#OT# More BS on oil supplies

Right here in the U.S. of A., as opposed to what will happen if we *don't* put a floor on prices -- which is to send the equivalent amount to Saudi Arabia, Russia, Venezuela, Iran, the U.A.R., Kuwait, etc., etc.

Put a $4 floor on prices, using an adjustable tax (phased in over, say, two years), and it will keep a lid on demand that will force the oil producers to play at a much lower different supply/demand equilibrium; keep more of the money in the US; shift the market so that US car builders have a market for fuel-efficient cars; create a market for alternative energy; etc.

Other than that, there will be lots for short-sighted people to bitch about. And they will. There's little chance any of this can happen in the US. Most likely we'll just go through the same old cycle again, in which we buy bigger cars and trucks when prices are low, then prices go up and we all bitch, and US car builders tank again. Then we'll find other people to blame for something we did to ourselves.

We doom ourselves to this cycle. The market is just behaving like markets do, despite the mostly futile efforts of OPEC to control prices. They almost never succeed at that and they're failing big-time right now. But the market will do it for them, once economies bottom out of this slump.

-- Ed Huntress

Reply to
Ed Huntress
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When I asked where will the revenue go, I ment it in the sense of how it is going to be used. Government will spend it on something. One would like to see debts paid down but I would not bet anything worth much on that. I have a feeling government will just get addicted to it and squander it. Then when oil prices rise they will want to keep the revenue.

Next, a gas tax is regressive. Something I keep being told is bad. If I make

500K a year, gas isn't a problem. If I was working at walmart or some other low wage job out in flyover country where the comute tends to be over many miles it would be a big bite out of the budget.

US car builders don't need a market. The dems have increased CAFE standards and I suspect the standards are going be tweeked upwards very soon. The market will exist by legislation.

Well foolish people will buy bigger cars. Should we out law freedom of choice? The chance of me ever owning a car getting < 30 mpg again is slight. I know the roadmap a head.

Likely so but low energy cost may be one of those things that help us get out of this slump. You seem to be advocating digging a deeper hole to climb out of at this time.

Right now I'm driving the same, putting a extra 200 bucks a month aside for when the economy goes over the edge. Hope it doesn't happen.

Wes

PS

Hope you had a very Merry Christmas.

Reply to
Wes

If I had certainty that it would pay down debt, we could consider it. It is a regressive tax as I mentioned to Ed.

The first part keeps us from digging a bigger hole. Pickens idea of using windmills to generate electricity and move heavy truck to NG was one of the few 'green' ideas I liked. Electric vehicles, networks and using cars that are charging as a load sink that can be dropped to keep traditional baseline running w/o firing up NG generation would be a piece of the puzzle.

Don't forget though that many voters feel the price of gas acutely. I'd hate to have my name on that one if I was a member of the house or senator up for re-election.

I have to ask you how far do you drive? Not everyone lives in a high density population center. Too many solutions, including light rail seem to be city/metro centric ideas.

Last one first. I don't see Obama making big changes so far. Iraq is winding down, surge in Afghanistan. Game still on.

Well we do not have a coherent energy policy.

The carbon crowd wants the end of coal fired, the anti nukes block new nuclear power plants. The save the fishies hate hydro. Then the endangered species types will block transmission line corridors and wind farms. The Kennedy clan didn't like windmills in their bailiwick.

I am not very hopeful.

Wes

Reply to
Wes

When the economy is going well, pay down the debt. When it's not, don't. One useful way to look at this is in terms of GDP: you want the debt to go down as a percentage of GDP when GDP is growing. Absolute numbers don't matter as much as fractions of economic activity. When the GDP is flat or dropping, depending on the reason for it, the smart thing often is to increase the debt.

Your feelings are interesting, but feelings don't solve problems. Setting good policy can help solve problems.

The serious gas tax plans include a credit, usually based on income. That covers lower-income people financially while still leaving in place their incentive to use less gas.

That doesn't create a market. That just distorts a market. People will still want bigger cars and the car makers will do everything they can to encourage them to buy them, just like they did with the original CAFE standards. The car makers paid a penalty if they made too many low-mileage cars but it was still more profitable for them to make the cars and pass the penalty on to the customer.

And then the small cars they make are junk, because they're just trying to squeeze a distorted market and they're building the cars to meet the standard. That's why their small cars are mostly junk now. When they sell a good one, it's usually because they build it overseas and imported it.

This is not maliciousness, greed, or collusion on their part. They're just following the market incentives as we've set them up, trying to keep their heads above water. CAFE standards are better than nothing but they create some perverse incentives that work against us in the long run. If you want a straightforward, clean incentive that pushes in the right direction, a gasoline tax is the best one anyone has come up with.

Don't outlaw it. Just make it expensive to make choices that hurt the whole country. There's an external cost when thousands of people buy Hummers, and the external cost is higher gas prices for everyone.

They did that in Germany for years, with a tax on engine displacement on top of their high fuel taxes. I don't think we need an engine tax. A substantial gasoline tax ought to do it.

As we can see already from the truck/car sales ratio (that 45% was for July, BTW; the 49% was for November. I forgot to mention that), a great many people don't. They just blame it all on market manipulation and think it's the government's job to ferret out the evildoers and to get prices down again. What they don't recognize is that they're the ones regulating the market.

It will be a shot of heroin -- it can put a lid on the pain, but it doesn't help anything in the long run. But timing is important. If you raise taxes quickly now, you'll stall any recovery. It has to be phased in, perhaps adjusted to the state of the GDP.

Well, if we could count on everyone to use good sense like that, there would be no need for any regulation and we'd be making smart choices without the coercion of gasoline taxes. But we can't, because people don't, and we therefore do. d8-)

We did, Wes. And I hope yours was the same.

-- Ed Huntress

Reply to
Ed Huntress

Hardly. Given todays technology, you could abate the tax at the pump completely with a card for anyone driving preferred vehicles. Your card could also hold a profile that would "prebate" the tax. Use more - pay more. Car pooling works, even in small shops.

Big Rigs are one of the few efficient uses of petroleum for transport. NG ain't going to happen. Taxing those guys would be foolish and there isn't any need to do so.

Yeah, bullshit Republican values will finally have to align with reality. There isn't anything conservative about today's Republican party. It's time you realized that we elect people to office at the national level to make hard choices. Don't pull the plug on them when they do so or we will continue to have what we do and don't put them in office unless you are willing to trust them with that responsibility.. They aren't any better than their constituents which is why George W. Bush is such an embarassment.

You'll know things are on the right track when you write your Congressman to say that their vote cost you something, but thanks, the good of the country was well served, let's not have this happen again.

My 1985 Corvette is sporting 273,815 miles and my 1990 is going on the road next week. I did 20,000 miles in four months this summer on the '85, all of it at more than four dollars per gallon.

Really? He isn't even our President and he's effected a huge change in public perception. OTOH, I've seen George W. Bush make dramatic changes in everything from his stewardship of America to the active promotion of policies that have lead our economy to the brink.

Nobody gives a shit about either of them Wes and you shouldn't either. Let them fight their own battles. We can, and should, help out but it's their beef. Your job, and mine, is to feed our families and grow America into the future with a higher standard of living for us all. Their job is to explain to us why helping them is a good idea. I haven't heard or seen anything from them yet unless their mouthpiece is living at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, and I thought the dude at that adress worked for you and I. That means not sacrificing our wants and finding a way to deliver. Convinced as Americans all seem to be of our superior nature, the time has come to rise to the challenge and quit blaming others for our own failure to get it right. When you are told the costs are to high your response ought to be something to the effect that Americans are at least as capable as the rest of the world - go back to the drawing board and figure something out or you're fired.

The way to keep Saudi Arabian citizens from crashing commercial jets into American real estate is to bankrupt their country. The way to keep Afghanistan in line is to pulverize them remotely with drones from time to time. They are savages. The real problem in that area is something that you didn't mention - Pakistan and their nukes. We tried to get them to buy into PASS but they wouldn't. That means they can launch at will and undetected.

That isn't going to happen either. Look for yourself.

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BS. The problem with Nukes is they take ten years to build and they are only a bridge. They also have another distinctive drawback. The fuel is EXPENSIVE and nobody wants it in their back yard. Something nobody talks about, but they actually do exist, is environmental sacrifice zones. Look it up.

JC

Reply to
John R. Carroll

Sorry, but that doesn't answer the question. How far do you drive to work each day. We don't care how far you drive to your cottage every weekend, or to the golf course, or for "$50 hamburgers" with your 'vette club buddies.

Reply to
clare

Actually it does. He said " I have to ask you how far do you drive?"

It's 112 miles round trip to the vendor I was working with. At the moment, I'll be running between LA and San Jose two or three times a week for a month.

That's pretty funny. Hamburgers at a good joint haven't been below $60.00 in years. LOL

JC

Reply to
John R. Carroll

Not really. When you are in a pool and the driver or passenger has to work extra hours it falls apart. When is the last time you car pooled? Been about 30 years for me.

NG isn't going to happen? Why?

Rail is way more efficent unless you think JIT is the holy grail.

Oh so the Obama administration is going to trim the UAW? I'm starting to laugh.

And to throw you a bone, when Republicans try to play as Democrats they are going to loose every time.

I've written my Dems a few times. They are very good at phrasing bend over in a reply.

Would you say that gas at 4 dollars really isn't a budget killer? You are speaking from the perspective of someone that doesn't think 30K is a good wage in these times. (I think

30K would suck, I love my job, I love my job...)

I think your perspective is out of line with the main stream.

Obama hasn't done anything. He can't. He sticks to 'one President at at a time'. If I was him, I'd use that tactic. I *hope* GWB and Obama are talking though.

I bet Obama stays in Afganistan. I'm a strong believer in self defense be it at a national or personal level. I think we get rolled on defending the world.

Considering how Nato has supported us, I'm ready to call the troops back from all of Europe.

I don't know what PASS is. Likely target is India. India will deal with it.

Thanks for the link.

I've said before and I'll say it again. Put a nuke plant next door and give me reasonably priced power and I'm all for it. Beats having a chemical plant next door.

Wes

Reply to
Wes

Nukes are underappreciated. The cooling water stream from our Oyster Creek plant grows the biggest crabs you ever saw -- they're as big as roosters. And that green glow makes them easier to catch at night. All you have to do is get past the extra claw or two and the third eye sticking out the top of their head. d8-)

-- Ed Huntress

Reply to
Ed Huntress

Having seen how excess social security funds have been 'invested' do you really trust government to do the right thing?

Previous response applies.

So you belive tax policy should be a tool of social engineering?

If you have 4 or 5 kids, something that tax policy seems to encourage, they are not going to fit in a sub compact.

People that are not schooled in physics seem to get that more mass vs less mass means you have a better chance of surviving a head on. So you want to force those that are not as well off into cars they will die in when the rich roll over them?

My 2001 Saturn is an excellent car. 161,000 miles and counting.

Not a great winter car since Governor Grandholm is balancing the budget by not plowing roads. Of course that means many of us living where I do are looking at suv's again since we need to get to work to keep that job.

That only affects the lower level classes. If I made 300K a year, I'd drive anything I liked. It is not clean in any way.

The hummer drivers are unable to give these things away. At least there were not able to a few months ago.

Based on your logic all private jets should be outlawed too. More efficient to fly commercial.

Good Dems.

Are you supporting the "Laufer Curve"? Seems like one side likes low taxes and another thinks high taxes will maximize revenue.

Well, a lot of people use good sense. Usually the lower on the scale of earnings the better sense they display. The ones thinking they are living large will shrug off gas taxes as they live outside their means.

I'm not a fan of social engineering. Social engineering is government working backwards.

Wes

Reply to
Wes

It's been a while for me too Wes but when that happened the others played chess in the break room.

It isn't any better than diesel. The hot ticket for long haul big rigs is gas turbines. Ford or GM came out with one years back but it was expensive up front and people were leary of technology more so than today. The damned things burn about anything.

Capacity is a problem with rail. You also have to get goods to and from a rail head. Our highway system is an excellent choice for anything perishable like food. There isn't a silver bullet.

Sort of. The Treasury is going to provide the debtor in possesion financing GM needs to file for bankruptcy. That won't eliminate the UAW but the exsting contracts will be null and void. The same is true with GM's retiree benefit program. It'll just be gone as far as GM is concerned. Still laughing?

What is actually going to happen is that Cerberus is going to end up with GMAC, GM and Chrysler are going to become one company and you and I are either going to provide loan gaurantees or loans to make that happen through the auspices of a shrink wrapped bankruptcy filing. Remember you heard it here first. LOL

What we are facing isn't going to involve a partisan solution. Anyone from either party that plays things that way will end up out of office in short order. Should the Toyota Republicans not get with the program, their constituents will toss them out on their ass so fast they won't know what happened. That's my feeling anyway. Everyone is well and truly tired of this crappy approach to governing.

Why would you take that sitting down? Keep writing and here's a tip. Hand write your letters. You would be surprised at the result.

Well, I'm getting thirty one miles to the gallon on the freeway Wes so you are probably right. I think everyone ought to get at least that.

I'd be surprised if there weren't cooperation but only to a point. Bush IS still our President and that has to be respected. Obama turning into mister big britches wouldn't go over well at all and I think he's conducting himself well enough.

We'll stay for a while and grow our force there. I don't see how the result can be especially good but I don't think Obama will continue to push a bad hand beyond reason. We'll see.

I'd do the opposite. We need to get them commited to the fight. Someone will need to define just exactly what the fight is first but the world is pretty turned off to Bush right now. Hopefully, the incoming administration will be able to take advantage of whatever good will the change in leaders generates. From all appearances, that could be considerable.

NP

OK but I'll want to shut off your electricity for the ten years it will take and ten years after that there will be a much better solution on the nuclear front. Fission is what we can do today, fusion is the long term future. Be a little patient and reap the reward. Your kids will regardless.

I've got to hop. One of my guys is having trouble with a turn key I did. They moved everything from one shop (vendor) to another and the top dogs woke me up at three thirty this morning to get me rolling. The Vietnamese food in Witchata is first class if you don't mind the neighborhood. LOL

JC

Reply to
John R. Carroll

Another market that has crashed Ed.

JC

Reply to
John R. Carroll

But how do they taste?

Wes

Reply to
Wes

Only problem is, like jets, there thermal efficiency is DISMALL.

Reply to
clare

Not over the road. That's the only applicatoin where they make sense. They were actually pretty good ( about equally efficient) and I've got to believe with the advances in techno;ogy over the last thirty years someone could come up with something spiffy.

JC

JC

Reply to
John R. Carroll

Because you can buy cheaper crabs from China?

Reply to
clare

People are buying fewer crabs as they stretch food budgets. Crabbers are starting to get out of the business in the Chesapeake Bay area all together because they can't make any money.

JC

Reply to
John R. Carroll

Disregarding the fact that social security "surplusses" are actually a net loss after corporate tax deductions for payroll taxes, how would you have wanted them to be "invested"?

Think about where you'd put the money. In Treasury bonds? So that we owe the money to ourselves, and gain interest -- but with the other hand we're...paying the interest?

These things get simplified in the popular explanations so that people can relate to them as if they're like a family budget. But they're not.

If you get specific, we can follow the money around the track for an example or two. Then the question boils down to this: Do you want that money to stay here, where it swaps hands among Americans (efficiently or not; it doesn't matter much), or do you want it going to Saudi Arabia?

It's our choice. My bet is that we'll continue to send it to Saudi Arabia, because the benefits of taxing gasoline are a little too hard for the average voter to follow. All they know is they don't like taxes -- or much else, for that matter.

All tax policy is a tool of social engineering, and always has been. It's just a question of whether you want to do the engineering, or to let Exxon and Iran do the engineering by default.

Well, then, put them in a horse-drawn wagon. Too bad. They should have smaller kids...

Yup. Get rid of the riff-raff. Get rid of 75% of the 3-ton SUVs, and we'll all be a lot safer. Tax the hell out of them and you'll get the numbers down.

That doesn't make it an excellent car. I have an axe that I use regularly. It's almost 90 years old and it still has the original head. It's a long-lived axe but I wouldn't call it excellent.

If you want to try an excellent car of about the size of your Saturn, take a test drive in a 3-Series BMW. As I told a couple of GM engineers one year at IMTS (admittedly, it was a long time ago), if that doesn't make you want to come home and kick in the doors of your Chevy shitbox (or Saturn), you're not a car guy.

The engineers were not amused, BTW, but they didn't have a rejoinder, because neither of them had ever been inside of a BMW. That didn't stop them from bad-mouthing the "yuppies" who bought them.

It's a funny thing, but we got along fine without SUVs for around 70 years, so I'm not impressed with their attitude. The best snow car I ever had was a '64 VW bug with studded tires, which carried me to the ski slopes for years, when everyone else was stopped dead. It got 36 mpg on the highway.

What are you, a communist? d8-) The object is to make the economy work for all of us, or for as many as possible. I'm not impressed with low-income people who tell me they're deprived because they can't fuel their SUVs.

Nowhere in anything I've said have you heard me suggest "outlawing" anything. You're making that up in your head.

I don't think political affiliations have anything to do with how much people bitch about what the government is doing wrong. The ones who think they know how to do better tend to be the ones who never graduated from high school. They have all the answers.

The Laffer Curve is a much-abused device that Laffer himself calls a "pedagogical device" for use in the econ classes he teaches. Of course it's valid -- the idea has been around since the 13th century. It's just that nobody knows where the intersection point of those two curves lies. The most expert analysis says it's at a total tax rate of 65%. I suspect that's in the right neighborhood.

Nonsense. Their lack of sense is how they got on the bottom of the scale in the first place.

If they have enough money, they *can* shrug off gas taxes.

Everything that government does is social engineering, especially taxation. And big companies that have real market power do the rest of the social engineering for us.

-- Ed Huntress

Reply to
Ed Huntress

I think the idea was to divert NG consumption from electric power plants to heavy truck. Then use wind to balance off the loss in capacity. Pickens never mentioned using EV's as a load sink to create a sorta base load capacity but he should have. Maybe that was too much to spoon feed people.

No there isn't. I worked for a place that brought in heavy loads of material. The rail road often lost in in a JIT enviroment. We have GPS and other technology to improve the sitiuation.

That is going to have to happen. I feel sorry for those affected but economic reality can't be avoided forever.

No. I'm not a GM worker. I've supported the greedy beast as an employee of a couple suppliers.

You may be right. Too big to fail. Where have I heard that?

The 'Toyota' legislators are not going to vote against their constituants interests. Most of them are in the south where wages are not as high as many blue states. Not a lot of love for the UAW down there.

I have Levin, Carl Levin. There isn't a chance I could send him a message he would take notice of unless it was flying fast, made of dense material with a good cD and aimed at his head. ;)

The only good Dem, John Dingle got forced out of his chairmanship on his energy committee.

You get that with a vette? Sweet!

I think Obama is playing it well. I don't lean his way but he seems to be doing the political thing with a lot of good judgement giving what he has to balance.

I'll stand back and watch. Dropping rummy and the surge worked in Iraq.

I really don't think the EU has the back bone. Great Britain excepted.

I'd love to sit in when Hillary lays down the law.

I also don't believe in good will. You know we don't have friends, we have nations with compatible interests.

You have a good night.

Never thought of a Vette as an encono car ;) I could see my self driving one of those!

Wes

Reply to
Wes

Well, lobsters are down something like 40%, but I haven't priced crabs. Those darned things cost three times as much as good steak.

-- Ed Huntress

Reply to
Ed Huntress

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