IT’S THE ENERGY, STUPID

IT’S THE ENERGY, STUPID
Ah, President Clinton. What a guy! The luckiest SOB to ever rule these fair shores. I would rather shove rusty yet still sharp razor blades up my southern hemispheric body orifice than ever say anything nice about the bastard, but he sure had it good. Oh, sure, he gutted the military and raped the Social Security fund to make the economy function. But more than that the policies of former prez Reagan paid off for him in the form of really cheap and affordable oil. It wasn’t the economy, stupid ( as his saying went ), it is the energy.
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My adopted special needs reader, my personally appointed heckler, made a comment. Don’t you have anything good to say about this country? Okay, here it is officially. America has one of the most liberal sets of gun laws around. But his main beef was my suggesting that you buy foreign made products instead of American made. So I say to him ( cover your eyes if you‘re underage or turn pink with embarrassment at profanity ), who’s my bitch now? Thank you for the article idea. That’s at least the second one you’ve given me. It doesn’t matter who makes the crap we buy, at least not at this point. From a national security standpoint, it is strategically asinine to give up any sector of the economy that strengthens you militarily ( which would include manufacturing and agriculture ). From an economic point it doesn’t matter in the slightest. Why? Because it is about energy, not economics.
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I love my job, at least as much as you can like any pointless activity that consumes ten hours a day. Not only is there no stress, not only can I go dumpster diving every day I work since I am tasked with taking the garbage trailer to the dump, not only do I get all the bread products I want, I can also allow my mind to drift while driving. This morning I am driving along and it suddenly hits me. It’s the energy, stupid! Here I spent the last few decades wrestling with the question was an information economy as viable as a manufacturing one. It doesn’t really matter. A Chinaman can make and sell a stainless steel knife for about a buck in bulk purchase pricing and walk away with a nice profit. The company in this country can buy it for a buck and sell it for five, the four buck profit having as much buying power as the Chinese profit. Everybody wins, including the consumer. If the item was made in America, it would retail for five to ten times as much, the company would make no extra profit due to sales volumes falling and the consumer would get screwed. The only winner would be Union workers. That wouldn’t be bad if we were all Union and all made their wages, but as it stands now only a small minority of workers get those benefits. My supporting them does nothing to strengthen this country as a whole.
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By buying foreign you still provide American jobs. They just pay a rate more in line with global wages. Sad but true. The government encouraged factory jobs to move overseas, starting fifty years ago with Japanese steel. We subsidized them at the expense of our own producers in order to bribe the Japanese to stay out of the Communists camp. So don’t wave the flag and call me unpatriotic by not buying American. Our own government screwed over our manufacturing sector for short term gains. Save the jingoistic blabbering for convincing young kids they need to go over and get slaughtered in Iran, chocking on the depleted uranium rounds dust we put in our own munitions. People like me telling the truth are not as dangerous as our own government, so wake up.
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Two world wars did not defeat the British Empire. The common excuse is that two wars bankrupted them. Well, why didn’t it bankrupt Russia? She came out of fighting both wars better than ever. Why? She had a butt load of oil. England went from the worlds greatest economy to a crippled has-been largely due to lack of oil. Her coal mines made her great in Victorian times, lack of oil killed her economy later. North Sea oil rejuvenated her to some extent but the damage had already been done. Her seed corn had been consumed. And we are following in her footsteps. Look, don’t write me and curse me out. Oil addiction will be our undoing. That doesn’t make me hate our country, just its choices. I admire all the British have done, but the sad fact is they are over and done as a power. We will be as soon as the oil reserves drop low enough. Energy surplus is what an economy is about. Without it your economy sucks.
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If it functions at all. Life is energy. Manufacturing is not important. Information economic activity is not important. Energy is important. As soon as it become too dear, both the Chinese manufacture who needs cheap ocean transportation and the US service economy which needs cheap Interstate transportation are equally screwed. Even if we still had all of our manufacturing, even if we still were 100% food self-sufficient ( I’m not sure that we are, but a topic for another day ), when energy becomes dear instead of cheap ( gas is still under the price of the equivalent unit of milk, a local item ) it doesn’t matter. Game over. All this senseless economic activity is to keep us too busy to revolt and keep a minority in power and profits. It isn’t necessary by any means. We would still be on our own dirt farms if it was profitable to the banks and politicians. So stop focusing on all of our goods being made in China, it only matters as long as the oil is abundant. Failing that, what and where for our consumer goods manufacturing origin is not very important.
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We could go from a service economy today to a telecommuting economy tomorrow. Or everyone being a vacuum cleaner salesman. It wouldn’t matter. As long as the cheap energy was available. Granted, economic activity dictates being able to secure energy. But the ability to become economically and militarily powerful is first contingent on a good oil supply. We had that, we advanced. No amount of other factors would have helped. Japan rose to power without energy, but it was a time of global oversupply and she was able to finesse the system to her advantage. That can’t happen in a scarcity situation. And she never would have become a global superpower without the oil. Same with Germany and even England. Coal and oil geopolitics are two separate animals.
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Forget paper currencies, trade deficits, economic activity. The answer is in energy supply.
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