$100 a barrel This is some serious stuff. It's not if but when. Our economy is shot. We've bet the kitchen sink on a war (that I felt just). And it's all falls back to black gold. We're all addicted! So dont' be pointing any fingers! http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21713574/ I thought it was Bushes fault. There's no more excuses. You can't keep blaming the oil companies forever. Our oil here in Prudhoe Bay is two thirds depleted already. And they want to put more taxes on it. Were coming into a new age people. We didn't start the fire It was always burning Since the world's been turning - Billy Joel
The inflation adjusted price for oil is quite close to the 1980 price. I wish healthcare costs were the same. Our only impending crisis is the government created 70 trillion dollar unfunded medicaind obligations. The Europeans , Chinks and Japs are in a similar boat.
I see gas theft to become an epidemic. Gas stations are becoming almost exclusively pre-pay. So I see a trend about to start involving theft from citizens. Right in their driveway or in a parking lot. http://www.nacsonline.com/NR/exeres...5AE3476A90}&NRQUERYTERMINATOR=1&cookie_test=1 http://www.ksl.com/index.php?nid=148&sid=1281244 Apparently locking gas caps are selling at record levels. It seems strange to me that we've relied on the internal combustion gasoline engine for a century. Think of all the inventions and innovations that have occurred in the last 100 years, yet the internal combustion engine is virtually the same. We have cell phones the size of credit cards. Digital technology that allows for amazing invention. We sent robots to f*cking Mars for Christ sakes. Yet here we are, still pouring fossil fuels into a mechanical menagerie of cogs and camshafts, igniting it like cavemen and spewing toxic carcinogens from the pipes at the rear of our primitive vehicles. How is it that the internal combustion engine is a dinosaur in relativity to all other inventions and innovations? Yet a staple in our daily lives. Requiring that we feed it a precious and fast depleting remnant created over countless centuries by the process of decaying matter. Why aren't we doing more? How can this be?
We've made some big mistakes, and the worst thing to do is continue on that path to prove to ourselves or whoever that we didn't make mistakes.. We've set up our society this way and have no one to blame but ourselves. Around here, 60 miles N. of the Twin Cities, up until the housing bust and $3 gas, people were flocking farther and farther from the city core, and their jobs, to buy cheaper land and houses, driving up prices and local workers right out the door. Now they're bawling about gas prices and property taxes.. We got big problems when teachers and cops can't afford a modest home. They make more than most people.. I guess I take solace in the fact that the worse things get, the quicker we'll get better... It's more than just oil, houses, and the economy.. It's people fighting to hold on to some illusionary power passed down from generation to generation..You know, it wouldn't work if we all quit believing it, and stopped participating. I'm hoping this election sees the end of this regime of the democrat/republican scam, phucking up the world, hopefully not, beyond repair. Make the people think they're getting a "choice", then put em in debt, send em to work, and watch us pretend we're God.. Are we safer? Prolly closer to a nuclear holocaust than at any time in history.. Why are we so afraid to live? "We" the people? Our government is out of control and the dog needs to start wagging the tail instead of the tail wagging the dog.. If I disappear for treason, will someone take care of my cat for me? All he needs is love and food.. just like me.
We got a lot more problems than that.. Good God, most of the young people I go to school with are already tens of thousands in debt before they'll ever graduate. The jobs they need to pay that back, buy a house, and start a family are not there... We cannot continue in this manner.. our way of life is a losing game in the long run..
I've seen that alot too. Seems the most reliable jobs are now medical or military, some communications. I know so many people with degrees who are working at Target and Wal-mart what's up with that?
Trickle down economics.. or is it trickle up? Who knows, Reagan's dead and left us with a legacy of debt and huge government... least we had a surplus when Clinton was pres...Which soon disappeared when Reagan's VP's son took over... Seems we also like our monarchy's...
In an 1875 Scientific America it was predicted that major US cities would be knee deep in horse manure by 1950 unless something drastic was done. In the mid 70's both Time and Newsweek printed articles concerning the threat of a new ice age. Pardon me if I ignore the chicken littles of today.
Gasoline Prices in Perspective by Jerry Taylor and Peter Van Doren Jerry Taylor and Peter Van Doren are senior fellows. Peter Van Doren is also editor of Regulation magazine. PRINT PAGE E-MAIL PAGE TEXT SIZE America appears to be in a state of wild-eyed panic about the rising price of gasoline. Talk radio hosts and T.V. populists apparently think that mass riots are imminent and that whole cities will burn unless politicians do something to save America from the long, dark economic night that is descending upon us. In truth, gasoline prices today are taking less of a bite from our pocketbooks than has been the norm since World War II. For instance, let's look at 1955, a year most of us associate with big cars, big engines, and cheap fuel ? automotive glory days, as it were. Gasoline sold for 29 cents per gallon. But one dollar in 1955 was worth more than one dollar today. If we were using today's dollars, gasoline would have cost $1.76 per gallon in 1955. Gasoline now costs around $3.00, so we are worse off than in 1955, right? No. Because we were poorer in 1955 than we are today, $1.76 then had a bigger impact on the pocketbook (that is, it represented a larger fraction of income) than $1.76 today. If we adjust gasoline prices not only for inflation but also changes in disposable per capita income (defined as income minus taxes), gasoline today would have to cost $5.17 per gallon to have the same impact as 29 cents in 1955. Let's pick another year we associate with low gasoline prices ? 1972, the year before the Arab oil embargo. Gasoline was selling at 36 cents per gallon. Adjusted for inflation, however, the price was actually $1.36 in today's currency. Adjust again for changes in disposable per capita income and the price would have to be $2.66 per gallon to have equivalent impact today. Were we better off then when we rolled into the filling station in 1972 than we are today? No, because our cars get 60 to 70 percent better mileage today than in 1972 (22.4 miles per gallon versus 13.5 miles per gallon). That more than offsets the 10.5 percent increase in gas prices adjusted for change in inflation and income from then to now. Now let's look at 1981, the year Ronald Reagan took office. Gasoline sold for $1.38 that year, the equivalent of $2.74 in today's currency. Adjusting for the change in disposable per capita income, prices would have to be $4.30 today to have an equivalent impact. There are probably three reasons that gasoline prices appear so high to us today. First, many don't fully appreciate the long run effect that inflation has on prices. Second, many don't appreciate how much our incomes have increased relative to prices. Finally, we still remember 1998 very well, the year in which we encountered the lowest gasoline prices since 1949. Gasoline in 1998 sold for $1.03 per gallon, the equivalent of $1.21 in today's currency. Adjusting for growth in per capita income yields a price of $1.35 per gallon in today's terms. Today's price is more than double that and people resent the increase over the last several years, in part, because they think that 1998 prices were normal. But they were not. Now let's put the recent price increase in terms of real outlays. The average household is spending $136 more on gasoline every month than it was in 1998 and $114 per month more than it were spending in 2002. But, believe it or not, real (inflation-adjusted) disposable income per household has increased even faster than have pump prices; by $800 a month since 1998 and $279 a month since 2002. Accordingly, Americans are still, on average, economically ahead of the game. No one likes high gasoline prices. But they are not as bad as most people think. Keep that in mind the next time some politician or media populist starts handing out the pitchforks.
I could give a crap about oil and gas prices... it's what people the world over are gonna do for it that's the problem.. Just be glad you aint 20 or younger teach...
Teach, would you deny the worlds wealth is being concentrated into fewer and fewer hands? Would you deny that there is more people in debt in the world than at any other point in history? Would you deny that doesn't bode well for the future of most young people? So, in conclusion, any government crap on inflation or GDP or growing wealth of a nation means jack squat and somehow covers up the fact that the standard of living for the "middle class" has gone downhill in this country for the last 30 years.. I don't think so.. I'm old enough to know better...
OK I get the "disposable per capita income" formula. It sounds like other factors could contribute to the influx in the past. But higher energy cost directly contributes to inflation. As it stands our energy is non-renewable. So I don't believe we can accept the trend of the past. The disposable per capita income could drop down into the depression era.
Yep, I sure would. Economic booms (thanks to downsizing the role of government)_ in India and China have created wealth in many more hands and given the American consumer lower prices. The Truth About the Top 1% by Alan Reynolds PRINT PAGE E-MAIL PAGE TEXT SIZE Key legislators and presidential hopefuls in the Democratic Party have proposed raising the top two tax rates. They're also suggesting extra surtaxes for war, for alleviating the Alternative Minimum Tax, for Social Security, and for subsidizing compulsory health insurance. Barack Obama and John Edwards advocate taxing capital gains at 28%; Hillary Clinton favors taxing dividends at the surtaxed income-tax rates. The argument for these proposals has nothing to do with the impact of higher tax rates on incentives and the economy. It is all about "fairness" -- defined as reducing the top 1%'s share of income. This political exercise invariably begins by citing dubious statistics about pretax incomes among the top 1% (1.3 million tax returns) as an excuse for raising tax rates on the top 5%, among others. Echoing speeches from Sen. Clinton, Business Week recently exclaimed, "According to new Internal Revenue Service data announced last week, income inequality in the U.S. is at its worst since the 1920s (before the Great Depression). The top percentile of wealthy Americans earned 21.2% of all income in 2005, up from 19% in 2004." Alan Reynolds is a senior fellow and author of Income and Wealth (Greenwood Press 2006). More by Alan ReynoldsThese statistics are extremely misleading. First of all, the figures do not describe the top percentile's share of "all income," but that group's share of "adjusted" gross income (AGI) reported on individual tax returns. For one thing, thousands of professionals and business owners who used to report most of their income under the corporate tax responded to lower individual income-tax rates after 1986 and 2003 by reporting more income under the individual tax as partnerships, LLCs and Sub-S corporations. Peter Merrill of PricewaterhouseCoopers found that "since the Tax Reform Act of 1986 . . . the share of business income earned through pass-through entities has increased by 75% from 29% in 1987 to 52% in 2004." Business profits accounted for just 11.1% of the income reported by the top 1% in 1986, according to economists Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez, but that business share leaped to 21.2% by 1988 and to 29.1% in 2005. It is this bookkeeping shift, moving business income from the corporate to the individual tax, not CEO pay, which raised the top 1%'s share on individual tax returns. Income reported on W2 forms -- salaries, bonuses and exercised stock options -- accounted for only 57.2% of total income among the top 1% in 2005, down from 63% in 2000 and 65.7% in 1986. Real compensation among the top 1% actually fell 7% from 2000 to 2005. Turning to the denominator of this ratio ("all income"), a huge portion of middle and lower income is no longer reported on tax returns. A larger and larger share of middle-class investment income is now accumulating outside of AGI because it is inside IRA, 401(k) and 529 savings plans. The CBO reckons the top 1% accounted for more than 59% of all capital gains, interest, dividends and rent reported on individual tax returns by 2004. Yet estimates of the share of national wealth of the top 1% range from 21%-33%. If the top 1% own 21%-33% of all capital, how could they be collecting 59% of the income from capital? They can't and they aren't. The top 1% is simply reporting a rising share of capital income because those with more modest incomes are keeping a rising share of their capital income unreported -- in IRA, 401(k) and 529 accounts. Millions also shrink their "adjusted" incomes by subtracting contributions to IRAs unavailable to the rich. Another huge swath of middle and lower income is excluded because AGI includes only the taxable portion of Social Security benefits and totally misses most other transfer payments such as Medicaid, food stamps and the Earned Income Credit. The Canberra Group, an international group of experts on income statistics brought together from 1996-2000 by the OECD, World Bank, U.N. and others, insisted household income must include everything that "increases the recipients' potential to consume or save." Government transfers amounted to $1.5 trillion in 2005 -- more than the total income of the top 1% in the basic Piketty and Saez estimates ($1.2 trillion). As a result of such huge omissions, and tax avoidance, the AGI of $7.5 trillion in 2005 was $3.7 trillion smaller than pretax personal income (personal income was $10.3 trillion in 2005, after subtracting $875 billion of payroll taxes). Anyone suggesting AGI is a more accurate measure than personal income is obliged to argue that GDP in 2005 was exaggerated by 29.4%. Estimated income shares from the IRS or Messrs. Piketty and Saez are not about income per household, but income per tax return. That matters because the top fifth of households average two salaries per tax return. The Census Bureau reports that the top fifth accounted for 26.8% of all full-time works last year while the bottom fifth accounted for just 5.7%. In fact, 64.5% of the households in the bottom fifth had nobody working, not even part time for a few weeks. When labor economists discuss income inequality, they habitually switch to speculating about skill-based differences in hourly wages, totally ignoring differences in hours worked. Third, the latest IRS figures are not comparable with those of 1986, much less with 1929, because the definition of AGI changes with changes in tax law. Such estimates differ greatly, with the IRS saying the top 1% received only 11.3% of income in 1986 (because AGI then excluded 60% of capital gains) while Messrs. Piketty and Saez put that year's figure at 13.1% and the CBO says it was 14%. The IRS figures only go back to 1986, so the Business Week comparison with the 1920s is invalid. The new figure is from the IRS but the old one is from Messrs. Piketty and Saez. Their recent estimates are also not comparable to their prewar estimates. Before 1944, their figures were obtained by dividing top income shares by 80% of personal income. Their estimates for 2005 were obtained by dividing top incomes by the $6.8 trillion left on tax returns after excluding even taxable transfer payments. If total income for 2005 was defined as it was for 1928, then the share of the top 1% would have dropped to 13.3% in 2005, compared with 19.8% in 1928. Besides, as Messrs. Piketty and Saez explained, "our long-run series are generally confined to top income and wealth shares and contain little information about bottom segments of the distribution." A fundamental problem with all tax-based income data involves "taxable income elasticity." Numerous studies, some by Mr. Saez, show that the amount of top income reported on individual tax returns is highly sensitive to changes in marginal tax rates on individual income, corporate income and capital gains. After the tax on dividends was reduced in 2003, for example, top-bracket investors held more dividend-paying stocks in taxable accounts (rather than in nontaxable accounts) and fewer tax-exempt bonds. When the top tax on capital gains was cut in 1997 and 2003, investors reacted by trading stocks more frequently and realizing more capital gains in taxable accounts. In the Piketty-Saez data, capital gains accounted for only 10.8% of the top 1%'s income from 1987 to 1996, when the capital gains tax was 28%. By contrast, capital gains accounted for 16.9% of the top 1%'s reported income from 1997 through 2002, when the tax was down to 20%. Even if estimates of the top 1%'s income share were not so sensitive to changes in tax rates, they would still tell us nothing about what happened to incomes among the other 99%. The top 1%'s share always falls in recessions, even aside from capital gains. But that certainly doesn't mean recessions raise everyone else's income. "It is a disputed question," wrote Messrs. Piketty and Saez, "whether the surge in reported top incomes has been caused by the reduction in taxation at the top through behavioral responses." In fact, their data clearly suggest that higher tax rates on top incomes, dividends and capital gains would sharply reduce top incomes, dividends and capital gains reported on individual tax returns. Such behavioral responses would have little impact on actual income or wealth at the top, while nonetheless leaving middle-income taxpayers stuck with a much larger share of the tax burden.
You mean all those owners of companies that moved jobs into slave and child labor to save money from places like America? Alan Reynolds is a dumbass.
Do "things" bought on credit equate to higher quality of life? Not when the credit stops... like now.
Slaves and children need work too. If you are so unskilled you can be replaced by a child you deserve what you get. http://www.miseryindex.us/indexbymonth.asp
