Employment Report: IT SUCKS

[OilFinder2]

This will be revised upward

One set of figures not subject to revision is the Treasury Department’s data on receipts from income taxes. And those numbers are giving a more positive signal, said Carl Riccadonna, a senior economist at Deutsche Bank Securities Inc. in New York.

The amount of money deducted from paychecks was up 5.2 percent at the start of this month from February 2010, according to Riccadonna’s calculations. That exceeds the Labor Department’s measure of weekly earnings, which showed a 2.5 percent year-over-year increase in January.

“That tells me the trend in payroll revisions is going to be higher,” Riccadonna said.

[Serial_Worrier]

Blah blah big business is greedy, so what? What purpose do soup kitchens serve anyways? Oh you want a neo-WPA program? To build what?

[mos6507]

Oh you want a neo-WPA program? To build what?

These would be a good start.

[mos6507]

People who adopted the "shortages/rationing" paradigm obviously failed to adequately factor-in demand destruction. The concept of "demand destruction" has been the single most import PO concept since 2008.

Excellently stated.

Heinberg and others have attempted to retroactively claim they always supported a stairstep collapse model with oil prices tanking (due to demand destruction) and recovering, but I don't really buy it. I think everyone felt that prices would only go up.

[Xenophobe]

People who adopted the "shortages/rationing" paradigm obviously failed to adequately factor-in demand destruction. The concept of "demand destruction" has been the single most import PO concept since 2008.

Excellently stated.

Heinberg and others have attempted to retroactively claim they always supported a stairstep collapse model with oil prices tanking (due to demand destruction) and recovering, but I don't really buy it. I think everyone felt that prices would only go up.

Of course they did. The earliest reference I can find to a see-saw economic cycle related to peak oil is Ruppert, somewhere in 2005/2006 I believe. Of course, he also wins the prize for claiming all consequences to peak oil in a shotgun manner, apparently adopting the peak oiler approach of always claiming its coming...waiting...claiming it again...and continuing ad infinitum in the hopes of being right sometime or another.

[vision-master]

Not only has this already happened, also the Apocalypse has begun.

Unaware sheeple like X are still hanging onto the old patriarchaly ways of the past.....

[Xenophobe]

Not only has this already happened, also the Apocalypse has begun.

Unaware sheeple like X are still hanging onto the old patriarchaly ways of the past.....

Of course the Apocalypse has begun, just ask David Koresch or any of the other religious nutbags who, since the writing of the Bible, have been claiming it. They see apocalypse under their bed pillows. So Vision sees it while he reads Chariots of the Gods...big deal. His grandkids will be seeing it 40 years from now.

How about those earthquakes opening up a portal to another universe, how did that turn out? Those webbots sure got it going on, don't they Vision?

[joewp]

Lets step back from any politics. Isn't this what we should expect from post peak oil? Oil prices up, government throwing paper at the problem. No solutions? Got preps?

Peak oil was supposed to start with shortages. Rationing. Obviously, when demand runs into no stagnant or falling supply, bad things are supposed to happen, and it all was going to start with the fuel.

The heavy duty relationship to all things financial is primarily a revisionist game by those disappointed with how peak oil in 2005 actually went.

It started with shortages. Many places in the world can't afford oil and its products for their basic needs. What do you think these riots all over the world are about? Just because you're snug as a bug in your particular situation doesn't mean there's a lot of misery out there.

I fixed your strawm... er statement above because nobody ever said there would be no supply.

And in case you didn't know it, there's been rationing all along. Rationing by price. It's called "the market". The people who don't have enough debt-backed paper "money" are rationed out of their needed supply. This "demand destruction" thing always bothered me too. I can tell you I still have demand for eating out every night, but the prices are too high, I have to cook in. And there's people all over the world with empty stomachs because they don't have enough to buy food. I would think their demand is still there, wouldn't you?

Just for your edification, the Hirsch Report said in 2005 "A shortfall of oil supplies caused by world conventional oil production peaking will
sharply increase oil prices and oil price volatility." Like from $30 to $140 back to $30 and up to $90 all in 5 or 6 years? Yep, that fits.

So I don't see what you're on about. Seems to be it's going as predicted by many.

[Xenophobe]

It started with shortages. Many places in the world can't afford oil and its products for their basic needs.

Expensive and shortage are two different things. I can go down to the local gasoline store and acquire a tanker truck of it. Using a credit card no less. Its cost does not prevent me from collecting as much as I wish.

What do you think these riots all over the world are about? Just because you're snug as a bug in your particular situation doesn't mean there's a lot of misery out there.

Such misery existed pre-peak oil. Therefore it is ridiculous to pretend that peak oil in 2005 is the cause.

And in case you didn't know it, there's been rationing all along. Rationing by price. It's called "the market".

Fine. Certainly peak oil has not changed this scheme in the least either. Not for more than a century I might add.

Just for your edification, the Hirsch Report said in 2005 "A shortfall of oil supplies caused by world conventional oil production peaking will
sharply increase oil prices and oil price volatility." Like from $30 to $140 back to $30 and up to $90 all in 5 or 6 years? Yep, that fits.

The Hirsch report said many things. I can say "price volatility" at any point from 1859 to present and produce a chart showing exactly that. For example, real crude price volatility from 1861 to 1867 was nearly identical to 1979 through 1986. Same could be said of 2002 through 2009. We had price volatility before you were born, you want to argue that Hirsch is right just because he recycled something from other times of crisis, some of which were related to prior peak oils (1979) and some of which weren't? (1863)

So I don't see what you're on about. Seems to be it's going as predicted by many.

Really? Walmart trucks stopped running in your neck of the woods? Seen any tractors parked in the fields, abandoned for lack of fuel? How about that nuke war stuff, spotted any EMP explosions recently? Revisionist history is the motto of the day, because lets face it, PRE peak oil the scenarios were all so much cooler. What's left? Blaming a recession on peak oil, and gasoline prices lower than they were in the 70's when we had a REAL energy crisis?

[Plantagenet]

Such misery existed pre-peak oil. Therefore it is ridiculous to pretend that peak oil in 2005 is the cause.

If you are going to require the invention of entirely new kinds of misery before you accept that peak oil occurred in 2005, then there in no convincing you.

Peak oil will involve mainly traditional, well-established forms of misery...some of these miseries have even been around for thousands of years.

[Xenophobe]

If you are going to require the invention of entirely new kinds of misery before you accept that peak oil occurred in 2005, then there in no convincing you.

Are you implying that some majority of peak oilers, pre-2005 peak, weren't supposing all kinds of types of OLD misery, except much more dramatic? The starvation and nuke war alone scenarios would cover that question.

Someone supposing that peak oil would cause generally lower crude oil prices than the 1970's energy crisis and a deep recession followed by recovery within about 18 months would have been laughed off the boards as a ridiculous cornucopian.

[Plantagenet]

If you are going to require the invention of entirely new kinds of misery before you accept that peak oil occurred in 2005, then there in no convincing you.

...some majority of peak oilers, pre-2005 peak... supposing ... starvation and nuke war alone scenarios

Sorry to disappoint you. All thats happened so far is global economic recession.
Would you be satisfied with a double-dip recession or will you insist on a nuclear war before you accept peak oil is now affecting the global economy?

[Xenophobe]

If you are going to require the invention of entirely new kinds of misery before you accept that peak oil occurred in 2005, then there in no convincing you.

...some majority of peak oilers, pre-2005 peak... supposing ... starvation and nuke war alone scenarios

Sorry to disappoint you. All thats happened so far is global economic recession.

Someone supposing that THAT would be the consequence of peak oil, 6 years in, would also have been dismissed as a cornucopian.

Would you be satisfied with a double-dip recession or will you insist on a nuclear war before you accept peak oil is now affecting the global economy?

A douple dip recession was what we got from the peak oil in 1979, so that seems reasonable. The nuke war scenario's have always been ridiculous, but only now do the revisionists recognize it. Even they can't ignore 6 years of historical fact, at least the more intelligent ones.

They are few and far between of course. Instead, in 2004, we got this for a "long range projection".

Dale Allen Pfeiffer, 2004

"Oil production will begin its decline in 2007 or 2008. At that point repression, both at home and abroad, will begin in earnest. The economy will soon collapse completely (if it does not do so before 2007). People will feel the crunch, and they will become desperate. If you are not prepared in a supportive community intent on transitioning to self-sufficiency, then your chances of surviving are drastically reduced."

So...obviously here we have someone who didn't anticipate peak plateau. We apparently have been suffering "repression" as of late, although I'm not sure if that was a typo for "recession" or not. How desperate do you think people have been, some 7 years after this prediction? Seen any collapsed economies around not caused by an earthquake or flood recently? Let alone in the US? We got a recession. It ended last year. How is your survival? Are you in a self sufficient community? I certainly am not. Don't even have any Amish around here.

No...if anyone dared suggest that years after peak oil all we would have is a recession, locally or globally, they would have been banned from this place as a cornie troll. Certainly they never would have been recognized as a reasonable prognosticator.

[Outcast_Searcher]

Whatever the root cause (and there could be several, IMO -- technology is the obvious one to me) -- there is a new reality we need to come to grips with:

There is going to be a structurally high unemployment rate in this country for a LONG time, if we don't intellligently alter policies to deal with it. (I say this because TECHNOLOGY is driving a lot of it. If automation can make most things more efficiently and cheaper than people -- automation will end up doing a larger share of the work. This shift is clearly accelerating in response to increased pressure to manage costs to be competitive.)

To me, the key question is, how bad do things have to get before we actually deal with the fundamental issues involved, instead of (from Capitol hill on down) throwing rocks at each other and trying to score political points?

Some simple ideas (which NEITHER party is making a REAL effort to utilize, from what I can see):


1). Encourage job sharing through the tax code. There are lots of folks who need work, and half a job is far better than no job.

2). Provide low skilled government jobs. At moderate pay (still a lot better than no job). There are all kinds of things that need to be done. Just elder care (and assistance) is a daunting task, and this will be a major growth industry in the first world as the polulation ages. Infrastructure would be another example. Hell, even basic healthcare jobs like helping transport sick patients through the healthcare maze -- if we have government run healthcare, why can't government provide good candidates for jobs like these?

3). Combine 1 and 2. Maybe 50-somethings can't do moderately physical work 8 hours a day, but they might well be able to handle 4 hours a day.

4). Better education and especially meaningful retraining opportunities. Hell, instead of proposing to give people basically endless unemployment, how about letting people EARN better opportunities through retraining/education? It's no guarantee for everyone, but it should sure help, with so many employers citing poor skills as a key reason for not hiring -- AND -- the superior basic educational system so much of the rest of the world now has compared to the US.

5). Longer term, we need to be looking at the reality of the long term unemployed who actually WANT a job. Are we going to just let a larger and larger segment of the polulation languish? People who are willing to work, to be retrained, to move, to be flexible on their job choice? (I'm not talking about people who are unwilling to do anything but X at an unrealistic salary, or who only want something for nothing).

What do we do when these folks rise in number to 20%, 30% or even 50%? There is only so long you can expect people to "behave well" when conditions get bad enough long enough. Egypt seems to be a pretty good current example of that.

But no. We seem to be convinced that fighting, believing in BAU, believing in corporate profits (or GDP) as the ONLY measure of overall economic health is the way to go, and keep kicking that can down the road.

This isn't a left or right wing problem -- it is EVERYONE'S problem. But, alas, I predict just more insistence that electing THIS candidate or THAT party will make all this better.

(edit - cleaned up a few minor typos)

[vision-master]

Not only has this already happened, also the Apocalypse has begun.

Unaware sheeple like X are still hanging onto the old patriarchaly ways of the past.....

Of course the Apocalypse has begun, just ask David Koresch or any of the other religious nutbags who, since the writing of the Bible, have been claiming it. They see apocalypse under their bed pillows. So Vision sees it while he reads Chariots of the Gods...big deal. His grandkids will be seeing it 40 years from now.

How about those earthquakes opening up a portal to another universe, how did that turn out? Those webbots sure got it going on, don't they Vision?

You don't even know what it means...

Better use Google an learn something.......

Have you been feeling kind of sheeply lately?

[Serial_Worrier]

Oh you want a neo-WPA program? To build what?

These would be a good start.

More windmills.

[Daniel_Plainview]

I believe that this "interdisciplinary nature" of PO is one of those revisionist concepts as well. For example, are you aware of a single reference or claim, created prior to the most recent peak in 2005, which argues that peak oil can be effected, either negatively or positively, by the application of the science of the sociology? I would argue that most debates against peak oil argue that sociology doesn't matter in the least, that people are people, won't change, and will all die because of it.

Xeno, I was referring to the reverse situation, namely, how peak oil affects society (sociology) rather than how sociology affects PO. Given that modern industrial societies are utterly dependent on the availability of cheap oil, it follows that capitalistic societies in their current form will collapse when cheap oil vanishes. Thus, PO has grave sociological implications.

In this sense, PO theory is one of the most important considerations for a forward-looking sociologist, and PO theory will have growing importance to the science of sociology.

[Xenophobe]

I believe that this "interdisciplinary nature" of PO is one of those revisionist concepts as well. For example, are you aware of a single reference or claim, created prior to the most recent peak in 2005, which argues that peak oil can be effected, either negatively or positively, by the application of the science of the sociology? I would argue that most debates against peak oil argue that sociology doesn't matter in the least, that people are people, won't change, and will all die because of it.

Xeno, I was referring to the reverse situation, namely, how peak oil affects society (sociology) rather than how sociology affects PO.

Okay. Then may I ask, after the 1979 peak, how do you think the sociology went? Certainly the fear of that peak didn't even last a few years, Americans invented the SUV and began soaking up all the fuel which showed up a few years later.

Given that modern industrial societies are utterly dependent on the availability of cheap oil, it follows that capitalistic societies in their current form will collapse when cheap oil vanishes. Thus, PO has grave sociological implications.

Bad assumption. Oil has been getting more expensive since 1970 and industrial societies have been coping nicely. Peak demand seems to more critical to the equation in places like Japan and the US than the actual peak in 2005 itself.

In this sense, PO theory is one of the most important considerations for a forward-looking sociologist, and PO theory will have growing importance to the science of sociology.

Only if you attach undue importance to people and their transportation. Certainly during the transition to EV transport fewer and fewer people will actually care about the price of gasoline at the corner store. And this is a good thing, so we can talk about the pleasant sociological consequences of peak. I don't think that a decade after it happens (currently scheduled for 2015) most people will even have heard of it.

[Plantagenet]

Oh you want a neo-WPA program? To build what?

These would be a good start.

More windmills.

For the two trillion dollars Obama wasted on bank bailouts, GM bailout, Goldman Sachs bailout, auto company bailouts, stimulus pork, supplemental budgets for government agencies, etc. the US could've built most of an entirely new infrastructure. Nukes cost about 5 billion each, so we could've had 50 new nukes---one for each state. That leaves 1.75 trillion---with that money we could've built high speech rail to network the cities, and we could've built the light rail systems we need to get workers out of their cars and into mass transit for the cities, and we could've build new electrical transmission systems to take the power from nukes, solar, wind etc. to where it is needed.

Obama let the crisis go to waste----instead of recognizing the economic problems were linked to the peak oil problem and responding by getting going on a new infrastructure Obama and the democrats spent trillions propping up BAU for two more years and leaving us with 3 trillion in new debt, an even more bloated federal government that produces unsustainable deficits, and an unconstitutional healthcare bill.

[mos6507]

More windmills.

What do you have against windmills? You'd rather we just keep paying the unemployed to sit on their asses?

Seriously, some people really need to keep some sort of link to pragmatic reality rather than just sitting back with a bag of popcorn and heckling everything.