Skip to main content

Let's bet some more...

Almost a year ago, in The Global Las Vegas, I told you how the runaway betting on imaginary things screwed up real people. Today I was reminded that nothing has changed, and Goldman Sachs continues to do what they've always done, ripping off clients, while disparaging them verbally. Goldman Sachs, an evil twin of Federal Government, remains the dominant player in our crazy megalopolis, the Earth-encircling Las Vegas.  There is no place to hide anymore, unless we wish to escape into the past.

In the meantime, the real world economy continues to consume Earth's resources at an ever-increasing rate as more of very desperately poor people are now just poor, and want to have some of the same amenities we take for granted. The results are predictable and the price you and I pay to commute in the U.S. is at an all-time high.

To put this price index into perspective, it now costs 10 times more to move from point A to B in the U.S. metropolitan areas than it did 60 years ago.  And the driving costs continue to explode with no relief in sight. Therefore, I take issue with this recent statement by Paul Krugman:
The irony here is that these claims come just as events are confirming what everyone who did the math already knew, namely, that U.S. energy policy has very little effect either on oil prices or on overall U.S. employment.
If people cannot get to work because of the high gasoline price, there will be an impact on U.S. economy.

So where is the heated public debate on transportation alternatives?  Nowhere it seems, as we are wasting precious time widening those roads everywhere.  Road-widening is the only solution we can think of as communities and that's dangerously unimaginative. I used to think that we could see more clearly into the future, but I don't anymore.  Woe on us.

Comments

  1. Prof. Patzek,

    That increase in transportation costs almost exactly parallels the rise in all costs since 1950 (which has rised by a factor of 9.6), while median household income has risen by a factor of about 25. So from 60 years ago to now, the cost of transportation as a fraction of our income has gone down quite a bit. It's better for your argument to focus on the period since 1970, or since 2000, when you could show substantial increases in fuel costs in constant dollars, while real median income has stagnated...

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Your are making good points, Mr. Kirk-Davidoff. However, in 1948 there were roughly 50 million employed Americans, while recently there three times as many. So while median household income has grown, so did employment (two people per household vs. one) and the number of commuting miles driven. Thus the cost of commuting to work increased quicker than income. Add to this income stagnation for most people over the last 30-40 years, and one can see that mass transit is coming to the U.S.A.

      Delete

Post a Comment

I would like to learn what you are thinking about my posts and encourage you to share

Popular posts from this blog

Ascent of the Angry and Stupid

Scientifically speaking,  stupid  people harm themselves while also harming others. In addition, stupid people are irrational and erratic, and are very dangerous to others. After discussing the destructive role of the stupid in any society whatsoever, I will focus on the delicate interplay of actions of intelligent and helpless people, who in balance make or break a functioning democracy.  Unless things change fast in the US, we can kiss our democracy goodbye for decades. If you want to see how a virulent ascent of the stupid looks up close, and what implications it has for our fight against social injustice and climate change, please watch the brilliant " Don't Look Up " movie. Unvaccinated people demonstrating in Los Angeles. There are tens of millions of the raving mad and/or angry, stupid people in the US and other developed countries. Source: New York Times , 12/25/2021. I overlapped at UC Berkeley with Professor Carlo M. Cipolla for a decade, until his death in t

Confessions of a Petroleum Engineer and Ecologist

I just attended an SPE workshop, "Oil and Gas Technology for a Net-Zero World – Defining Our Grand Challenges for the Next Decade."  Of the 60 people in the audience, I knew 1/3, some very well.  It makes sense, because I have been an SPE member for 40 years, and a Distinguished Member for 20 years.  Last year, I received an SPE EOR/IOR Pioneer Award for my work at Shell and UC Berkeley on the thermal enhanced oil recovery processes that involved foams, and their upscaling to field operations. This was nice, because Shell recognized me as one of their best reservoir engineers, and in 1985 I received an internal Shell Recognition Award for the same work. But I am not a mere oil & gas reservoir engineer.  First and foremost, I am a chemical engineer and physicist, who has thought rigorously about the sustainability of human civilization , ecology and thermodynamics of industrial agriculture and large biofuel systems, as well as about the overall gross and net primary produc

Net Ecosystem Productivity is Zero on Planet Earth

In the last bog , I told you how the law of mass conservation governs the large-scale behavior of Earth's households - ecosystems - that must recycle all mass on average and export only low quality heat into the cold universe.  Now, I will give you a few useful definitions of cyclic processes, sustainability, and ecosystem productivity. Let me start from stating the obvious:  We live in a spaceship we cannot leave, a gorgeous blue, white and green planet Earth that takes us for a spin around her star, the Sun, each year. But this statement is imprecise. We really live on a vanishingly thin skin of the Earth, her ecosphere .   Think of this skin as of a thin delicate membrane, teaming with life and beauty, but incredibly fragile. We trample on this membrane and poison it.  Then we act surprised when it brakes and shrivels. Practically all life on the Earth exists between two concentric spheres defined by the mean Earth surface at the radial distance from the Earth's