Gas prices have gone down
Mostly because of improved efficiencies in manufacturing. Most US manufacturing has been leaned out and become more efficient, mostly because of the regulations and bullshit imposed by this administration. This is actually how it’s supposed to work, and that’s fine. Of course Wingnuthead is getting credit for “Improving the economy” when in fact the only way he has “Improved” it is by breaking it hard enough that everyone ELSE had to double and redouble their efforts to make it at all.
We are reaching the horizontal asymptote of that improvement.
But don’t worry. People who don’t understand what “asymptote” means will pass laws and make regulations that will allow us to cross it.
11 comments Og | Uncategorized
If we grade the economy by the productivity it might be great.
If we grade it by number of people employed it sucks.
My problem with the supposed improvement of the economy is that while gas prices have dropped by quite a bit, nothing else has. And I can point at one thing at least that I KNOW has continued to go up in price……so at least here in my corner of the USA there hasn’t REALLY been any actual improvement.
Certainly, people’s lives have. In general, not improved.
Mine has improved ever so slightly…wait, my washer just puked up a bearing…never mind.
Consider the long term effect of the higher oil prices. Most roofing products are asphalt-based, and the product pricing on those reflects the higher benchmarks, not the new lower per-barrel price of crude.
Now, carry that effect on through everything other “hard product” that originated at the wellhead. All plastics, most chemicals and the list boggles the mind.
Oil prices fall, but the prices of those hard-products lingers from the old, higher benchmarks.
But as the economy softens, buying power fades in relation to those hard products.
Yeah, the fuel is cheaper at the pump, and that helps. Just doesn’t solve all the problems, and creates quite a few more in the bargain.
Remember, I’m not a cynic. I’m just an optimist with experience.
Jim
Sunk New Dawn
Galveston, TX
Yep.
I think I am a cynic. Or at least my wife says I am. I have two kids looking for work and they are both having issues finding what they want. On is a recently minted chemical engineer with a BA in physics. Can’t find anything.
Pretty much tells me the economy is in the crapper.
Don’t remember when but Atomic Fungus showed a graph where deliveries to fuel stations did not pick up, so demand has not returned, and so the price is low. Plus aren’t most if not all raw material prices stagnant, including metals and another crucial fuel, natural gas (the WSJ had a good article on that a month ago)? The price of THAT isn’t what it was 5-7 years ago when I used to look at my utility bill with one eye closed and the other fluttering. I know the price of finished flat rolled carbon (steel) is in the toilet and bringing turbulence to the steel industry. Plus, how much is kept artificially low with hyper production partly as a trade war with Putin and partly with one against us to get our fracking and shale operations into mothballs? Expecting the public in this “recovery” to spend prices up is tantamount to setting up a blood drive in a turnip field.
Yeah, this isn’t about more petroleum available, it’s about demand for petroleum products falling into the abyss. This will become more and more obvious as we run up to the election as Jugears and his Krewe frantically escalate their efforts to cover up the fact that we never actually came out of the Great Recession, and in fact, are probably in a Second Great Depression.
Like a cat trying to cover up scat on a bare floor, it isn’t going to go well for them.
When I was an undergrad I knew a grad student who’s once worked for Exxon as a chemical; enginneer. When he saw flames shooting out of the top of a refinery he’d say “Screw the environment, that’s MONEY going out the stack. If you’re burning it there, you’re not selling it to someone to burn in their engine/furnace/whatever.”
He worked on one of the very early attempts to computer-control a refinery, before that you had a guy turning a valve and watching a meter. It was so proprietary that they warned him if he divulged how it was done they’d put him in jail so deep his mother would have to ship him boxes of sunshine. The first year of operation his system saved the company megabucks. That’s how it’s done.
MTS, as much as I’d like to take credit for that chart, it wasn’t me. It sounds about right, though.
Our economy has reached a point where it’s impossible to cut more workers from the workforce without seriously damaging industry’s ability to DO things. Unemployment has only slowed because if Sample_Big_Company lays off any more prople it won’t be able to serve its clientele.
Even so, as things continue to decline and DEMAND falls, companies find more room to cut workforce.
My biggest worry is the futures markets for things like copper and aluminum and iron, stuff which is in just about everything we make and use. We can’t function without them, and those markets show declining demand. THAT is troublesome.