investment in transit infrastructure. The savings of $3000 over the life of a car with better mileage is dwarfed by the savings one gets from riding a bus or (even better) rail. The payoff for investment in public transit has been shown to be 7:1. For every dollar spent, $7 are returned in the form of efficiency, economic development and reduced congestion.

Nuclear

[currently_awake]

If you are desperate for power build breeder reactors, subways and electric street cars. That will eliminate 1/2 the oil imports and drive down oil prices world wide. It would buy you time to do something.

Re:zounds wall of text

[wealthychef]

I personally am not worried so much about how much oil is left. I'm worried about the pattern we're in with respect to it. It's polluting our planet and causing wars, regardless of the amount you say exists worldwide. I'm hoping we can get nuclear fusion working. Cheap, nearly unlimited energy would be a huge boon to all of us. Except the oil companies in the short run, but even they would benefit, taken as a collective of individuals.

Of course

[jav1231]

This was the president who said he wished gas prices had not risen to quickly. His energy secretary once lamented that we need European level gas prices in the United States. This is why. They want to push America to other sources as opposed to letting them come naturally. Get used to high prices and unemployment if you vote this mental dwarf back into office.

Re:The Wrong Plan

[jav1231]

I don't want to ride the bus. I live in a free society. I can choose. And if I choose not to ride the bus, tough! If wind and solar are the answer they will/would already be pervasive. They're not. At this time they can at best be supplemental. Sure, we should use them but their not the answer yet. And I can't power by car with them. The salient point people seem to be missing is freedom. I'm all for conservation I'm all for alternatives. But not at the hand of a gun. The idea this can happen by next Wednesday is stupidity. Yet we have an administration that simply doesn't care about gas prices because it believes higher gas prices will push us to want something else. They're wrong. Proof of this will be when Obama starts campaigning for lower gas prices. Hey, he already is!

Farming CO2 emissions

[dindi]

If you happen to be green, vegan, non-mainstream media watcher/reader, you might have heard, that animal farming causes more CO2 than all the cars on this planet. Also it causes a significant amount of pollution, and uses a lot of water and energy.

Do I know exact numbers? No,

Question: how is this not getting addressed at all, ever, and how is transportation energy/cost/pollution always taking the publicity? Is it because the above facts are not facts/true, or is it because of something else, like politics/lobbying/etc?

I do not mean this as flamebait, I am really just baffled by this happening. And yes, I am a tree-hugger in many ways..

Re:zounds wall of text

[ArcherB]

I personally am not worried so much about how much oil is left. I'm worried about the pattern we're in with respect to it. It's polluting our planet and causing wars, regardless of the amount you say exists worldwide. I'm hoping we can get nuclear fusion working. Cheap, nearly unlimited energy would be a huge boon to all of us. Except the oil companies in the short run, but even they would benefit, taken as a collective of individuals.

Actually, it's your oil companies that are investing the most in other forms of energy. These guys know that as soon as a "better" form of energy is found, they are out of business. If they are the ones to discover this new form of energy, they put their competitors out of business.

I know everyone likes to call the "oil companies" or "big oil", but the fact is, these are "energy companies". Oil just happens to offer the best profit margin right now. If cars and plants start to run on milk, oil companies will gladly become dairy farmers.

as usual

[roman_mir]

as per the usual procedure, the powers that be, in form of the brainwashed population made sure, that the real information about economic situation is hidden away from the eyes of the public.

subsidies being left out of that list

[brokeninside]

1. below market, or even interest free, loans
2. construction bonds for new drilling sites
3. the feds assuming liability for new exploration

And then there are more indirect subsidies

1. the federal interstate system (imagine how much less oil would be needed without that money being spent)
2. miitary costs for escorting tankers through pirate infested waters
3. cleanup costs for superfund sites and other poluted grounds (how much did the feds pay for BP's spill last year alone)

Re:The Wrong Plan

[das3cr]

Show me again where Amtrak is making me money. I somehow missed that headline. 7:1 .... where is all the money ... I want 7:1 return on every dime we have put into Amtrak. And heck .. if this was such a great money maker everyone would be doing it. But they are not. Even cities with huge public transport systems (LA for instance) ... sell off their public transport assets and ;lease them back. If they where making 7:1 returns there is no way they would have to do such foolish things.

That's an oil industry blog

[Klaxton]

... written by some guy named John who doesn't cite the sources for his assertions. They are merely his personal opinions. Here is a better rundown of the subsidies. And John, they aren't "subsidies", they are *subsidies*. http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/taxtopics/2011-Budget-Fossil-Fuels.cfm

Re:zounds wall of text

[Sri Ramkrishna]

Cheap unlimited power will only create a larger population.. you will continue to have wars and pollution due to consumption. You'll also create great pressure on the environment causing something to break. Most likely this ends up with habitats being destroyed.. habitats that conceivably we rely on. Eventually that will lead to a war as a method to create balance or simple self destruction. Either way, the planet won't care, it will achieve balance again.. it's life span is in the millions of years, it will recover, but we will be gone and turned into oil for the next race to do it all over again. :-) I wonder who the new Jesus will be.

Reserve-to-production rates

[golodh]

True, but not very relevant. What you really want to know in order to estimate how long we've got with liquid fossil fuels (oil) is the reserve-to-production rate.

If you're unsure about what that is, read here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reserves-to-production_ratio

For statistics on the RtP rates see slide nr. 6 of this presentation by BP: http://www.bp.com/liveassets/bp_internet/globalbp/globalbp_uk_english/reports_and_publications/statistical_energy_review_2008/STAGING/local_assets/2010_downloads/statistical_review_of_world_energy_full_report_slidepack_2010.ppt

You will note that the RtP rate remained approximately constant over the past 14-15 years. Now if you look at the price of oil (page 12 of the presentation), you'll notice a fairly steep price increase, except for the jolt caused by the 2008 banking crisis. This means that oil, whilst still *available* is getting more difficult (and hence expensive) to produce. If you factor in that the rate of consumption is growing and the rate of discovery of new sources is not, you'll see the problem.

Now, panicking (preceded of followed by running out) is not recommended, but neither is cultivating an "Oh but there's still oil aplenty" attitude.

Current trends of production and consumption all but guarantee continued high (and perhaps even higher) prices.

Now how can I state that in a way that is close to your heart? Ah yes. Let's put it this way: expect gasoline prices and your energy bills based on burning oil or gas to continue to rise in the next 20 years as they did in the past 10 years.

That means that alternative (especially renewable) energy sources definitely merit our attention, despite the increase in proven reserves.

Re:Reserve-to-production rates

[lgw]

Are oil prices going p, or is the dollar collapsing? Either way it's doom, but I lean to the dollar one myself - that's really the right/left divide right there: do we need the government to protect us from our evil oil consuming habits, or the evil government to stop it's reckless spending beyond its means? Watch Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece, and Spain for the answer.

Cold fusion and/or nanosolar anyone?

[Paul Fernhout]

http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/blog/post/2011/05/swedish-skeptics-confirm-nuclear-process-in-tiny-4-7-kw-reactor
http://www.nanosolar.com/power-plants/technology-advantages

The oil in gasoline is just an energy carrier...

[Paul Fernhout]

http://www.evnut.com/gasoline_oil.htm
"Roughly one-third of the energy content of a gallon of gasoline produced from California wells is input from natural gas. Less than 2/3's is net energy (probably a lot less!). So I can get 24 miles in my ICE on a gallon of gasoline, or I can get 41 miles (at 300wh/mile) in my RAV4EV just using the energy to refine that gallon. Alternatively - energy use (electricity and natural gas) state wide goes DOWN if a mile in a RAV4EV is substituted for a mile in an ICE!"

Re:The Wrong Plan

[David Greene]

Who ever said you could not choose? It's a strange definition of freedom to provide only one choice. We need more transit infrastructure to give people choice and we know that people choose it when given the option.

I hear responses like yours all the time. It's completely dishonest, putting words in people's mouths and not hearing what they're actually saying.

Re:The Wrong Plan

[David Greene]

We're not talking about Amtrak. We're talking about metro-region transit. Look at Portland. Look at Seattle. Look at Denver. These are all places that have reaped enormous ROI on transit investment.

Re:The Wrong Plan

[jav1231]

Actually, no it's not dishonest. You haven't given any data to prove that people will choose anything. Here in my town the transit system serves only a very small number of people. The reason is simple, it was poorly designed. But regardless, I'll not debate infrastructure. I wish there were more choices. Just don't make mine for me and don't lecture me about the choices I make.