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Nightmares and the secret tax
You know those nightmares in which you’ve forgotten to do something really important? A midnight specter haunts me periodically—I dream that I’ve forgotten to attend one of the courses on my 1983 college schedule. Faithfully attending classes all semester except for the rogue course, I suddenly realize my stunning 15-week absence. Heart pounding, sweaty, feeling like a dunce, I wake up thinking I have a final exam later that day with no time to prepare. Of course, nightmares aren’t real. Or are they?
With April 15 looming, how would you feel if you had forgotten to have payroll taxes withheld all of last year? You’d have a nightmarish tax bill due. This devilish scenario could materialize—an unanticipated erosion of wealth—for millions of Americans even if they fill out their W-4 forms properly. How so? There’s a ghoulish stealth tax that’s on the rise. Every American pays it whether his or her money is in the bank, the stock market, bonds, a retirement account, or under the mattress.
So what is this secret tax? It’s called inflation. Writing for National Review Online last week, Kevin Williamson said if the inflation rate is just 2 percent, this scourge costs Americans about $1.4 trillion per year. In other words, it erodes the value of dollar-denominated assets by $1.4 trillion (e.g., savings and retirement accounts). How do you think Americans would react if Rep. John Boehner and Sen. Harry Reid were to announce a $1.4 trillion tax increase? A public announcement isn’t necessary because “[i]nflation is the creation of money by monetary authorities” (e.g., the Federal Reserve), not Congress, wrote Dr. Hans Sennholz in 1979. This new money devalues existing money and prices rise in response. While the average Joe suffers, the federal government benefits by paying off its debt with new and cheaper dollars.
Predictions about rising inflation are no longer an esoteric exercise. Earlier this month Wal-Mart CEO Bill Simon told USA Today that inflation “is going to be serious” as early as June. Shadow Statistics believes inflation is actually 9 percent, not 2 percent. The precious metals, hedges against inflation, are sending price signals too. Financial Times reported that silver closed above $40 an ounce on Friday while gold hit an all-time high of $1,474. Moreover, commodities guru Jim Rogers told Forbes last week that he expects “agriculture prices to go much, much higher” leading to “more and more social unrest” throughout the world.
Sound like a nightmare? It doesn’t have to be. You know the test is coming. Read the news about what the Federal Reserve is doing with the money supply and prepare yourself for a potentially large tax bill called inflation.
back to top85 Comments to “Nightmares and the secret tax”
It will get worse. I think this inflation was originally caused by both Republican and Democrat politicians using Other People’s Money to political ends, i.e. get re-elected. However, Xion has a link to an interesting article on which I comment in today’s WV. That is, I believe it’s now part of a plan. George H.W. Bush, talkied about “A new world order”. Bush didn’t know what he was talking about. Thees people have a plan. Chaos is part of it.
Visit Xion’s link
http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2011/04/06/george-soros-events-weekend-aim-remake-financial-order-media-wheres-reporting/
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Interesting article, Chas.
Thanks!
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A very good book on this subject is called The Creature from Jekyll Island by G.Edward Griffin. It explains how banking works and the role of the Federal Reserve. I am rereading it now. He says,
The FDIC does not actually insure anything. It is the American taxpayer who is the co-signer on every bad loan made by banks. The FDIC doesn’t prevent banks from shady business practices, it encourages them to be as reckless as possible.
Politicians actually support this practice, which is why the new banking regulations don’t actually regulate the banks but the brokers who bet on their inevitable failure. This is also why Fannie Mae, the source of the recent economic collapse was completely untouched and they continue as reckless as ever.
Big banks and the Federal government have no incentive to be prudent with money since in the end the American taxpayer will always cover it under penalty of law.
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Gas at the 76 station four blocks from my house, premium, was listed at $4.49 a gallon just now. Libertarian members of my family with socialist tendencies, have always felt life in the US would be better if gas was taxed to $5 a gallon. They feel that would force people to conserve and involuntary conservation is a good thing.
They, of course, would not feel any of that pain.
We’ve been discussing how to hedge against inflation for quite a while at our house. Investing in commodities and simplifying our life works for us, but we’ve no children left at home. Beyond that–paying back your house with inflated dollars may be “cheaper” in the long run, but paying off debt makes more sense to us, personally.
You were skipping your Spanish class like me, weren’t you, Lee? I always get the bad news while walking down Bruin Walk at UCLA.
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Variable rate loans will go up when bank loan rates go up. That will be big chunks of money.
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Michele, if your family members have socialist tendencies, then they are not libertarian.
Thanks Xion for info concerning that book. I think I shall read it this summer.
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You do realize that the governments figures on inflation leave out “volatile” categories such as “Energy” and “Food”?
For example, CPI (Consumer Price Index) and PPI (Producer Price Index) don’t include those figures, supposedly because they’re too seasonally volatile. I think that’s a bunch of hooey.
Let me backtrack just a moment, and define what inflation is…
Inflation is not rising prices. Rising prices are a result of inflation. Inflation is actually an increase in the money supply. And as you know, that’s exactly what Quantitative Easing (printing money) is. So we definitly have inflation, and have had inflation since the FED has been printing money. What’s under debate as “inflation” is whether prices have been rising or not.
While the rate of rising prices may or may not be as little as the government says it is, the general trend since the FED has been inflicting it’s inflationary policies on the economy (and the taxpayer as noted above) is that prices are rising. When you have a growing economy, where producers are finding innovative ways to produce more with less, then prices fall, and producers make more money. I’d bet money that most producers prices are not falling, and they are NOT making more money right now.
All you have to do is look at your bills to know that prices are not falling…
And if you really start digging, you’ll realize it’s in politicians best interest to continue the Keynesian policies which are inflationary and create booms and busts.
Here’s a great website that espouses the Austrian Economic theory (as opposed to the ludicrous Keynesian theory) if you want to learn more:
http://mises.org/
And if you want the short version, you can just watch the RAP video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d0nERTFo-Sk
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It’s a mixed marriage and they’re a confused bunch, Rom116, constantly swinging from one extreme to the next but seldom affected by anything. Think Mr. and Mrs. Schwartzenegger.
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Actually, inflation is a reduction of the value of the currency (dollar). The primary cause is increase in the supply of dollars without a corresponding increase in value of output.
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Just curious – is this news to anyone, that inflation is eroding the value of our assets? I have no idea which class in which school I learned it, but it was a long long time ago, before I had hardly any assets to be concerned about their eroding.
I have those dreams too, about having forgotten to attend classes all semester. Sometimes it’s high school, sometimes college, sometimes grad school. Sometimes I’m even the teacher. Sometimes it’s work I’ve forgotten to show up for. I wouldn’t call them nightmares, though – to me, nightmares are the kind that are so bad they wake you up and you’re afraid to go back to sleep for fear you’ll be right back in one.
No one likes what inflation does to assets, but its effect is slow, so it’s not going to cause the same kind of crisis as having to pay an entire year’s taxes all at once. And economists aren’t in agreement as to whether zero inflation would really be a good thing.
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Inflation is compounded. It may go up gradually but what cost $1.00 in 1957 cost $10.00 now. And the sizes have gotten smaller, and wages and other expenses have gone up and your furniture, TV’s, and tennis shoes are made in China.
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It’s all about energy, man. We use too much, scorn conservation and whistle past the graveyard when the topic of it’s finitude comes up.
The cost of fuel is going to rise, with or without taxes on it. As it does, the price of everything that is made with or shipped with petroleum fuel — which is just about everything we consume — will rise.
This is simple supply and demand, except that the supply is inelastic. Pumping more oil to meet the demand will only work for a limited time, and the faster we use it the more limited that time becomes.
The fed printing money is a bad idea, a short-term fix at best. (Although my saying it plainly will not, I’m sure, stop NJLawyer from later insisting I said the opposite.) It’s bad, but it’s really not the root of the problem. The root of the problem is the network of dependency we have on a diminishing fuel source.
We pump a lot of oil in America. There are some reserves that remain untapped that we could also pump, but they would buy us only a few more years at our current rates of consumption. The oil companies are tacitly admitting this when they talk about oil shale or tar sands, two other possible sources of some oil that are much more expensive and, for shale, dangerous than pumping liquid oil. Nobody would be trying to figure out how to extract oil from rocks if liquid oil were still plentiful.
We are in a period of transition into a deindustrial society, and there’s nothing we can do to stop it. We probably will not live to see the end result of the transition, but our children may and our grandchildren certainly will.
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If Clinton hadn’t vetoed the ANWR exploration/drilling bill in 1996, gas stations would be offering plates and cups with fillups again.
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No, Chas, it wouldn’t have made much difference. There is not that much oil there. Estimates vary, but the largest estimate of recoverable oil is about 9.2 billion barrels.
At our current rate of consumption, that’s just a bit more than one year’s worth.
http://www.anwr.org/Background/How-much-oil-is-in-ANWR.php
But your assumption is common and it’s part of why we never get anywhere on this topic. The Republicans moan that the evil Democrats won’t let us drill our domestic oil (even though we do drill plenty). The Democrats moan that the wasteful Republicans won’t stop wasting fuel.
There’s a modicum of truth to both complaints, but they both miss the real point: Oil will not last forever.
The solution to not having enough oil can’t always be “get more oil,” because there won’t always be more to get. The real solution HAS to be changing our lifestyles to use less energy overall, and to depend on oil for less and less of it.
And nobody wants to hear that.
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From an article in The Washington Times by Mackubin Thomas Owens, a professor at the Naval War College (one of my alma maters, BTW). Everything below here is his article.
“Unfortunately, current U.S. government policies short-circuit the market, negating the two positive features of higher oil prices. Regarding the first, state and federal governments effectively hamstrung the ability of domestic oil producers to increase output by denying them assess to substantial reserves.
…
These areas hold an estimated 635 trillion cubic feet of recoverable natural gas – enough to meet the needs of 60 million American homes fueled by natural gas for more than a century – and an estimated 112 billion barrels of recoverable oil – enough to produce gasoline for 60 million cars and fuel oil for 25 million homes for 60 years.
….Heavily subsidized alternatives are not true substitutes in the economic sense.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/mar/15/the-upside-of-high-oil-prices/
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#12 Conan I agree with you that energy is one of America’s primary issues and that no one is doing anything about it. Obama goes around promoting window companies and other corporations owned by his cronies, but just two weeks ago he was telling Brazil to “Drill baby drill” while hindering essentially all viable domestic energy sources.
You keep harping on conservation. Who opposes it? No one opposes better efficiency. We all agree on that. But you act like conservation solves a problem. Conservation only postpones the inevitable. You keep saying we don’t understand that energy is finite, yet propose conservation as a solution. It does not change the finiteness of our resources.
Liberals and radical environmentalists are fighting essentially all forms of energy. They fight geothermal in Hawaii, hydroelectric in NH, wind energy on Cape Cod, solar energy in CA, nuclear, clean coal, biomass, natural gas and so on. You name it and leftists will oppose it.
What’s their solution? More air in your tires lowered thermostats and poisonous mercury light bulbs which pollute landfills and ethanol which lowers fuel efficiency and drives up food prices.
Um, OK but how does that provide more energy? You can tell a starving man to eat less, but he will die anyway.
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Chas, let’s assume that the figures in that article are correct.
U.S reserves, he says, contain “an estimated 112 billion barrels of recoverable oil – enough to produce gasoline for 60 million cars and fuel oil for 25 million homes for 60 years.”
OK, sounds good, right? But cars account for only about 40 percent of the oil we use, and heating oil is even less. Again, we use 20 million barrels a day just in the U.S. 112 billion barrels is 5,600 days’ worth, or about 15 years. And it would become scarce and prohibitively expensive well before then, if we had to depends just on that.
And that’s IF there really is that much recoverable liquid oil.
It just is not sustainable long term.
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Xion: I don’t think there IS a solution, if by solution you mean, finding a way to continue our current levels of energy use. That’s not going to happen, even with alternatives. Oil had the advantage of producing a great deal of energy for a relatively low cost. Once it’s depleted to the point of no longer being viable, nothing else seems likely to step up and take its place.
The “solution” is changing our expectations and lifestyles so that we use an amount of energy we can reasonably expect to have available.
A good book on the topic is “The Long Descent,” by John Michael Greer, or “The EcoTechnic Future,” same author.
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Chas, What Conan is saying in #17 is that 60 years is not enough. If we conserve we can get 70 years. See, problem solved.
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What’s their solution? More air in your tires lowered thermostats and poisonous mercury light bulbs which pollute landfills and ethanol which lowers fuel efficiency and drives up food prices.
Well, I don’t agree with your assessment of the light bulbls. The use about 15 – 20 percent as much electricity as a standard bulb and if everyone is using them that’s a huge drop in demand for electricity. We have hazardous wastes already that we can dispose of properly if we’re conscientious, and these are no different.
Tire inflation and lowered thermostats are minor impacts, but they help.
Ethanol is a huge boondoggle that amounts to agricultural welfare in the form of subsidies. It’s not good for fuel and other uses of corn are bad for food (high fructose corn syrup, etc.) and that madness needs to die now.
Envrinmentalists don’t oppose wind power, even on Cape Cod. The “Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound” includes wealthy residents trying to preserve the view, and some oil execs, along with oil heir William Koch, former mining executive Doug Yearley and Mitt Romney. (The list is available at the Massachusetts Division of Corporations.) It does also include some left-leaning groups, but it’s hardly a coalition of “liberal and radical environmentalists) … it’s not quite a front group for oil companies, but it’s close.
Nuclear is problematic, as Japan is finding out right now. Theoretically it could be a solution for electricity generation, but it’s not a substitute for fossil fuels in other applications, and the safety risks as formidable.
Ultimately, I do agree, some level-headed environmentalists who want to develop clean and renewable energy sources do run up against the fluffy-bunny types who don’t want anything manmade visible through their bay window, and they’re just going to have to get over it, as we do need the fuel. But it’s very very wise to start preparing now for a day when energy is not plentiful nor cheap, as barring some completely unforseeable discovery, that is inevitable.
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Xion: Chas, What Conan is saying in #17 is that 60 years is not enough. If we conserve we can get 70 years. See, problem solved.
What Conan is saying is that we’re going to run out of easily recovered oil. We have some time left to make a smooth transition. Conservation can buy us a little more time, but that’s all. We still have to make a transition. And that’s a transition not just to different energy sources but to a new set of expectations.
I sense you want some miraculous solution whereby we can keep driving SUVs and heating our houses to 80 degrees and commuting 40 or 50 miles every day between home and work. Ain’t gonna happen.
You can snark at me for not telling you what you want to hear, or you can deal with reality.
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#18 Conan “Xion: I don’t think there IS a solution, if by solution you mean, finding a way to continue our current levels of energy use.”
You mean like staying warm at night or watching TV? Again no one is opposed to conservation, but you’re not solving anything. You are merely postponing the inevitable.
Do you know that according to a Harvard study Congress spent 27% of its time belittling each other? If you want conservation how about we use that energy to propose an energy infrastructure instead?
A friend of mine owns a company that helps people go green to the point of going totally off grid. I am planning to go solar myself, but assume I’ll have an uphill battle with leftists in my town who will oppose putting up something so ugly in my yard. The greenies in my town are fighting tooth and nail against hydroelectric because the wires will look ugly.
“The “solution” is changing our expectations and lifestyles so that we use an amount of energy we can reasonably expect to have available.”
Are you talking about sustainable energy? Like what for example? Wood stoves? Outhouses? What about transportation and shipping and manufacturing? What about national defense?
We have many many forms of energy available which environmentalists oppose. We need a national strategy. We need nuclear and a natural gas infrastructure immediately to sustain us until we discover better form of energy. Obama could lead the way. Instead he is playing golf.
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#21 Conan “I sense you want some miraculous solution whereby we can keep driving SUVs and heating our houses to 80 degrees and commuting 40 or 50 miles every day between home and work. Ain’t gonna happen.”
It is the left that wants a miracle. I have given you about 10 viable solutions.
Can you explain to me just why SUVs are so evil? If someone wants to spend $80 dollars to fill up their tank, what is that to you? I am a big guy. Am I therefore evil because I exhale lightly more CO2 than you? And is a 50 mile commute evil? Should those people starve? Are you proposing mass urbanization or mass reversal back to the 17th century?
“You can snark at me for not telling you what you want to hear, or you can deal with reality.”
What is the reality I don’t want to deal with? We agree that non-renewable resources are finite. We agree that conservation is good. But why not go after the energy we have, especially geothermal, hydro, nuclear, hydrogen, natural gas and biomass? Why do greenies oppose pretty much everything?
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Inflation isn’t always a bad deal depending on how it affects wages. It really depends on one’s debt, one’s assets, and how those assets are allocated.
Suppose all my savings (other than the equity in my home) is held in the form of commodities and I have a mortgage with a lot left to pay. Inflation may actually be a good thing for me, so long as my wages adjust accordingly. Why?
Inflation doesn’t change the value of my savings since it’s in commodities. If the dollar devalues then whatever commodity I own is suddenly worth more in terms of dollars. My home, as well, has value irrespective of what the dollar does. If the dollar devalues then my home becomes worth more in terms of dollars. But what about my mortgage? Its value can’t change. If I owe $100,000 prior to the massive inflation then I still owe $100,000 after the massive inflation. However, after the massive inflation the actual “value” of that debt is less than what it was prior to the massive inflation inflation. In other words I owe “less” than I did before.
The person who gets killed by inflation is the guy with no debt and sizable savings, and whose savings is allocated in non-inflation-proof investments, e.g. cash, stocks, etc.
Or potentially the person whose income is unlikely to adjust to account for inflation. Such as someone earning minimum wage.
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Regarding the actual topic here, I bought a couple of books by Milton Friedman which I plan to read on my way to Tokyo.
He was a devout Keynesian, which advocates spending your way out of debt. But he eventually flipped and became classically liberal aka conservative and libertarian.
He seemed to be the ultimate pragmatist, arguing for his ideals but willing to work within the confines of existing systems and try to make the best of them.
For example, “he opposed the existence of the Federal Reserve, but argued that given that it does exist, a steady, small expansion of the money supply was the only wise policy, and he warned against efforts by a treasury or central bank to do otherwise.”
Wouldn’t that create a steady small increase in inflation? Perhaps he viewed that as a good thing. I look forward to learning more about his philosophy.
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I don’t heat my place to 80 degrees, but freezing is not a solution either. If it’s going to run out, and it will, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t drill on our own land. That never sits well with the Left, I know. They’d rather make our lives as miserable as possible.
The country did fine without the Fed. It is a SECRET organization that is not elected. It has way too much power. I’m with Andy Napolitano. Get rid of it.
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Xion: Can you explain to me just why SUVs are so evil? If someone wants to spend $80 dollars to fill up their tank, what is that to you? I am a big guy. Am I therefore evil because I exhale lightly more CO2 than you?
You ARE a big guy. You are NOT forced to drive an SUV. It’s a choice. And if we’re dealing honesty with a fuel source that is finite, then you must admit that every gallon of gasoline burned is one less gallon that is or ever will be available to anyone else.
What is it to me? It’s taking more out of remaining resource than is necessary. I don’t say it’s “evil,” that’s your word, but I do think some introspection would be good. Why do people who choose a car that gets half the gas mileage they could get with a different choice feel they’re entitled to use more of the resource? It’s one thing to need a truck or SUV, or van. If you’re a contractor with a truck full of tools and equipment, or a mom with five kids to transport, you have a reason. If you’re a guy with some money and think your SUV looks cool and makes a statement, but there’s nothing in your life that actually demands the power or space, maybe you could reconsider.
And is a 50 mile commute evil? Should those people starve? Are you proposing mass urbanization or mass reversal back to the 17th century?
I’m not proposing anything. I’m telling you what I think the future is going to look like as the availability of energy decreases. This isn’t anything I want to happen. I like my lifestyle with plentiful energy, I just don’t think it can last forever.
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BTW, my commute is about 40 miles daily. The way our communities are built, it’s very difficult for most people to not have lengthy commutes, especially if you change jobs or your workplace moves and you can’t easily sell your house and move closer.
I’m not saying people who have long commutes are doing anything wrong. It’s just how it is. I’m saying that it would be wise to start making the changes now so that when those kinds of commutes are unaffordable, we will be ready to adapt.
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Rent.
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My job can be done from home. We have one lawyer who lives in Florida.
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I think Conan would eat that awful Chicago MANDATED school lunch.
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#27 Conan “You ARE a big guy. You are NOT forced to drive an SUV. It’s a choice. And if we’re dealing honesty with a fuel source that is finite, then you must admit that every gallon of gasoline burned is one less gallon that is or ever will be available to anyone else.”
Now I understand. You are viewing the world in a Mad Max sort of way. There’s only so much gas so SUVs are in effect stealing from the mouths of rich self righteous Prius drivers. But if gas has a price, then why is someone with a smaller tank a better citizen? People who want more pay more.
The problem with Mad Max is that no one ever built an alternative. We have many alternatives, but the left shuts down every last one of them.
Government has a role in providing standards and infrastructure. Bush was an abysmal failure. Obama is at least a fantastic talker, but he’s all talk. He couldn’t make a decision on the future of America if it bit him in his south side.
What America needs is alternatives. If we had a natural gas or hydrogen infrastructure most existing cars could easily be converted. Obama is doing everything he can to prevent progress while talking all the while about progress.
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The plan of the left, as explained by Obama, is to tax and/or shut down all viable sources of energy so that they can be in charge of doling it out to people whom they deem worthy and responsible citizens. This would include little people in little cars and people with the right skin color. Liberalism is totalitarianism with a smile.
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Here is more on the Fed and statism which is the goal of both political parties:
As Karl Marx said, history is a long slow march to the Left. Regardless of political party, America is marching toward statism.
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We don’t have any alternatives that can provide the amount of energy petroleum does for a comparably low cost. Even hydrogen. It’s glib and easy to blame the political party you don’t like, but that’s just not the case.
See, hydrogen doesn’t exist in significant quantities by itself. It has to be made from water and that takes energy to do — it actually takes more energy to make hydrogen than you can get from hydrogen.
http://www.energybulletin.net/node/4541
Natural gas is no more abundant than oil is, and right now the demand for it relatively low. If we start converting cars to use it, the demand will spike and it will deplete all the much faster.
I’m not going to go around and around about this. See if your library has one of the books I recommended in No. 18, “The Long Descent” especially.
If you care about doing more than finding ways to blame Democrats, that is.
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No. 31: Nope. I am an advocate of real food. Good meat, fresh vegetables, fresh fruit, no low-fat anything and as little processed food as possible. That lunch in the item you linked looked awful, and I do not AT ALL agree with any limits on parents’ ability to send homemade lunches with their kids.
The school is dead wrong.
However, I am sure my telling you this, directly and and clearly, will not prevent you from claiming later that I support the school in this, because I am rapidly concluding that you are just a fundamentally dishonest person.
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#33: I’m not going to indulge your paranoid fantasies. The reality is that our society is based on non-renewable fuels in rapidly diminishing supply. This is true no matter who is in the White House.
We can either accept reality and adapt, or we can deny it until the day the power grid goes down for good because we kept demanding that somebody, somehow, make new energy sources out of nothing.
The choice is still in our hands … for a little while longer.
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#37 Conan “I’m not going to indulge your paranoid fantasies
You mean like Obama promising to bankrupt the coal industry?
It’s not paranoia if it is true.
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It’s not true. Even your link doesn’t say so. He’s talking about disincentives to build new coal-fired power plants rather than picking a clean and sustainable energy source.
He says nothing about “bankrupting the coal industry.”
However, it is true that coal is yet another fossil fuel in limited supply. Why should we NOT discourage further use of it and encourage use of solar, wind and other sources instead? Investing millions of dollars in new infrastructure that is dependent on a fuel that will one day no longer be available is foolish.
I think the cap and trade plan is heavy-handed, but I don’t argue with the goal. That huge, powerful coal-fired generator will not do a darn thing for us when there isn’t coal to burn.
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If the impact of opening ANWR is small, the effect of SUVs on the road is teeeensy. No reason for introspection.
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Money As Debt
I’d known for years that the Federal Reserve (and its “notes”) was a scam — that our “money” was backed by nothing more than the “full faith and credit of the United States of America.” (As one wag has noted, “Only governments can take valuable commodities like paper and ink and turn them into something utterly worthless.”)
But the thing I could never figure out was, “Just where does this ‘money’ come from?” In other words, when FRNs are printed and the money supply is inflated, what is exchanged in value for the new FRNs that came into the system?
Money As Debt
explains it all — and it’s all right there, staring us in the face, “hidden” in plain view. It’s a scheme so arrogant that it defies understanding … and yet, there it is!
“Money As Debt” is 47 minutes long, animated (in a slightly cheesy way), and kinda humorous. Check it out … then pass it along to your friends.
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If the impact of opening ANWR is small, the effect of SUVs on the road is teeeensy. No reason for introspection.
Yeah, we Americans shouldn’t have to change a darn thing about the way we live! We’ll take all the energy we want and it’ll never run out! Because we’re Americans!
Foolish.
But ok. I can only pound my head against the brick wall for so long. Good night all.
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If the American people at large really understood the nature of the Federal Reserve — which ironically (or maybe not) is neither “federal” nor a “reserve” — the stuff would hit the fan here in a way that would make the “unrest” in the Middle East look like a Sunday School picnic.
THE FED ABSOLUTELY HAS TO GO.
Oddly, the only American representative with the nerve to say so is regularly derided by too many Americans as an “isolationist” and “conspiracy nut.”
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#39 Conan “It’s not true. Even your link doesn’t say so.”
What are you talking about? Obama said that once he’s through taxing energy companies anyone who tries to build a coal-powered plant will go bankrupt. Obviously existing plants will also be charged in like manner and will also go bankrupt.
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#43 Ron Paul is right Frank. He’s loony, but right!
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There, there, Conan. When you check back in, you’re welcome to provide figures to show how much sooner we’ll run out of oil because of SUVs. I’m guessing it might be about 8 seconds sooner. What’s your guess?
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Ron Paul is loony because Fox News says he is.
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#47 “Ron Paul is loony because Fox News says he is.”
Ron Paul is loony because he flirts with conspiracy theories. Nevertheless, I find that I generally agree with him these days.
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I suppose it is true that if you take away one of the major markets for coal, the coal suppliers will have trouble. However, while the wisdom of that specific policy is debatable (and I agree it’s probably not a good idea), it doesn’t detract from the larger reality that fossil fuels are finite. In that same article Obama talks about plowing the revenues from cap-and-trade into research for renewable clean energy, which is something that could and should have happened 30 years ago.
Another point with regard to coal is that it takes oil — which is the resource closest to depletion — to mine coal. The mining equipment is all powered by oil and gasoline. So even if peak coal is a while off, the ability to extract it is at risk. We don’t need to wait until we’ve totally depleted the resources before we change.
Mac: If a hybrid gets 45 mpg and compact car gets 30 and an SUV gets 20, then mile for mile the SUV is burning 1 1/2 times as much gas as most cars and more than twice as much as a few of them. That’s not a trivial impact.
But you are right that the overall difference is probably less than some environmentalists assume.
But consider an analogy. Say your community depends on a pond for its drinking water. The pond isn’t connected to a larger water supply (for the sake of the analogy assume there’s no rain to replenish it.)
A few miles away there’s a river, and now and then people talk about how it might be a good idea to dig a canal from the river to the pond to keep it filled. But in the meantime, whenever people need water to drink they come get it from the pond. The community charges a fee based on the amount of water taken.
Many of the people bring a glass, fill it, drink and go on about their business. But some bring buckets, drink what they need and spill the rest on the ground, paying the higher fee to do so.
Eventually, the water level starts to become noticeably low and talk of digging that canal takes on new urgency. Some people are now not sure it could even be finished before the pond runs dry. Meanwhile, the people with buckets continue to spill water on the ground and, whenever someone suggests they could bring a glass, take less out and cost themselves less too, they’re likely to indignantly insist “If I’m willing to pay for the water I spill, what’s it to you?”
Eventually,
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It’s a trivial impact, Conan, because fuel for SUVs composes an infinitesimal amount of overall oil use, and SUVs themselves compose a small fraction of overall cars on the road. You don’t contemplate SUV oil consumption by merely subtracting it from the equation. Say you were to do away with SUVs. Most of those people still gotta drive. For many, the alternative would be mini-vans or sedans. Others would drive trucks. Oil is still consumed. And a small percentage would convert to low-consumption vehicles. But the reduction in *overall* consumption, regardless of choice, would be miniscule. If there’s any urgency to conserve, reducing numbers of SUVs isn’t a consequential response.
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And for the record, I reject your accusation that I lied about you in the other thread, as I demonstrated I did not lie. If that kind of thing rankles you, and you get upset over how anonymous people address you in this little corner of cyberworld, you should be more careful with those kinds of charges.
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#50: Well that’s fair. However, please note that it was not me who brought up SUVs in the first place.
#51: I didn’t respond to your response on that, but I don’t agree that I think conservatives have a goal of doing bad things to seniors or the poor. I think conservatives support policies that have that effect and find the cost to the poor or the elderly to be an acceptable consequence to achieve what they think is a worthy or necessary goal. But I don’t think harming anyone is the motivation.
I do admit that I can get more passionate than I should and say things that I later regret (I actually do sometimes), but I deny that I think what you attributed to me.
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I didn’t really “attribute” so much as quote you. It sounds like you’re denying what you said.
I don’t want to pile on, and I appreciate your humility in replying, but you might find it an interesting exercise to search through your posts. When I culled through them , wow, I had to wade through a lot of snark and condescension. Maybe you just don’t realize how often you do it.
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I am too quick to be impatient with what I perceive to be obtuseness. I acknowledge that. I’ve not come to my views overnight, I’ve spent many decades of life observing and thinking and reading and at various points in time I’ve held very different beliefs and views than I do now (I was a dittohead in the ’90s) and gone through the process of changing my perspectives as information and other points of view came to my attention.
So when I’m talking to someone who sounds like I used to, I probably react to that more vigorously than is called for.
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What you quoted that I said didn’t say “you want to starve the poor” really. It was more like “doesn’t it bother you that this policy you support will starve the poor?”
But there’s probably room for either interpretation.
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Cool, Conan. I didn’t mean to pile on or suggest I’m not an offender, too. There are some prominent posters here with whom I largely *agree* but whose posts I just ignore now. I’m numb to the “lefties are X,Y,Z evil” posts of non-substance. I certainly don’t consider yours in that category.
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#49 Conan “… it doesn’t detract from the larger reality that fossil fuels are finite. … But consider an analogy. Say your community depends on a pond for its drinking water. The pond isn’t connected to a larger water supply (for the sake of the analogy assume there’s no rain to replenish it.)”
On my commute today while I was listening to an audio book by Milton Friedman Free to Choose on economic power vs. political power, I finally understood your fundamental point. It is that energy is a zero sum game.
And so, now I understand why you hate SUVs so, because in your view they are in effect stealing from the whole community. If they aren’t outright thieves they are at least arrogant ingrates who are wasting precious resources. They are like gluttons who take food from starving children and then throw it on the ground. How evil those people are!
The problem with this is that this is a dramatic oversimplification if not outright false. Filling up a Hummer is not stealing from those who fill up a Prius.
The energy market is not a zero sum game. Someone who gets better mileage enjoys the benefit of keeping more of his money. He is getting paid in effect for being prudent. Someone who pays more isn’t stealing anything, rather he is losing money. We should feel sorry for the Hummer driver, not spit on his car.
If commodities become scarce then people will automatically buy less and will seek alternatives. Eventually the price will become so high that no one will buy it. New markets will open up with alternative forms of energy all on their own. The market is self-regulating. You don’t need an inefficient nanny state to try to micromanage the market, because that will ruin whatever it is trying to save.
That does not mean the government shouldn’t be involved. It served a national interest both militarily and with interstate commerce by creating the interstate highway system. If America is at risk by having all of our military vehicles running on foreign oil, then we could have some portion of them running on domestic fuel like natural gas. This would help create a natural gas infrastructure and so on.
We can and should be prudent with our resources, but the sky isn’t falling. So we don’t need socialism to save us and you don’t have to hate your neighbor. Now, don’t you feel better?
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The liberal economic plan is closely tied in with energy and the environment. Rather than waiting for an actual energy crisis, the idea is to artificially create one now by setting up a system of penalties and credits whereby the politically connected are rewarded. The fact that it will cause worldwide chaos is of little consequence.
The goal is to create a massive green economy through central planning. The purpose of the Copenhagen conference and other UN environmental conferences is to set up a global economy that will give a few politicians in the cartel the power to regulate the world (as if this would give them the power over the climate).
The UN is proposing that Mother Earth have the same rights as humans and would have legal representation appointed in order to sue human oppressors for victimizing the planet. This is similar to what Cass Sunstein, Obama’s regulatory czar proposed, which was to allow animals to sue their owners in court.
One might say these are loony conspiracy theories, except for the fact that actual people who are actually in power are proposing this insanity.
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My wife and I were involved in an accident years ago. A lady ran a red light and hit us in the side. Our lives were saved because we were driving a heavy built car. I will pay the extra on gas mileage and know I’m keeping my family safer. We drive a heavy built SUV. The more medal and air bags the better.
On the subject of energy conservation one area you hear little about is underground homes. A few feet down the temperature is the same year-round. You save on utilities in summer and winter. I’m 100% confident this is where we will go as our energy supply depletes.
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Xion: You agree with me more than you realize, so how about you knock off the uncharitable terms? I don’t “hate” SUVs. I actually like them. But it would be denial to pretend they don’t use greater amounts of limited resources than other choices.
Energy is not a zero-sum game, but petroleum is.
This is an important point: If commodities become scarce then people will automatically buy less and will seek alternatives. Eventually the price will become so high that no one will buy it. New markets will open up with alternative forms of energy all on their own. The market is self-regulating. You don’t need an inefficient nanny state to try to micromanage the market, because that will ruin whatever it is trying to save.
There are a few problem with this. One is that those alternate forms take time to develop and create and put infrastructure in place for. If we wait until market pressure over petroleum forces it, it will be too late to do it painlessly. We’ll still be looking at a lengthy period of time of increasingly unaffordable fuel before alternatives can become widespread options.
Another is that none of the alternatives are going to provide the amount of energy at the relatively low price of oil. Liquid oil produces a lot of energy and demands relatively little in terms of labor and energy use to extract. Nothing else can match it. Solar and wind are great, low-cost alternatives, but they don’t generate anywhere near as much power. Hydrogen actually takes more energy to make than it provides once made.
These are simple facts. Your faith in the market to solve the problem is misplaced.
No, the sky isn’t falling and nobody has said it is. I’m talking about taking wise steps now to prepare for the coming century … not exactly a panic attack, is it?
I previously recommended “The Long Descent” by John Michael Greer for a good examination of the topic. Another one I haven’t read but have heard good things about is “The Slow Emergency,” by James Howard Kunstler.
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Buddy: The underground home idea is a great one. I’d love to have tha. Unfortunately, tearing down all existing homes and rebuilding them underground won’t be cheap or fast. But yeah, it’s a very intriguing idea.
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In #60, I trust you can figure out where I stopped quoting Xion and started my response, since once again I botched the closing tag.
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The problem with wind is that it isnt consistent. That and along with Solar, the O&M can be expensive.
Your body isn’t really renewable either, Conan.
Should you stop living life because at some point it will end on it’s own? I’d think not.
Oil goes into far more than just gasoline and diesel. It is involved with plastics, synthetic rubber, synthetic fibers, even candle wax, jet fuel, the list is practically endless…
Knocking SUVs doesn’t get you anywhere. It’s smoke and mirrors by politicians to make you think your doing something useful, all the while they invest in the alternative to make money…
The Prius gets plugged into an outlet that is providing electricity…BUT FROM WHERE? A power plant.
How do they make the batteries? From non renewable resources.
The world will end from nuclear holocaust long before it we will run out of oil, or fail to have good alternatives at the ready.
America sits on over 800 billion barrels of oil. I’d say it’s a pretty good reserve for when the rest of the world is about tapped out.
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Now I find myself being argued with by people who agree with me in many respects.
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Thorn (who agrees with me in many respects)
The problem with wind is that it isnt consistent. That and along with Solar, the O&M can be expensive.
Your body isn’t really renewable either, Conan.
Should you stop living life because at some point it will end on it’s own? I’d think not.
Not at all. Who said otherwise?
Oil goes into far more than just gasoline and diesel. It is involved with plastics, synthetic rubber, synthetic fibers, even candle wax, jet fuel, the list is practically endless…
Exactly. Hence, we use 20 million barrels of it a day in the US, about 80 million worldwide.
The Prius gets plugged into an outlet that is providing electricity…BUT FROM WHERE? A power plant.
Actually the Prius has a self-charging battery coupled to a gasoline engine. You’re probably thinking of the Chevy Volt. But either way, absolutely correct.
How do they make the batteries? From non renewable resources.
Yes.
The world will end from nuclear holocaust long before it we will run out of oil, or fail to have good alternatives at the ready.
Well if you mean literally run out of oil, I agree. That will probably never happen. However, that’s not the problem. Read on.
America sits on over 800 billion barrels of oil. I’d say it’s a pretty good reserve for when the rest of the world is about tapped out.
Well no, there you are mistaken.
First, it’s impossible to know just how much oil America sits on, although 800 billion barrels is a pretty high estimate. However, there’s a difference between total oil and recoverable oil. And there’s a difference between oil we can just drill and pump (cheap) and oil we have to squeeze out of rocks at high temperature, putting ground water supplies at risk in the process (oil shale — not at all cheap).
Nobody’s saying we’re going to run out of oil. We’re going to find oil harder to get and progressively more expensive, until it becomes more of a luxury item than a commodity. That will happen long before the actual end of the supply comes near. That’s what people fail to appreciate.
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#60 Conan “I don’t “hate” SUVs. I actually like them. But it would be denial to pretend they don’t use greater amounts of limited resources than other choices.”
No one disagrees with that. But they also pay more for fuel. In other words, they are already penalized by the price. So leave them alone.
“Another is that none of the alternatives are going to provide the amount of energy at the relatively low price of oil. Liquid oil produces a lot of energy and demands relatively little in terms of labor and energy use to extract. Nothing else can match it.”
That is very observant and exactly right. But how does hindering energy companies and penalizing them help anything? It will reduce the amount of oil used, but will also drive up the cost of everything and potentially cause another worldwide economic crisis.
Instead of government intervention to kill energy, how about government stepping aside to let freedom and innovation thrive?
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I haven’t said anything about government intervention. There’s a bigger picture here that’s far more important.
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Xion: No one disagrees with that. But they also pay more for fuel. In other words, they are already penalized by the price. So leave them alone.
That they pay more to fill up doesn’t replace the fuel they’re taking that they could do without. But once again, you’re agreeing with me here — as gasoline becomes more expensive, it will increasingly become a luxury item. When it’s $8 or $10 a gallon, someone who can afford a $400 fill-up will use gas much more freely than someone who struggles to put five gallons in and hope it’s enough for two weeks. That person will cope by walking more, working from home, buying a bicycle or using public transportation.
And when gas is $20 a gallon, pretty much everybody but the super-wealthy will be having to do the same.
My argument here is that a wise man will be preparing for that eventuality now, when there still is enough gas at affordable prices to use some of it getting things set up. The conservation that you mock is how we make the gas supply last us longer so we have more time to make the needed adjustments.
It does not fix the problem permanently, and no one’s said it does.
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Conservation at the pump is of miniscule consequence to the overall supply of oil.
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Any individual use is “of miniscule consequence to the overall supply of oil.” If millions of people make the same choices to conserve, the impact is significant.
But remember, conservation is just a stretching technique. The supply of inexpensive fuel will run out eventually (still available but no longer inexpensive — don’t miss that point. Oil will become prohibitively expensive long before it actually runs out.)
Now is a good time to learn how to grow food and make clothes and get your house insulated so you don’t need as much heating and cooling.
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But Conan, I think the same principle applies to general auto fuel conservation as it does to SUVs. American auto fuel consumption is a very small portion of overall oil use. What percentage reduction would you realistically hope for, best case scenario? %25? A small percentage of a small percentage is very small.
I do agree that it’s advisable we make lifestyle choices in preparation for unexpected events, however.
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Where do you get that it’s a small percentage? Automobiles burn more than 40 percent of the oil we use. Find ways to reduce usage there, and other conservation techniques in other arenas, and you can make a pretty big dent.
Realistically, we’re talking about slowing the long descent by a decade or two, not preventing it. But that’s a decade or two we could use. It takes energy to create new energy sources, so the sooner we start, the less abrupt and painful it has to be.
And the reason I’m harping on conservation is that the first thing that needs to change is the sense of entitlement that causes people to demand unlimited power to do everything they want. In the future, you may not have electricity in your house every day. Gas will be too expensive to use casually, when you can get it at all. The sooner we start adjusting our expectations to prepare for that, the better off we’ll be.
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Conan,
Say the U.S. consumes 25% of the world’s oil output. %45 percent of that use is for automobiles. A certain percentage of that is for passenger vehicles. A percentage of that is for what we might consider profligate-use, high-consumption cars and/or unnecessary driving. A reasonable percentage reduction of that last category isn’t going to make a significant difference in the whole scheme of things, so far as I can tell. Do you have figures fow how much oil use would be reduced based on a conservation model you have in mind?
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Why are you obsessed with SUVs? I just noted that driving smaller cars saves fuel. I’m not on an anti-SUV crusade in particular.
The predicament we face is much larger than any one small component. And looking it in isolation, as you keep trying to do, is a mistake. Effective changes come from doing many small things.
You can point to any one of them — driving an economy car, carpooling, using more efficient light bulbs, letting your house get a bit colder in winter or warmer in summer before using the climate control — and say ‘that’s a small thing, it won’t make any significant difference,’ and be correct. But I’m not talking about doing one small thing and calling it a day. it’s a combined approach.
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Relax. I didn’t mention SUVs. I’m saying that if we’re in the dire straits you mention, and if we only have personal control over a very, very small part of the solution, then that solution would seem to lie elsewhere. You can straighten me out there, if you want, as I asked for figures from your model. What should we do? How much reduction should we expect from a combined approach? I think a lot of people already, out of a desire to save money, if nothing more, take a number of the steps you propose.
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What I think we should be doing as individuals is becoming as self-sufficient as possible, to prepare for a time when we can’t just get in our cars and drive to stores that are filled with products trucked in from all over.
Develop good relationships with your neighbors. Learn a trade that you can do without electricity if necessary. There are a lot of ways to prepare. I have recommended books above that provide some pointers.
In the short term, conservation on a large scale helps to delay the time when that’s necessary.
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It’s interesting that you describe (a) a sizable portion of the evangelical community–the oft-mocked patriarchal/homeschooling crowd, and (b) a situation that would have been far more likely to have come about in a more libertarian universe.
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(a) Just because I disagree with evangelicals theologically doesn’t mean they don’t get some things right — whether it’s for the right reasons or just coincidental is another question.
(b) Possibly, but unfettered individual action isn’t any more likely to be farsighted than political action. Most people don’t try to conserve until they have an immediate need to do so, which is like stopping smoking only after you develop lung cancer — by that point it’s already too late to prevent problems.
During the energy crisis of the 1970s, people started finding ways to save energy. Conservation was in vogue and people actually did cut their usage by as much as 20 percent, for about a 10-year period into the mid-80s. There was a lot of attention being paid then to developing solar and wind power.
But then, as demand fell, the price dropped — and usage came back up, wasteful usage became more common and interest in solar and wind power was just something a few “envirowhackos” thought about.
We showed we could significantly decrease our energy use and then forgot all about it and have now wasted 20 years that we could have used developing those technologies and expanding the infrastructure for them. And only now, when gas topped $4 a gallon a couple of years ago and is threatening to again do we start thinking about these issues ago. (And I’m no better than anyone else — this is recent stuff for me.)
John Michael Greer argues that if we had stayed on the course to develop alternative energy sources then, when petroleum was more abundant, we could have made a pretty painless transition — using petroleum until the time when we could move to something else. As it stands now, we may not have that opportunity anymore. We may face a painful shortage of energy for quite some time before we get something else up and running, if we even can now (because it takes this generation of energy technology to put the next-generation technology in place.)
Whatever you think about government intervention, cap-and-trade is at least an effort to incentivize people to make that change before it’s a crisis, not only after it’s too late to do it smoothly.
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Regarding (a), I didn’t have you, specifically, in mind, although I might be able to find posts of your here where you make sweeping criticisms against evangelicals regarding energy that parallel those you make about them regarding the poor, i.e., unfair criticisms that would be mitigated by this ‘homeschooling’ subgroup.
I’m not convinced that the era of government-intrusion-in-every-aspect-of-life of the last 50 years has brought any more long term innovation than the millenia that preceded it. Parenthetically, when you refer to the dismissive attitude taken toward “envirowhackos,” you seem to be indicating that it’s been *them only* who had responsible environmentalism in mind, while evangelicals were oh-so-stupidly were missing the boat. Maybe it’s your myriad other less than charitable posts that predispose me to think you’re blaming evangelicals yet again for some ill we face, though. If that’s the case, cool.
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Conan,
I understand the increase in cost is a factor.
However, refusal to drill raises that factor prematurely. The reason it is done, has nothing to do with actual conservation, but controlling the demand, the price, and thus the investors profit.
Just like the housing market…
If the government wants to reduce how much oil we use, the US Navy is a good place to start.
And yes, I understand the difference between total oil and recoverable oil. 800 billion barrels is still a conservative estimate.
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Mac: Parenthetically, when you refer to the dismissive attitude taken toward “envirowhackos,” you seem to be indicating that it’s been *them only* who had responsible environmentalism in mind, while evangelicals were oh-so-stupidly were missing the boat. Maybe it’s your myriad other less than charitable posts that predispose me to think you’re blaming evangelicals yet again for some ill we face, though. If that’s the case, cool.
Not evangelicals at all … pretty much everybody. What had been a mainstream movement in the late 1970s became a fringe element in the ’80s and onward, ignored and marginalized by just about everyone else.
However, refusal to drill raises that factor prematurely. The reason it is done, has nothing to do with actual conservation, but controlling the demand, the price, and thus the investors profit.
I agree, but we already do drill a lot in America. If the average American used as much oil as the average European, we’d probably run a surplus and be an exporter.
Drilling more would help, short term, and as long as it’s environmentally protective, I’m all for it. But a lot of the rhetoric suggests that it will solve the problem permanently or at least for so long that our generation won’t need to worry about it. I’m not at all convinced of that.
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Conan My argument here is that a wise man will be preparing for that eventuality now, when there still is enough gas at affordable prices to use some of it getting things set up. The conservation that you mock is how we make the gas supply last us longer so we have more time to make the needed adjustments.”
Who is mocking conservation? How many times do I have to repeat that we all heartily agree on that. The word ‘conservative’ means ‘conservation’. But I disagree with the zero sum game mentality. It is self-righteous and futile and creates animosity about things which don’t solve the real problem.
What we need is leadership on the importance of energy independence. Instead we have children running the country who merely want to use the energy crisis (and every crisis) to remake the economy, pay off their friends, keep themselves in power and enslave the people to the government.
What I think we should be doing as individuals is becoming as self-sufficient as possible, to prepare for a time when we can’t just get in our cars and drive to stores that are filled with products trucked in from all over.
Personal activities may help a single person, i.e. yourself, but who is watching over the country? Obama’s answer to the energy crisis is to make current sources more difficult to obtain by declaring moratoriums, taxing them, vilifying them and in some cases bankrupting them. He is trying to appeal to environmentalists who oppose all forms of energy.
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Obama’s at least trying to create ways to push people off of the old ways of thinking that will not serve us much longer. I would rather see it happen by people wising up on their own, but I’m not sure financial incentives to discourage further dependence on dwindling fossil fuels is a bad thing.
Ultimately though, the government can’t save us. I’m advocating individual and community action, regardless of what the government does or doesn’t do, because by the end of the long descent — actually a good way before the end of it — that’s what we will have to rely on.
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When I was young I shined shoes for 10¢ a pair. I rode a bicycle to and from the business district. One night heading home a man opened a car door in front of me. I crashed into his door. Myself, my shoe shine kit and bicycle where all over the road. Thank God no car was close behind me. He gave me a dollar to cover my injuries and damage before he went into a nearby bar. I say all this to make a point. We could save energy and have a healthier population if we made road shoulders safer places for bicycles. Small motorbikes could use this area and not slow cars down. Many other countries use more bicycles than we do.
We live in the Midwest where roads in some areas are hilly and curvy. One day we followed a bicycle racer for miles at a very slow speed before we could safely pass him. For the most part our roads are not designed to safely accommodate bicycles.
Save energy and have a healthier population. There ways the government can help us to save and be safe.
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Buddy: Yes! That would be great.
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