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THE Jevons Paradox Thread Pt. 2

Discuss research and forecasts regarding hydrocarbon depletion.

Re: Jevons Paradox - Death by conservation

Unread postby BackyardRambo » Wed 10 Mar 2010, 15:03:42

jdumars wrote:Civilization (the establishment of communities of people whose demand for resources outstrips their ability to produce them locally) is completely, utterly unsustainable on any level.

Everyone dances around the topic, but this is it. Every human system breaks down in the end because it is contrary to nature, not in concert with it.


The current model of society is obsolete and utterly unsustainable, no argument there. But why is that? What is the underlying reason? I would argue that it's largely because of how money works, as Mike Ruppert often puts it.

All money is borrowed with interest, therefore there is always more debt than actual money. Compounding interest and new loans increase debt perpetually. For this debt and interest to be paid off, or more accurately shifted around (as it is never really paid off), the economy has to grow infinitely. Economic growth always increases the need for energy and resources. Unfortunately we live in a finite world.

In addition to that, there is a duality in this economic model. It operates under the assumption that there is an infinite amount of resources available, but at the same time there is an incentive to create scarcity, as something scarce is much more valuable than something abundant and easily accessible, like say air, or sun light. Basically if there ever was a magical perpetual motion machine that was cheap to manufacture, required no maintenance and produced an endless amount of free energy, it would not be as economically viable as oil, for example. No return customers. That being said, the fundamentals of how our whole world economy works, are seriously flawed, and until we change them, we change nothing. This can be said for most existing popular ideologies, including capitalism, socialism, communism, fascism etc. as they are all fundamentally very similar.

And whether there are enough resources in any given area or not, depends in large part on how efficiently those resources are used, recycled and renewed. But it also depends on the fundamentals of the local economy; if it's geared towards infinite growth and based on scarcity, it's ultimately unsustainable. However, if it's a resource based economy of sorts, that is geared towards using as little finite resources as possible the most efficient way possible while recycling them and using mostly renewable resources, it could be sustainable, in fact it probably would even produce abundance with the right kind of technology.

Some people would argue that the population of such a place would grow unsustainably, bla bla bla. Not necessarily, population growth in Italy for example, is negative; they are now "importing" people from Africa to join the work force. An economy that requires infinite growth, always requires more labor, which typically means more people. That's why population growth is largest in the third world; they might not have money or resources but if they get five kids they at least have a labor force, with which to obtain money and resources.

My 2 cents.
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Re: THE Jevons Paradox Thread (merged)

Unread postby rangerone314 » Wed 10 Mar 2010, 15:48:41

Hypothetically, imagine a society where there is no population increase, no energy growth, no economic growth. Bob wants to make shoes. His dad is too old to make shoes anymore and his equipment has worn down.

So Bob goes to a bank for 100 quatloos, and has to pay back 10 quatloos in principle and 5 quatloos in interest. He buys shoemaking tools and supplies, and starts selling shoes. He starts selling shoes and pays the bank 15 quatloos. Life goes on, bank still gets its interest.

What you probably don't see is the bank taking 15 quatloos to a casino and speculating to make extra.
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Re: THE Jevons Paradox Thread (merged)

Unread postby BackyardRambo » Wed 10 Mar 2010, 18:18:02

rangerone314 wrote:Hypothetically, imagine a society where there is no population increase, no energy growth, no economic growth. Bob wants to make shoes. His dad is too old to make shoes anymore and his equipment has worn down.

So Bob goes to a bank for 100 quatloos, and has to pay back 10 quatloos in principle and 5 quatloos in interest. He buys shoemaking tools and supplies, and starts selling shoes. He starts selling shoes and pays the bank 15 quatloos. Life goes on, bank still gets its interest.

What you probably don't see is the bank taking 15 quatloos to a casino and speculating to make extra.


That's the old paradigm. The only sustainable model I can think of is one where there is no incentive to profit, and that would be one where all the necessities are so abundant and readily available that it's not possible to profit; selling electricity or food at that point would be like selling air or sun light today. Because there will always be some group of people who are greedy, ruthless, corrupted and will, given enough time, break or change any laws necessary to get ahead, and eventually they will start the whole banking ponzi scheme all over again.

Essentially the next civilization has to be completely rethought, from the bottom up, or else history will just keep repeating itself.
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Re: intent

Unread postby Roderick Beck » Sun 25 Apr 2010, 17:35:52

Aaron,

Economics has no difficulty explaining the Jevons paradox. In fact, it is only paradox only to those who didn't study economics.

The economic logic is straightforward:

Technical innovation that economizes on the use of energy > reduces the price of energy intensive goods and services > the quantity demanded of energy intensive goods and services increases > production and consumption goes up.

Economists would be shocked if inventions like the steam engine had not increased the demand for energy.

:-D
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The Return of the Jevons Paradox

Unread postby davep » Sun 07 Nov 2010, 16:45:13

Here's an interesting article on the historical perspective and current status of the Jevons Paradox, including the context of the paradox within his overall view.

Capitalism and the Curse of Energy Efficiency

The curse of energy efficiency, better known as the Jevons Paradox—the idea that increased energy (and material-resource) efficiency leads not to conservation but increased use—was first raised by William Stanley Jevons in the nineteenth century. Although forgotten for most of the twentieth century, the Jevons Paradox has been rediscovered in recent decades and stands squarely at the center of today’s environmental dispute.

The nineteenth century was the century of coal. It was coal above all else that powered British industry, and thus the British Empire. But in 1863 the question was raised by industrialist Sir William George Armstrong, in his presidential address to the British Association for the Advancement of Science, as to whether Britain’s world supremacy in industrial production could be threatened in the long run by the exhaustion of readily available coal reserves.1 At that time, no extensive economic study had been conducted on coal consumption and its impact on industrial growth.

In response, William Stanley Jevons, who would become one of the founders of neoclassical economics, wrote, in only three months, a book entitled The Coal Question: An Inquiry Concerning the Progress of the Nation, and the Probable Exhaustion of Our Coal-Mines (1865). Jevons argued that British industrial growth relied on cheap coal, and that the increasing cost of coal, as deeper seams were mined, would lead to the loss of “commercial and manufacturing supremacy,” possibly “within a lifetime,” and a check to economic growth, generating a “stationary condition” of industry “within a century.”2 Neither technology nor substitution of other energy sources for coal, he argued, could alter this.

Jevons’s book had an enormous impact. John Herschel, one of the great figures in British science, wrote in support of Jevons’s thesis that “we are using up our resources and expending our national life at an enormous and increasing rate and thus a very ugly day of reckoning is impending sooner or later.”3 In April 1866, John Stuart Mill praised The Coal Question in the House of Commons, arguing in support of Jevons’s proposal of compensating for the depletion of this critical natural resource by cutting the national debt. This cause was taken up by William Gladstone, Chancellor of the Exchequer, who urged Parliament to act on debt reduction, based on the uncertain prospects for national development in the future, due to the anticipated rapid exhaustion of coal reserves. As a result, Jevons’s book quickly became a bestseller.4

Yet Jevons was stunningly wrong in his calculations. It is true that British coal production, in response to increasing demand, more than doubled in the thirty years following the publication of his book. During the same period in the United States, coal production, starting from a much lower level, increased ten times, though still remaining below the British level.5 Yet no enduring “coal panic,” due to exhaustion of available coal supplies, ensued in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Jevons’s chief mistake had been to equate the energy for industry with coal itself, failing to foresee the later development of energy substitutes for coal, such as petroleum and hydroelectric power.6 In 1936, seventy years after the parliamentary furor generated by Jevons’s book, John Maynard Keynes commented on Jevons’s projection of a decline in the availability of coal, observing that it was “overstrained and exaggerated.” One might add that it was quite narrow in scope.7...


See full article for the rest. Thanks to Keith Addison's biofuels list for the link.

http://www.monthlyreview.org/101101foster-clark-york.php
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Re: The Return of the Jevons Paradox

Unread postby ralfy » Sun 07 Nov 2010, 22:48:27

Very good share. Thanks!
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Re: THE Jevons Paradox Thread (merged)

Unread postby autonomous » Wed 23 Jan 2013, 21:44:56

The 'rebound' effect of energy-efficient cars overplayed

The argument that those who have fuel-efficient cars drive them more and hence use more energy is overplayed and inaccurate, a University of California, Davis, economist and his co-authors say in a comment article published Wednesday in the journal Nature.

Critics of energy efficiency programs in public policy debates have cited the “rebound effect” as a reason that hybrid cars and plug-in electric vehicles, for example, don’t really save energy in the long run.

The “backfire” concept, a more extreme version of “rebound,” actually stems from a 19th century analysis in a book titled “The Coal Question,” by Stanley Jevons. The book hypothesized that energy use rises as industry becomes more efficient because people produce and consume more goods, according to the Nature article. But the article’s co-authors found that in the modern economy, the effect is not supported empirically.

“If a technology is cheaper to run, people may use it more. If they don’t, they can use their savings to buy other things that required energy to make. But evidence points to these effects being small — too small to erase energy savings from energy efficiency standards, for example,” said David S. Rapson, assistant professor of economics at UC Davis.

Rebound effects are therefore “no excuse for inaction,” the article states.

Energy efficiency standards will once again be a topic of debate — and a potential target for attack — with the renewed focus on climate change and the possibility of federal regulatory action, Rapson explained: “From an economic perspective, a carbon tax or well-functioning cap-and-trade market is still optimal. But if the political reality doesn’t allow these, efficiency standards should be evaluated based on the balance of costs and benefits. Rebounds are an important consideration, but are often overblown and misunderstood.

“Even though increased efficiency may prompt changes in behavior, energy is still saved overall,” said Rapson. “Energy efficiency policies should therefore continue to be considered as a way to address greenhouse gas emissions.”


http://www.news.ucdavis.edu/search/news_detail.lasso?id=10473
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v493/n7433/full/493475a.html
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Re: THE Jevons Paradox Thread Pt. 2

Unread postby Tanada » Tue 15 Nov 2016, 23:14:52

It occurred to me today that if President Elect Trump manages to stimulate growth, no matter how short lived it may be, we may get to see real world examples of Jevons Paradox in action next year.

What do you think would be a real world example we could study and review here?
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Re: THE Jevons Paradox Thread Pt. 2

Unread postby ROCKMAN » Wed 16 Nov 2016, 03:57:20

T - "What do you think would be a real world example we could study and review here?" How about Texas? We've had a strong economy and mucho job growth for years. And also a huge consumer of a number of resources:

Texas as the second-largest population and the second-largest economy of any state after California. Texas leads the nation in energy consumption, accounting for more than one-eighth of the U.S. total. The state's industrial sector accounts for the largest share of energy use (the national growh promised by the President-elect). The transportation sector accounts for the second-largest share of energy consumption. Because of its size and varied climate, the state's energy use for heating and cooling is also high.

Texas produces more electricity than any other state, generating almost twice as much as the second highest-producing state. We are the largest motor fuel consumer beating #2 Florida by 25%. The state has almost one-third of all U.S. crude oil reserves (getting rid of bad regulations as promised by the President-elect). It leads the nation in natural gas production. One-third of the 100 largest natural gas-producing fields in the US are located here.

Texas is the largest coal consuming state and the sixth-largest coal producer in the nation. Renewable energy sources contributed about 10% of the state's net electricity generation in 2014, but that amounted to about 15% of the U.S. total electricity generated from all nonhydroelectric renewable resources. Texas was second only to California in nonhydroelectric renewable generation.

And specifically about the paradox: despite the state's world class wind power that gain hasn't reduced our coal consumption. It has supplemented our booming demand for electricity. And that increase in supply has been feeding our constantly growing demand. And that constantly growing demand is why Texas has no plan to move away from coal. Towards the goal we have the largest CCS project in the world starting operations in the next few months. This $1 billion project will requestor the second largest source of GHG in the country: a plant with an equal number of lignite and NG burners. Thus when NG prices eventually increase we can switch to more lignite Btu's. Thus Jervon rears his head again.

If President-elect Trump can duplicate even to just a small degree the dynamics Texas has experienced in the last 15 years we might see that short lived paradox you mentioned. It could truly be "the best of times...the worst of times".
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Re: THE Jevons Paradox Thread Pt. 2

Unread postby Ibon » Wed 16 Nov 2016, 04:57:15

https://thenanfang.com/china-to-boost-a ... -billions/

The Airline industry. Just China building over 60 airports in cities with over 4 million inhabitants. Cheap airlines offering discouont fares. The airline industry globally enabling so many more hundreds of millions of passengers to fly. This expansion of passenger flights off sets any efficiency gains of jet fuel consumption with the more modern fuel efficient airliners introduced by Boeing and AirBus.
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Re: THE Jevons Paradox Thread Pt. 2

Unread postby Pops » Wed 16 Nov 2016, 08:23:18

How about gasoline? Obama raised CAFE standards and car makers are ahead of the rules but the US this year used the most gas ever. Fleet milage is up but people buy bigger models. Obviously has a lot to do with surplus oil bringing the price down.

The thing I've always argued is that while there may be a paradox in the macro sense, there is none at the individual level. If an individual conserves, he saves money, if a bunch of people conserve and the price falls he then saves more.

I don't get the trump part? Seems conservation is about the opposite of his agenda. I won't be surprised at the opposite happening and a big beautiful bubble of consumption grows out of deregulation, borrowing/spending, etc.
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Re: THE Jevons Paradox Thread Pt. 2

Unread postby Tanada » Wed 16 Nov 2016, 08:44:57

Pops wrote:How about gasoline? Obama raised CAFE standards and car makers are ahead of the rules but the US this year used the most gas ever. Fleet mileage is up but people buy bigger models. Obviously has a lot to do with surplus oil bringing the price down.

The thing I've always argued is that while there may be a paradox in the macro sense, there is none at the individual level. If an individual conserves, he saves money, if a bunch of people conserve and the price falls he then saves more.

I don't get the trump part? Seems conservation is about the opposite of his agenda. I won't be surprised at the opposite happening and a big beautiful bubble of consumption grows out of deregulation, borrowing/spending, etc.


For the Trump part I was thinking of the infrastructure improvements making it cheaper/easier to travel thus making travel more frequent and increasing the total amount of travel. Speaking to Ibon's example one of the things President Elect Trump has been touting is rebuilding or replacing airports all across the USA to make air travel cheaper and more convenient, which IMO would increase air travel.

Of course if roads and bridges (my personal bug-a-boo) are repaired making it easier for me to travel by more direct routes it will likely increase my travel enough to more than offset the energy savings of the moderately shorter rout I would be able to access. There is a big project just finishing up in Southern Indiana to replace a 2 lane road with a 4 lane limited access freeway from Indianapolis to the south west border of the state. In the Toledo, Ohio area they are expanding I-75 from two lanes each direction to 3 lanes each direction for about a 20 mile long swath of the freeway. That project started in 2012 and won't finish until 2018 or perhaps even later, they are milking it for every dollar the contractors can make. Once it is complete that will 'improve traffic flow' south of Toledo all the way to Detroit and every time they do that there is a housing boom building more suburban sprawl along the higher capacity roads.
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Re: THE Jevons Paradox Thread Pt. 2

Unread postby Pops » Wed 16 Nov 2016, 09:07:19

As I understand it, the "infrastructure improvements" are actually “public-private partnerships” — simply government financing of private works. Private companies decided what infrastructure they want a piece of, the gov guarantees the bond, the private company does the work in return for a piece of the revenue stream from the project. Since there is no revenue stream from filling potholes that ain't gonna happen—that's a D thing. Airports & toll roads yes, oil pipelines yes, Flints water supply maybe but pot holes no.
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Re: THE Jevons Paradox Thread Pt. 2

Unread postby Tanada » Wed 16 Nov 2016, 09:16:53

Pops wrote:As I understand it, the "infrastructure improvements" are actually “public-private partnerships” — simply government financing of private works. Private companies decided what infrastructure they want a piece of, the gov guarantees the bond, the private company does the work in return for a piece of the revenue stream from the project. Since there is no revenue stream from filling potholes that ain't gonna happen—that's a D thing. Airports & toll roads yes, oil pipelines yes, Flints water supply maybe but pot holes no.


You could be right, until he actually takes office and enacts whatever parts of his plan make it through Congress its hard to tell what will actually happen. I do think following Airports, Roads and if I understood Rockman's post correctly electricity rates from cheaper fossil fuel burning could tell us something.
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Re: THE Jevons Paradox Thread Pt. 2

Unread postby vtsnowedin » Wed 16 Nov 2016, 09:52:02

Tanada wrote:It occurred to me today that if President Elect Trump manages to stimulate growth, no matter how short lived it may be, we may get to see real world examples of Jevons Paradox in action next year.

What do you think would be a real world example we could study and review here?

Any improvements in transportation infrastructure will give you examples of Jevon's paradox as long as oil supplies remain adequate. I think it will break down and become invalid as soon as total energy supplies begin to decline. There just won't be any surplus fuel to turn to some other activity or increase in present activities. It will correct itself when the time comes.


On another note;

There is more then one way to fill pot holes. Throw and go cold patch only lasts until the next rain storm and is a costly and never ending task. Saw out and hand pave using proper methods and hot mix requires lane closures and traffic control and a larger crew but can last a year or more. Problem is another pot hole or holes show up between the patches you did fix so you are just moving the problem up and down the street a few feet at a time.
Curb to curb overlays covers all of them and lasts a few years but you have to remove all the throw and go cold patch before you pave or it will just boil up through your overlay. (for those that don't know cold patch is just 3/8" mix that has had some diesel fuel mixed in to thin the asphalt cement to keep the mix from setting up).
If you have the traffic volume to justify it the best method is to mill off 1 1/2 to 2 inches and send the millings to the plant for recycling, then repair any defects reveled including changing and culverts or catch basins that are failed or about to fail then repave full width and depth. That will last from fifteen to thirty years depending several factors of how the road was originally built. A two lane road with paved shoulders treated that way would cost on the order of $500,000 per mile to do right.
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Re: THE Jevons Paradox Thread Pt. 2

Unread postby ROCKMAN » Wed 16 Nov 2016, 12:40:42

Pops - "...don't get the trump part? Seems conservation is about the opposite of his agenda." Which is why I suggested Texas as a model for President-elect Trump's stated goal: we are the epidemy of expanding consumption of EVERYTHING. LOL. Infrastructure? Hell, I bet you can't guess how much we've been spending expanding roadways. The state spent $7 billion OF TAX PAYER MONEY to expand our grid to we could consume more electricity from our greatly expanded WIND POWER INFRASTRUCTURE. And then there's the many $billions spent to expand our PIPELINE INFRASTRUCTURE to allow our refineries (which in the last 10 years witnessed the largest INFRASTRUCTURE EXPANSION in history) to refining more Canadian oil. Houston led the nation in housing starts in 2013 with 28,339. Austin was the national leader in metropolitan population gain on a percentage basis. Over the past four years, Texas has added more than 1.2 million jobs, an impressive rebound following the Great Recession. The state’s unemployment rate of 5.7 percent in February was significantly lower than the 6.7 national rate, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported.

ExxonMobil, based in Irving, Texas, did its part, too. The company is relocating about 2,000 employees to Houston primarily from Fairfax County, Virginia, and Akron, Ohio, and building a Texas-sized corporate campus with 20 buildings containing 3 million square feet of space on a 385-acre site on the north side of Houston. Austin has been a technology draw for years. Facebook, eBay, Samsung and many other tech firms have located offices there because operating and housing costs are lower than those in Silicon Valley or Boston. Dramatic INFRASTRUCTURE GROWTH growth in chemical plants: wenty-one chemical companies are expanding or building new ethane cracker plants, which use a component of natural gas to produce ethylene, a vital ingredient in production of plastics. A recent study commissioned by the Port of Houston indicates that at least $35 billion, and perhaps as much as $50 billion, will be spent for waterfront chemical plants and other industrial facilities.

INFRASTRUCTURE expansion of Texas ports. The opening of the widened Panama Canal is expect to create 15 percent uptick in the amount of cargo coming across our docks. President Obama has already helped expand our coal exporting INFRASTRUCTURE by expediting those permit requests.

And finally: San Antonio has seen an uptick in manufacturing jobs, building on its solid employment base of health care, military, and insurance jobs. Maruchan, which has its American headquarters in Irvine, California, just opened a $350 million ramen noodle factory that will employ 600 people and export a significant portion of its product to Mexico. San Antonio–based Mission Solar Energy is building a $100 million plant on the city’s southeast side that will produce solar panels.

I could go on but point made. If President-elect Trump could just produce nationally only a small % of what Texas has experienced even most D's might vote for him. LOL.
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Re: THE Jevons Paradox Thread Pt. 2

Unread postby Revi » Wed 16 Nov 2016, 12:59:39

It is great to live in a place that still has stuff going on. Here in Maine there is a mill closing every month lately. The towns then begin to waste away, and people move out, if they can. There's still tourism and coastal Maine is still fine, but anywhere north of Augusta is in trouble.
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Re: THE Jevons Paradox Thread Pt. 2

Unread postby Pops » Wed 16 Nov 2016, 13:05:48

ROCKMAN wrote:we are the epidemy of expanding consumption of EVERYTHING. LOL.

LOL
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Re: THE Jevons Paradox Thread Pt. 2

Unread postby ROCKMAN » Wed 16 Nov 2016, 14:34:21

Pops - "...we are the epidemy of expanding consumption of EVERYTHING."
And if my point was too subtle for some: expanding not necessarily in a good way. We've just done a much better job of sustaining the unsustainable then most states. LOL.

Revi - Of course we've had advantages that many states never had and never will. Even if all Texas oil disappeared tomorrow we would still be the country's hub for refining thanks to the existing infrastructure. Infrastructure much easier/cheaper to expand then build new.

OTOH the state's public policies have a positive effect also. Can't compare corporate tax rates (CIT) with the other states...we don't have one. Nevada, Ohio, Texas, and Washington impose gross receipts taxes instead of CIT. As the name suggests, a GRT is a tax on business receipts rather than business income. Typically, it is imposed on all business sales and allows few or no deductions. IOW the more you sell the more GRT you pay. But then also net more income.

The tax rate is 1 percent, but there is a reduced rate of 0.5 percent for taxpayers primarily engaged in retail or wholesale trade. But not as sweet a deal as it seems: if your company is operating at a net loss, but you have revenue from sales, you have to pay the gross receipts tax based on the amount that you collect from customers. You also can be taxed by local county and city authorities, in addition to the state.

But the state still makes a good income. For 2015-16 legislators begin to write a two-year budget (we allow them to gather only every 2 years...less opportunity for them to screw up. LOL) they can expect to have $113 billion in general-purpose state revenue. In the current cycle, Texas is spending about $95 billion. Counting federal funds and other income, its budget just tops $200 billion. In addition to the new money, the state’s rainy day fund will swell to $11.1 billion by August 2017 unless lawmakers tap those dollars, Hegar said. In recent years, legislators have drawn down the money only to create a water-project fund and increase highway funding — and then only with voters’ approval — and filling holes in a current budget.

BTW there is no personal income tax in Texas. But local communities get their pound of flesh from property taxes most of which funds local schools. A big plus if you're a renter: no income or property taxes. One reason high income earners changed their residence status from other states to Texas.

So back to the point: can President-elect Trump turn the rest of the country into another "Texas"? No way. Can he do some tweaking that might marginally bring about some national improvement? Maybe. But like other POTUS's have learned they really have limited powers compared to the impact of the general economic cycles IMHO. The POTUS can look like an economic genius or an idiot depending on their luck when they hold office.
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Re: THE Jevons Paradox Thread Pt. 2

Unread postby Synapsid » Wed 16 Nov 2016, 19:20:25

ROCKMAN,

Another gold star for Texas, I guess: an article in today's OilPrice states the US just became a net exporter of NG, first time ever. Cheniere can take a nod; I don't know if Louisiana can horn in though.
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