Can anyone answer me this question? Regarding the Oil Industry.....

[Mike DC]

 
I'm not saying that they're not finding new oil. 

I'm saying that the new oil they're finding isn't enough to cancel out the rate we're using it up worldwide.  A huge oil discovery today would have been viewed as a mediocre discovery 50 years ago.  We've found the really huge concentrations of cheap oil already, and that's what we've been using up first.  From here on out, the worldwide situation is just increasing extraction costs and worsening reserve/demand ratios for the foreseeable future.

 

[pettyfan43]

But real world evidence just doesn't point that way. Think about this, where we ARE drilling are only pinpoints on a map in relation to the size of the earth. I think there is MUCH more down there than we can ever fathom, and we can get to it in time if the Dirt Nazis and the algores of the world will mind their own business.

[Mike DC]

To the contrary, I think the real-world evidence DOES point that way in this case. 
The raw amounts of oil discovered over the decades shows a lot more oil being discovered decades ago. 


We're just finding more oil right now than 15-30 years ago because the price went up so there's an incentive to look for it again.  But the technology has been growing all the time.  We've got better & better ways of targeting exactly where the oil is likely to be found, and yet we're still making some pretty small new discoveries compared to the mid-20th century findings. 

If we could really get lots more massive quantities of oil just by looking, then we wouldn't be doing expensive deep-core offshore drilling just to get batches of oil a fraction of the size of what we used to find.  It would be A LOT more profitable to find a few more BIG wads of oil in politically compatible areas than doing what they're doing right now. 

And why not just find enough oil in the continental U.S. to get rid of the middle-east's influence on the western world's politics?  It would save us a lot of trouble.  But instead the U.S. chooses thankless/bloody/unpopular military action (costing a couple trillion dollars that it already owes to other countries) trying to bring some long-term stability to the middle east.  The current Iraq war isn't the subject of this discussion (and I don't think it's that simple either), but the fact is that the entire western world generally cares way too much about middle-eastern stability for the oil not to be critical to us.


Right now, the world is collectively going back and finding the smaller oil fields that we ignored 50 years ago because there used to be a lot of other huge/cheap oil fields to pump first.  A profit-driven industry like Big Oil is only gonna do the harder work once they're really starting to exhaust the biggest & most profitable sources already.

 

[SirNik73]

 
Maybe the gas isn't going up -- maybe it's the US dollar that's going down.

Gas/oil prices, milk is $4/gallon, raw wood prices, steel prices, shipping prices, foreign currencies that are all gaining on us . . . I think the US dollar is suffering a lot more inflation than the official C.P.I. is ever admitting to.  The Fed keeps publishing C.P.I. numbers that make inflation look low, but the raw commodity prices & currency exchange rates all seem to tell a different tale.

 

YEP!

In 2002 the Jack in the Box Big Cheese Burger was $0.99 now its over $2 at some Jack's....
Am I the only one that is watching this?

Last summer Burger King Double Cheese Burger was $0.99 now its $1.89

Who the hell is controlling this!

I want my Cheap Lunch back!

********UPDATE*********

Went to lunch today. the Burger King Double Cheese Burger is now $2.19 but it still tastes great.

[bull]

Who's controlling it? The "people" who keep jacking up the minimum wage and thinking they're helping people by doing it. You think 'ol Jack is going to take it in the shorts when the govt. forces him to increase wages? No. Jack passes it on to all the piss ants making $7.50/hr and then those same piss ants wonder why the price of hamburgers, movies, pizzas and beer keeps going up.

[70charger_boy]

Maybe the gas isn't going up -- maybe it's the US dollar that's going down.

Gas/oil prices, milk is $4/gallon, raw wood prices, steel prices, shipping prices, foreign currencies that are all gaining on us . . . I think the US dollar is suffering a lot more inflation than the official C.P.I. is ever admitting to. The Fed keeps publishing C.P.I. numbers that make inflation look low, but the raw commodity prices & currency exchange rates all seem to tell a different tale.

YEP!

In 2002 the Jack in the Box Big Cheese Burger was $0.99 now its over $2 at some Jack's....
Am I the only one that is watching this?

Last summer Burger King Double Cheese Burger was $0.99 now its $1.89

Who the hell is controlling this!

I want my Cheap Lunch back!

whopper jr's and chicken crisp sandwiches are .99 cents

[Brock Samson]

a nation of strip malls just like i said.

[Mike DC]

 
Man, that issue is A LOT bigger than just the minimum wage.  Look to the whole economy & spending habits of the last 30 years or so, the trade deficits, the massive federal debt, etc.

   

[bull]

 
Man, that issue is A LOT bigger than just the minimum wage.  Look to the whole economy & spending habits of the last 30 years or so, the trade deficits, the massive federal debt, etc.

   

He was asking about $.99 burgers, not furniture imported from China and credit card debt.

[Crazy Larry]

 
Man, that issue is A LOT bigger than just the minimum wage.  Look to the whole economy & spending habits of the last 30 years or so, the trade deficits, the massive federal debt, etc.

   

He was asking about $.99 burgers, not furniture imported from China and credit card debt.

Cheeseburgers at McDonald's still 99 cents - and hamburgers are 89 cents.

I think that is pretty much consistent with the last 20 years or so.....

and you can buy them with a credit card now - how convenient!

[Mike DC]

 
Burger prices?  Yeah, maybe that one is being affected by the minimum wage hikes. 

Hmm . . . I'd be curious about how much the location labor actually adds to the total cost of fast food. 
It's probably not the whole story but I'm sure it's still a decent chunk of change.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Either way, the big country-killer isn't the minumum wage levels.  It's the lack of better-paying jobs several notches above that level.

Better jobs causes MUCH lower crime, lower school dropout rates & more higher education, families sticking together & splitting apart for the right reasons (instead of forced cohabitation for rent money or splitting up for the sake of faraway jobs), kids get raised by their loving parents (instead of being raised by the media while their parents are at work all day), people can start voting based on the right decisions for the country overall (instead of desperately voting with their wallets every four years just to keep from going under) . . .

The lack of decent working/middle-class jobs is such a total chain-reaction that's messing America up at this point.

 

[Vainglory, Esq.]

There will always be a lack of "decent" jobs if you never define decent.  That way no one can contradict you.

Show some semblance of fact to back up what you're saying, or else all you're left with is an assertion.

[bull]

I think we should raise the minimum wage to $100k a year or $50/hr. That way we'll all be rich, right?

[70charger_boy]

I think we should raise the minimum wage to $100k a year or $50/hr. That way we'll all be rich, right?

[Mike DC]

 
Vain, was that last post of mine really very controversial/incorrect in nature? 


Methinks you might be picking on the idea just for the sake of it. 

 
 

[Vainglory, Esq.]

Yes it is very controversial, and I think if you look at the facts, you'll find that it's just as incorrect.  Show me proof of the lack of "decent" jobs.  Show me proof of a lack of jobs at all.  Show me some fact that points to the vaguest idea that more people are not doing better than they ever have...

If you can't find evidence that the sky is falling, there's no need to pretend that it is, even if it helps to make your point.  Repeated assertion does not a truth make.

[Mike DC]

I was originally just trying to make the point that the widening class gap causes a chain reaction much bigger than the raw dollars alone. 
I'm not sure how your assertion of a stable class gap became the "baseline" and my assertion became the one needing defending.

If you wanna debate whether Joe Average is having a harder time of it than he was a few decades ago, be my guest.  First we'll argue about where the classes really divide, then we'll argue about what a "decent standard of living" is, then we'll debate whether people really have less or just want more . . .