Lindi is right. If oil became more expensive, we would have spent the money on finding a replacement. They do exist. Why doesn’t every home in CA have solar panels?
{Solar power right now is a boondoggle. Too expensive compared to coal, hydropower, wind power, natural gas and nuclear. If you think it’s such a good idea, then go out and buy these solar panels yourself. Sunlight only provides 1.5kW per square meter under the best of conditions and if your panel is 10% efficient, then you can make 150 watts while the sun shines! Woo-woo!
Oil is becoming more expensive.
There is no “collective we”. }
Trade is important, as each country has unique resources and skills. However, our government leaders have allowed big business and their Fed member banks most likely, to profit at the expense of the American worker and our future productivity.
[Business exists to make a profit as does everyone who gets a job and goes to work. Businesses exist to make money, not provide jobs. Providing jobs for people is just a means to an end which is *to make money*.
Fortunately, our government leaders have been smart enough not to interfere with private business to the extent that people still have jobs in this country. Otherwise this place would be like Germany where they have 10% unemployment and the government there pays generously for people not to work. ]
When we started moving our manufacturing off-shore, there should have been a move to replace auto and textile manufacturing with something else: better farming, pharmaceuticals, engines, alternative energy. Instead, they just went for cheaper goods from overseas. There was no rhyme or reason to it, no planning at all.
{Thank god that there was no planning at all! Why shouldn’t they move manufacturing off shore? No one in this pristine state of California wants a factory next to them since it would pollute the pristine air or view or reduce property values. Do you want to live next to a steel mill or a chemical plant? Probably not, so don’t complain.
You want the government to pick winning industries for the future to replace the textile mills?
Curse the people that shop at WalMart for wanting cheap goods. Their wages have been stagnant since the late 1970’s, so the only way they can maintain their standard of living is by paying less for things. }
Likewise,the entire development of our society with far-flung suburbs and millions of miles of freeways (just a guess) should have been recognized as unsustainable by the urban planners in the 1950’s and 1960s. Did they think that oil is the only resource on this planet that is in unlimited supply? Don’t get me started, I’m getting real pi**ed off at the way our elected officials have let this country go to pot.
{I guess you think that urban planners should be able to see into the future 50 years so that you would not get p*ssed off! They did not invent the crystal ball yet and as far as I know, it’s still in the future. Where would your have put people that want to live in the suburbs? In beehives in the city? Dormitories near their factories?
Elected officials can get elected. That is their qualification. What do you expect? If you don’t like their lack of omniscience, then run for office yourself. }
Corporations are just as bad. They use corporate bonds and their big profits from the recent liquidity boom to buy back stocks, so the stock price goes up. Then the insiders sell the stock at high prices, in anticipation of the decline which is coming. Not enough money is invested in the future of the company, in building it up. The money goes to elevate the share value for the insiders.
{Corporations exist to make money for their shareholders, in theory. In fact, corporations are run for the benefit of the upper management. Accept this fact of reality. With concentrated benefits to upper management and diffuse costs to shareholders, why shouldn’t management pay itself as much as possible?
You get all of your economic news from Mother Jones and Utne Reader. I suggest reading, “Where are the Customers’ Yachts” to find out how Wall Street works.
Corporations should return the excess cash to their shareholders, otherwise they just go one an empire-building spending spree. }
Then we’ve got the bubble in private equity funding. What value is created by that? Just as with free trade where we shift higher paid jobs to lower wage countries and don’t replace those jobs with anything at all, what good comes of it?
{It puts the UAW out of business permanently which is a service to this country. The UAW was run by communists in the 1930’s and the leadership learned much of their economics from the same place you obviously did. Maybe the federal government can make a “jobs bank” for them where they can get paid 95% of their working wages and read the paper.
If you are worried about all this “private equity funding” then have the Sarbanes-Oxley Act repealed. There would be little incentive to take companies private. }
If we really want to help the poor countries, we should teach them how to farm and manufacture. Maybe I’m just rambling…
{Who says we should help the poor countries? What did they do for us? We have enough debt without giving them free money! These people already know how to farm and manufacture, they just need the government there to guarantee private property rights, have an independent judiciary, and not interfere in the economy. They don’t need help from us. Banana republics are banana republics for a reason. Look at Iraq. }
