gas price thread

[JackFlorey]

I don't see anyone traveling to communications satellites.

Agreed; the only thing that travels are the satellites themselves. So?

I think sending up satellites and probes makes sense for some comms, mapping, and scientific applications. But none of those things requires manned missions, hence my use of the word "travel".

A friend of mine is the PI on the Psyche mission. Her probe is definitely traveling to the asteroid belt.

 

[JackFlorey]

Thought rocket fuel was moving to Hydrogen and Oxygen as to refuel off earth.

That's actually the reason that the next SpaceX launcher is using methane and oxygen. If you take a fairly small amount of hydrogen with you to Mars, you can use the hydrogen to make both methane and oxygen from the existing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

And if you can find water, you don't even need to bring the hydrogen. But since that is not assured, the current plan is to bring hydrogen.

 

[Hillhater]

Also I love it when Hillhater tries telling me about my nation

.. ..its my mission to help others see reality ! :wink:
Albert E’ once said..” you cannot see the time if you are inside the clock !” (or words to that effect)

 

[speedmd]

Also I love it when Hillhater tries telling me about my nation

.. ..its my mission to help others see reality ! :wink:
Albert E’ once said..” you cannot see the time if you are inside the clock !” (or words to that effect)

His words, as I remember them, were, "you can not see the time if your head is up your butt". :lol:

 

[CONSIDERABLE SHOUTING]

I will gnaw the arms off anyone who DARES stand in the way of space exploration.

Thought rocket fuel was moving to Hydrogen and Oxygen as to refuel off earth. Long lines at the Gasoline pumps not sure if they had run out or dropped the price again.

I'm gonna see tonight; my momma says the premium has dropped in price again.

That's actually the reason that the next SpaceX launcher is using methane and oxygen. If you take a fairly small amount of hydrogen with you to Mars, you can use the hydrogen to make both methane and oxygen from the existing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

Which frankly- and I only say this as a hobbyist and with interests- you shouldn't do, because even while Mars has a CO2 atmosphere it's at best 1%-0.5% the density of Earth's atmo; I can't imagine it'll be easier to bring complex equipment and it's energy needs to make a fuel, versus just bringing MORE and not having something you rely on that can break. But honestly, all that just gets into how going to Mars and making a base there is frankly, pretty stupid compared to the Moon which has (usable) tritium, will let us support probes like the James Webb, and in case of technical problems is 1-3 days away instead of 6 months.

.. ..its my mission to help others see reality ! :wink:

The reality that Trump oversaw one of the biggest mass deaths of Americans in known history, of 1.2 million and counting, because he didn't want it to affect his chance at re-election and thus, acted like a disease didn't exist. Slaves like you will believe anything :lol:

 

[ZeroEm]

They are looking for water on mars and the moon for refueling. The companies are interested in the make up of asteroids to see if there is any mining in the future.

In passing Neil Degrasse Tyson" commented about a colony on Mars, He said Antarctica is warmer and wetter than Mars and we are not living there.

 

[CONSIDERABLE SHOUTING]

They are looking for water on mars and the moon for refueling. The companies are interested in the make up of asteroids to see if there is any mining in the future.

In passing Neil Degrasse Tyson" commented about a colony on Mars, He said Antarctica is warmer and wetter than Mars and we are not living there.

Well we are, just not permanently- and that's a MASSIVE implication, because they show how damaging long-term isolation from other people affects us. You've got water on the moon, future studies to see if we can produce peskovite cells off the surface, and tritium as a nuclear fuel; Mars only has water so far, and is also many times as distant.

 

[Ianhill]

Theres enough oxygen up there for us and the mutants but cohaagen wont turn on the reactor, theres enough in our brains to bring down the sons of bitches but kuato needs to help us remember what we know.

See u at the party richter.

 

[ZeroEm]

Launching big space ships is easer from the moon.

 

[CONSIDERABLE SHOUTING]

Theres enough oxygen up there for us and the mutants but cohaagen wont turn on the reactor, theres enough in our brains to bring down the sons of bitches but kuato needs to help us remember what we know.

See u at the party richter.

CUM AWN COHAAAGEN, U GAHT WHAT YU WAHNT! GEEV DEES PEHPLE AHIR!

 

[JackFlorey]

In passing Neil Degrasse Tyson" commented about a colony on Mars, He said Antarctica is warmer and wetter than Mars and we are not living there.

Well, to be fair, that's because most nations have agreed not to settle anyone there, and only allow scientific expeditions. The "towns" there like McMurdo are there solely for purposes of research, and you have to get explicit permission to go there.

Of course as the climate warms that may change . . .

 

[speedmd]

Oil down well below $90 /barrel today. Interesting summer.

 

[The Toecutter]

The long-term trend will be upwards in price. I don't think this price shock is over. Even if the cost of gasoline were to drop to $3/gallon, the cost of fuel would continue breaking tens of millions of people's budgets in the U.S., because wages have not gone up to match the price increases of everything. The official CPI statistics, as well as the BLS statistics, are misleading at best, and more likely outright fraudulent. I still have my old receipts of things I've been buying since 2008, and the experienced real-world rate of inflation has exceeded the official CPI numbers by 2-3x, on necessities. In the last year, the costs of my groceries have gone up more than 20%, but the CPI claims the inflation rate is less than half that.

 

[john61ct]

Hopefully it stays on average above $150, with supply not allowed to expand, to help accelerate our transitions away from fossil fuels as quickly and thoroughly as possible.

Leave it in the ground!

And screw "practicality" screw the economy, our ecological emergencies are accelerating time is running out.

The whole political-economic bases of human life needs to be radically restructured ASAP.

 

[Hillhater]

And screw "practicality" screw the economy, our ecological emergencies are accelerating time is running out.

??exactly Which “ecological emergencies “ would that be ??….

 

[The Toecutter]

The whole political-economic bases of human life needs to be radically restructured ASAP.

It does. But it needs to happen with public consensus or near-consensus, and not at the orders of oligarchs like Klaus Schwab or Bill Gates. If asshats like those determine our future for us, we and the planet will both be greatly worse off than by doing nothing at all.

The richest among us consume the most resources and emit the most pollution, and that is what first and foremost should be addressed if the goal is actually saving this planet. So many of the "solutions" bandied about involve the middle class and poor reducing their consumption with the consumption of the financial elites left unaddressed, and also left unaddressed is an unsustainable economic system built upon conspicuous/compulsory consumption, fiat money, and planned obsolescence. The environmental movement and the terminology that originated from it has sadly been hijacked by those who have done the most to destroy the environment. This was intentional.

Imagine how rich everyone would be if planned obsolescence, endless wars, unsound money, and wasteful government spending were eliminated. Overall resource consumption would go down dramatically. So too would the gap between the rich and poor, the inevitable consequence of greatly reducing the flow of earned money from the latter to the former and allowing the latter to build wealth instead of constantly struggling to survive. The rich have far too much of the pie, and that needs to change, especially if that pie is going to have to shrink.

 

[e-beach]

Just wait until the DARPA Re-Net program is really going strong. In 40 or 50 years, not too many will be having their own thoughts anyway.

 

[JackFlorey]

But it needs to happen with public consensus or near-consensus, and not at the orders of oligarchs like Klaus Schwab or Bill Gates. If asshats like those determine our future for us, we and the planet will both be greatly worse off than by doing nothing at all.

So we have to do whatever they say NOT to do? You are giving them too much power over you.

The richest among us consume the most resources and emit the most pollution, and that is what first and foremost should be addressed if the goal is actually saving this planet.

Which is one of the reasons that replacing luxury gas SUV's with EV's is actually more important that replacing Honda Civics with EV's.

Imagine how rich everyone would be if planned obsolescence, endless wars, unsound money, and wasteful government spending were eliminated.

Everyone would actually be a lot worse off. No planned obsolescence? Fewer jobs for factory workers. No debt based money? No loans available to buy a first house or a car. No wasteful government spending? Millions of defense workers would lose their jobs and we'd be in an instant recession.

There are huge problems with our current system, to be sure. A debt based monetary system relies on endless growth and that by definition is unsustainable. But the reason we have kept is that it makes a lot of people rich. Not evenly to be sure - the lower 20% has been decreasing in real wealth for the past 80 years or so, and the top 5% are seeing absurd increases in wealth. But everyone else - including the middle class - is getting richer. So that top 80% have a strong incentive to continue that.

Overall resource consumption would go down dramatically.

Agreed. Consumption always goes down during deep recessions.

So too would the gap between the rich and poor

Why? What mechanism would move money from the rich to the poor in your scenario? Most likely the rich would continue to get richer, since money in and of itself makes money.

The rich have far too much of the pie, and that needs to change, especially if that pie is going to have to shrink.

Yep. But the details there are the killer.

 

[JackFlorey]

US average gas price as of today: $4.08/gal

US average gas price in 2008 in UNADJUSTED dollars: $4.11/gal

 

[The Toecutter]

So we have to do whatever they say NOT to do? You are giving them too much power over you.

I'm not giving them any power. Their recommended policies are being imposed as we speak all over the world without anyone getting so much as a vote. That is why there are protests in places like the Netherlands and Sri Lanka going on right now.

Which is one of the reasons that replacing luxury gas SUV's with EV's is actually more important that replacing Honda Civics with EV's.

It would make more sense for the rich to give up their luxury gas SUV so that three poor and middle class people can drive Honda Civic EV replacements at a reduced ecological footprint to that one electric SUV. A 120 Wh/mile streamlined sedan of 2,700 lbs with a 25 kWh pack for 200 miles range consumes greatly less energy during operation than a 500 Wh/mile 9,000 lb SUV with a 150 kWh pack for 300 miles range, and requires greatly less embodied energy to build, and is less expensive to purchase and keep operational.

Also, that 500 Wh/mile SUV with a 150 kWh pack could also build 100 electric velomobiles with 1.5 kWh packs that use 1/100th the electricity per mile of operation. Most people who operate a vehicle are operating it alone. Many people too poor to afford cars would find the velomobile a massive improvement to their living standard, versus having nothing at all.

Everyone would actually be a lot worse off. No planned obsolescence? Fewer jobs for factory workers.

It would mean fewer items filling landfills, and factory workers could buy something and expect it to last the rest of their life, instead of having to keep buying, and buying, and buying. This reduces the need to work as many hours on the whole for a given amount of living standard. A partial solution would be to cut the workweek down as needed and raise the pay per hour as needed so that there are enough jobs to go around.

No debt based money? No loans available to buy a first house or a car.

True, and because of the law of supply and demand, the cost also goes down tremendously. The current paradigm is such that most people my age can't afford to rent a 1-bedroom apartment, let alone afford a home. Priced in terms of hours of median wage required to afford each square foot, housing costs have increased about 3-fold since 1968. This is not due to material usage, as we use less materials to build dwellings today per sq ft than back then. A lot of this is because of endless money printing and the money-as-debt paradigm, that allows banks to conjure money out of thin air. This forces everyone on the debt bandwagon if they ever want to own their own shelter, the creation of said debt which increases the amount of money chasing the limited amount of shelter space available, creating a nasty positive feedback loop. Except that average people have to labor to pay that money back, while the money creators got to create the money without effort, then get the property if the average person laboring away can no longer pay.

No wasteful government spending? Millions of defense workers would lose their jobs and we'd be in an instant recession.

Good. That labor can be freed to do something not wasteful.

But everyone else - including the middle class - is getting richer.

Only using the current flawed metrics like the CPI. Price everything in terms of hours of work required to afford it, and the bottom 90% of the population are actually getting significantly poorer. The real inflation rate is 2-3x what the government/CPI are claiming, and wages are not rising to a commensurate level.

The U.S. used to be a society where a lone minimum wage earner could support a household without constantly being in debt. It has turned into a society where we need two median wage earners working and constantly accumulating debt, to maintain the same material living standard for that household. That is not "getting richer", and all of the frivolities available today to distract from this that did not exist in the past do not make up for the fact that necessities are becoming increasingly more expensive when priced in terms of hours of labor needed to afford them.

The difference is being expressed in the increasing share of total wealth owned by the rich and decreasing share owned by everyone else, in spite of productivity per worker more than doubling since 1968.

Agreed. Consumption always goes down during deep recessions.

And it must go down to avoid squandering non-renewable resources and consuming the planet dry. Lets start by cutting down the consumption of the upper 0.1%, and finding ways for the bottom 90% to maintain or improve their living standards on less by cutting out waste. Midsized cars should get 80+ mpg instead of 30 mpg, and they should be built to last a lifetime and be repairable. Homes need to be built smaller and with more durable materials. And finally, we need a more equal distribution of wealth/income so that it's not the top 20% driving the market for all new purchases as is currently the case because they have more money than brains and care more for conspicuous consumption than value, while everyone else is shut out of the market altogether. This distorts the market greatly.

Why? What mechanism would move money from the rich to the poor in your scenario? Most likely the rich would continue to get richer, since money in and of itself makes money.

Any mechanism that allows one to spend less money to maintain a given amount of living standard. Planned obsolescence forces people of average means to keep spending their money, instead of building wealth. Every dollar spent on profit margin is a dollar that goes not to the laborers who provide a product or service, but to the rich. Planned obsolescence is in the long term actually destroying wealth, rather than generating it, as it is consuming the planet's resources. On paper, the GDP grows with planned obsolescence more than it would without, but the permanent wealth generated goes to the upper echelon of society, while the lower echelons keep parting with their money AND must suffer the consequences of the externalities not considered in the GDP figure. Wasteful government spending such as the endless war paradigm destroys already existing wealth, usually that of poor and middle class people, not only by the taxes levied against them, but also by the direct destruction of built up properties and of infrastructure, nevermind all of the maiming and killing.

If our so-called leaders kick off a nuclear war, IMO they all deserve to die.

Yep. But the details there are the killer.

They are. But the current world is not the best of all possible worlds either, and the current trendline is towards ecocide and a world completely dominated by aristocracy. Extinction will follow with it. Complete and total anarchy would be an improvement to the current paradigm's trendlines regarding climate and resource depletion being followed to their inevitable conclusion, as at least everyone would be placed on equal footing instead of what will likely be the pre-planned and targeted mass dieoff that the current "leadership" is leading us towards.

 

[JackFlorey]

It would make more sense for the rich to give up their luxury gas SUV so that three poor people can drive Honda Civic EV replacements at a reduced ecological footprint.

Yes, it would. But since we don't do "orders by oligarchs" we can't force that to happen. We can give them a better option, though.

It would mean fewer items filling landfills, and factory workers could buy something and expect it to last the rest of their life, instead of having to keep buyer, and buying, and buying. This reduces the need to work as many hours on the whole for a given amount of living standard.

Yes to all that. But again, that means less work, lower wages and more poverty.

True. and because of the law of supply and demand, the cost also goes down tremendously.

While that is true, it is true because no one can afford a house. You get deflation and recession.

A lot of this is because of endless money printing and the money-as-debt paradigm, that allows banks to conjure money out of thin air. This forces everyone on the debt bandwagon if they ever want to own their own shelter, which increases the amount of money chasing the limited amount of shelter space available, creating a nasty positive feedback loop.

Yes, that is bad. But again, the choice is debt-for-homes and no homes. (For most people of course.)

And while I agree that a top level decision to not use debt-based money, that's a tough sell when it comes to telling people "hey, so you can't have a house, but it's all for this really good no-debt political ideology, believe me."

Good. That labor can be freed to do something not wasteful.

Like what? Painting pictures of your cat? That's fine, but since there's a limited market for pictures of your cat, the result is more poverty.

Labor is the underlying foundation of our economy, and we value it through wages. Eliminate labor (or change it to less-valued labor) and the economy tanks.

Only using the current flawed metrics like the CPI. Price everything in terms of hours of work required to afford it, and the bottom 90% of the population are actually getting significantly poorer.

Nope. Simply not true. In terms of real dollars the top 80% are getting richer and richer.

Median family income 1970 converted to 2021 dollars:
$15,218.88
$41,225.44
$66,383.96
$93,574.72
$165,658.12

Median family income 2019 converted to 2021 dollars:
$16,923.24
$45,795.64
$78,701.36
$127,289.12
$294,041.44

https://www.taxpolicycenter.org/statistics/household-income-quintiles

And it must go down to avoid squandering non-renewable resources and consuming the planet dry. Lets start by cutting down the consumption of the upper 0.1%

Again, the question is how to do that without using oligarch/despot commandments.

Any mechanism that allows one to spend less money to maintain a given amount of living standard.

Well, then, that's impossible. Many Americans define a standard of living as boats, SUV's and vacations in New Zealand. You would have to forcibly remove those things from people to get them to spend less money.

In addition, many things will go up in price in the future. Climate change will make water and food more expensive. Trying to mitgate climate change will make cement, power, cars and aluminum more expensive.

Complete and total anarchy would be an improvement to the current paradigm, as at least everyone would be placed on equal footing.

Spoken like someone who has never experienced it.

(chart)
That chart looks like every peak-oil chart I saw circa 1990, and every starvation prediction I saw circa 1970.

 

[The Toecutter]

Yes, it would. But since we don't do "orders by oligarchs" we can't force that to happen. We can give them a better option, though.

1) End subsidies and business tax deductions for large pickups and SUVs
2) End the changes made to the CAFE rules that allow vehicle footprint modifications to the standards, and go back to the way the standards used to be
3) Get rid of many current safety standards designed to keep out affordable foreign competition. Let the Chinese bring in their $6,000 EVs
4) Hold trucks and SUVs to the same safety standard that cars are held to, instead of having looser standards for trucks/SUVs
5) No more auto industry bailouts

All of these will get us closer to that goal. All of them involve the government shrinking instead of expanding by each reducing the total number of rules and regulations, and reducing government expenditure.

Yes to all that. But again, that means less work, lower wages and more poverty.

Less work? Yes. Lower wage? Maybe, but the market will adjust accordingly since any business who has no one to buy their products will go under, meaning on the macro scale a greater percentage of revenue will by necessity have to go to wages and less by necessity will to go to profits. Henry Ford understood that in order for his products to sell, the people that made them had to be able to afford them. If wages go down, so too must cost for a given amount of quality.

Everyone benefits on the whole when they only have to buy one lightbulb to last decades or longer, than having to replace them 10+ times during that interval. Same if one can buy a car, and expect it to last a lifetime, without repairs costing more than the car is worth. Planned obsolescence is essentially a "broken windows" policy in economic form. It is programmed premature destruction of actual wealth in the form of finished products to facilitate the forced purchase of new products.

Every useful tool or appliance that breaks is representative of destroyed wealth. Labor and resources were expended to produce those items, so does it make more sense for that item to last for a longer period of time, or a shorter period of time?

While that is true, it is true because no one can afford a house. You get deflation and recession.

Most can't afford a house anyway. That's why they have to borrow money. In the present day it's virtually impossible for someone of average wages to save for a house outright and avoid the middleman collecting interest, precisely because of the existence of the debt-as-money paradigm. It didn't used to be this way. 50 years ago, a burger flipper could live in a cheap apartment, save money for a few years, and buy a house outright. Today, a nurse, engineer, scientist, or lawyer would be hard-pressed to ever be able to save for one outright. I'm trying. I lived in the ghetto with roommates on an engineer's pay, and I'm now almost 40 living in my step mom's basement in the ghetto on similar pay. The alternative is to be in debt into my 70s, where I'm always a job loss away from losing everything. I've been through 3 layoffs over 11 years, so the odds of never suffering a job loss for that duration are not favorable, either. I'm doing far better economically than most people my age or younger, but I am not doing better than my dad did when he was a 19 year old minimum wage janitor in 1970.

Yes, that is bad. But again, the choice is debt-for-homes and no homes. (For most people of course.) And while I agree that a top level decision to not use debt-based money, that's a tough sell when it comes to telling people "hey, so you can't have a house, but it's all for this really good no-debt political ideology, believe me."

You're forgetting about a third choice being returned which existed in the past: save for it over a period of years, even on a low wage job, and then buy outright in full. This cuts out the wealthy middlemen making unearned money off of interest payments.

Like what? Painting pictures of your cat? That's fine, but since there's a limited market for pictures of your cat, the result is more poverty.

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone.

It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.

The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities.

It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population.

It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some 50 miles of concrete highway.

We pay for a single fighter plane with a half million bushels of wheat.

We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people.

This, I repeat, is the best way of life to be found on the road the world has been taking.

This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.
~Dwight D. Eisenhower

Instead of our scientific and mathematical minds and our natural resources being directed towards murdering, spying upon, imprisoning, and destroying other people, they could be directed toward finding ways to clean up our environment, reduce resource usage for a given amount of utility, educating/teaching others, building renewable energy systems, solving problems like hunger and poverty, ect.

Labor is the underlying foundation of our economy, and we value it through wages. Eliminate labor (or change it to less-valued labor) and the economy tanks.

Labor conducted for its own sake does not add wealth. If you get a ditch digger to dig a ditch, and have another fill that ditch, no wealth has been created. Instead, labor and resources have been expended for no gain. In fact, as the amount of hours of toil have gone down per capita over the centuries, wealth has in fact increased. The Luddites were incorrect about industrialization materially impoverishing everyone.

Nope. Simply not true. In terms of real dollars the top 80% are getting richer and richer.

Median family income 1970 converted to 2021 dollars:
$15,218.88
$41,225.44
$66,383.96
$93,574.72
$165,658.12

Median family income 2019 converted to 2021 dollars:
$16,923.24
$45,795.64
$78,701.36
$127,289.12
$294,041.44

https://www.taxpolicycenter.org/statistics/household-income-quintiles

You don't understand my argument. The metric of "real dollars" is crap precisely because the methodology used to measure inflation via consumer price index does not reflect real-world price increases. Hedonic adjustments obfuscate the truth.

In 1968, an average house was 1,665 sq ft. It took a minimum wage laborer 9,344 hours of work to afford that house, and a median wage laborer 5,436 hours of work. Today, it will take a minimum wage worker nearly 44,000 hours to afford the same size home, and median wage worker 17,800 hours to afford the same sized home.

Measured in cost per square foot of home, today's median wage is 1/2 of what 1968's minimum wage used to be.

Similar applies to the cost of healthcare, food, college educations, new cars, ect. Some more than others. An hour of work does not buy as much as it used to.

The "real dollars" used in your link above are not "real dollars", but are the product of manipulation of government statistics to make things seem better than they actually are. Get rid of the hedonic adjustments, and you won't be able to come to the same conclusion anymore and pretend all is well. No matter how many times Alan Greenspan has said such, hamburger is NOT steak.

Again, the question is how to do that without using oligarch/despot commandments.

Getting rid of government in most aspects of our lives would actually be a good start and lead us towards that, and away from oligarch/despot commands. When a small group of people owns most of the wealth, and the wealth is representative of what one is allowed to do, then that small group already forms an oligarchy and uses their influence to issue despot commands. I'm all for eliminating their ability to do that. Public policy and law has been shaped by a small few, and not the majority of people.

https://scholar.princeton.edu/sites...testing_theories_of_american_politics.doc.pdf

Imagine if the people of the U.S. gathered up the courage to occupy K-street and prevent the lobbyists from writing the laws that us little people are expected to follow even though we got no say in said laws. Imagine if large mobs of people made the lobbyists unable to function. Then imagine that they occupied the J. Edgar Hoover Building, the IRS, the Pentagon, the CIA building, and prevented all of those unelected bureaucrats from imposing policies, policies that were made without so much as a vote from the people. And whenever the police kill an innocent person, instead of allowing the federal government to hire agent provacatuers to burn down businesses and homes, how about us little people people burned down the police stations, the city halls, and the court houses? Let all the prisoners loose? Attack the fusion centers that illegally spy upon all of us, rendering them inoperable?

It would be beautiful. And at this point, it's probably necessary. It might happen, and anyone who would use violence upon those who do such are going to deserve what will come their way when they finally realize that they are greatly outnumbered.

Well, then, that's impossible. Many Americans define a standard of living as boats, SUV's and vacations in New Zealand. You would have to forcibly remove those things from people to get them to spend less money.

Most Americans can't dream of affording ANY of that. New boats, new SUVs, and vacations to New Zealand are the domain of the wealthiest 20% of Americans. The average new car buyer of any type, whether that car is a stripper Mitsubishi Mirage, or a high-end supercar, or anything in-between, has an individual income at the bottom of the upper quintile. In 2015, NADA found that the average new car buyer had an individual income of more than $80,000 per year.

75% of those working in the U.S. live paycheck to paycheck and don't even have $1,000 in savings, not so much because they are wasteful, but because the cost of the necessities of living exceeds their take home pay. How much does a new boat, a new SUV, or a trip to New Zealand cost these days? WAY more than $1,000. By the metric many Americans define a standard of living as, MOST Americans have a terrible standard of living. It is only through debt that a large number of them can continue to pretend that all is well, but those bills are going to come due, and it's going to be nothing short of catastrophic when they do.

In addition, many things will go up in price in the future. Climate change will make water and food more expensive. Trying to mitgate climate change will make cement, power, cars and aluminum more expensive.

All the more reason we need to use less of these resources on frivolous luxuries that only the rich can afford, less resources on wasteful government expenditures and wars, and more resources on things people actually need.

Spoken like someone who has never experienced it.

Who has? Every place on Earth has some kind of government or other entity forcibly extracting their pound of flesh, even Mogadishu, Somalia. The world would be a better place without parasites deciding they have a right to rule everyone else and extract their resources. The captains of industry extracting profit from labor are functionally no different than governments that tax labor or central banks that profit from debasing the currency. At the end of the day, that represents resources the laborer worked to generate that was stolen from them. Government exists to uphold and preserve this unfair arrangement, to protect the wealthy and their often ill-gotten assets from appropriation, and to allow the wealthy to take more resources for themselves through war and conquest. And many resources are needlessly consumed and greenhouse gasses are emitted to perform this particular function of government, and many resources are also destroyed during the performance of these functions of government, leaving less for everyone outside of government. Both Ayn Rand and Karl Marx understood this, even if they vehemently disagreed about the details and solutions.

That chart looks like every peak-oil chart I saw circa 1990, and every starvation prediction I saw circa 1970.

Sort of. A lot of those old charts shared a similar curve, except on a more compressed timeline. The one I posted is actually tracking closely to the real world we live in today, which is a key difference. Things might diverge in the future, but the point still stands: endless growth on a planet of finite resources is not possible to maintain. Something will give at some point. The question is will the people of the world decide what will give and where and how, or will an existing entrenched aristocracy of moneyed powers hell-bent on controlling the people of the world make that decision for them and use force to uphold it(ie. "you will own nothing and be happy"), using all of the language and concerns of the environmental movement of the past which they have subsequently hijacked as "justification" for it?

 

[Ianhill]

Winter fuel prices will place stress on anyone thats heating the home in anyway other than logging and theres talk that even they will need to be recirculating to pass newer chimney emission laws.

Looks like the 1971 currency debasement is going to be a walk in the palk compared to the current state we find ourselfs in.

 

[The Toecutter]

Winter fuel prices will place stress on anyone thats heating the home in anyway other than logging and theres talk that even they will need to be recirculating to pass newer chimney emission laws.

Looks like the 1971 currency debasement is going to be a walk in the palk compared to the current state we find ourselfs in.

Glad to see that large numbers of Europeans are threatening to refuse to pay their bills. That will cripple the industry. For better and for worse.

 

[CONSIDERABLE SHOUTING]

Winter fuel prices will place stress on anyone thats heating the home in anyway other than logging and theres talk that even they will need to be recirculating to pass newer chimney emission laws.

Looks like the 1971 currency debasement is going to be a walk in the palk compared to the current state we find ourselfs in.

Ooh, thanks for reminding me to get my chimney swept. It's full of bird corpses and last winter it got down to -14F.

As for economy, looks like we've avoided a depression and are on the recovery but there's still a risk. Interest rate hikes (back to 5.78%, oooohhhh so high :lol: ) seem to be slowing everything well; house prices are remaining steady now unlike the head-over-ass advancement they were making (my sister's has more than doubled) and has cooled significantly with things not selling in hours as much as before, but it's hard to say since Russia invading Ukraine screwed energy markets and increased them enormously thus throwing Core CPI out of whack.

https://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2022/consumer-price-index-unchanged-over-the-month-up-8-5-percent-over-the-year-in-july-2022.htm

Glad to see that large numbers of Europeans are threatening to refuse to pay their bills. That will cripple the industry. For better and for worse.

Depends. In loud protest to making themselves reliant on Russian gas? Hell yeah, Germany's got 3 nuclear plants they WERE shuddering that they could fire back up (especially now that Greenpeace suddenly, is without funding) but there's a good chance that it could backfire and lead to a push for early restitution, which is what Putin wants so he can stem the hemorrhage as much as possible.