Neural Gourmet Archives | Feed Your Brain
Neural Gourmet Archives | Feed Your BrainHave you ever seen or heard somebody say that?
"I wish Oil was a hundred bucks a barrel! THEN those rich bastards would feel the pinch in the pocket, and THEN we'd finally have electric cars to drive to Starbux in!"
Oh. Bullshit.
People just don't get it. When you're rich enough to "do something" about energy prices, you don't give a shit HOW much it costs. The cost of filling up that H-2 you parade around in? it is as the buzzing of FLIES!
OK, so try and wrap your brain around this. Let's say for the sake of argument that we have identified one of these connected mover/shakers who can "do something" about anything. Would it be fair to assume that this guy has an annual income somewhere around 4 megabux?
Good. Now hang on, I'm about to overload my poor TI-30...Let's see what this guy has to shell out if his expenses/income ratio is the same as The Poor Little Wheelman's...
Let's call our fictitious multi-millionaire "Spiff". Now, Spiff grosses $4,000,000 every 365 days. Out of that chunkachange he will pay:
$42,500 every MONTH for rent.
$42,000 every MONTH for his vehicle payment.
$5,200 for Insurance on that land yacht.
$4,400 for his landline service.
$6,700 EVERY month for water, sewer, electricity, and another $9,800 to keep his 400-square-foot $42,500 crib at 62 degrees.
$6,000 a week for groceries. $1,200 to take his ESSO out for a BURGER.
He's a hypertensive diabetic who's depressed. He has a pretty good HMO that costs him $12,700 a month. The out-of-pocket share of his meds is $10,000. Every Month. He sees his PCP 4 times a year for a $2,000 co-pay. He sees a therapist every 3 weeks for another $2,000 co-pay.
It costs him $2,000 a month to take his clothes to the laundromat. NOT the dry-cleaners, the Suds n' Spin.
He suscribes to 2 special-interest quarterlies at $3,500 a year each.
He likes to read "MAKE" 'zine, but he hasn't gotten a sub yet, so he pays $1,500 a quarter for a copy to read at the laundromat.
Now he has to fill up that $44,000-a-month dreamboat he drives around.
$3,900 a week. and that's at $66 a barrel for crude. Remember, he has to spend the same proportion of his income on survival shit as I do.
So, can we see just how RIDICULOUS A statement about wishing crude would hit $100 a bbl is? You'd have to be a moron to think that would make any matter to the wealthy power brokers of this country.
Let's see now, I really start to worry about being able to afford to commute to work at about $3 a gallon. Now, let's assume that ol' Spiff has the same break point. Which I would seriously doubt, because his REAL costs for all that stuff I catalogued above is ONLY 1/100 of what I listed it at.
So, our $4,000,000 a year Spiffer is spending only about $30,000 to stay alive. Yeah, I know he lives higher on the hog than me, but hey, he makes 100X as much.
Anyway, I get hinky at $3 a gallon. Do you think Spiff would flop around on the gas station drive if it cost $300 a gallon? Maybe?
And just how much would a bbl. of crude have to go up before it hit $300 at the pump? I figure crude would have to hit somewhere around $7,000 a barrel to get gas at the pump up to $300.
So you see, even if crude did hit $100 a barrel, the price of Gas at the pump would rise to "only" about $3.75 or so. Now, that would really worry people like me, and I imagine a lot of you Fellow Babies out there in Blog Land...
NOT the Boon Pickins and Kenny-Boy Lays of the world. Buzzing of Flies, remember?
Class dismissed. (thows chalk in tray and walks out of lecture hall)
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Excellent book by the mathematician John Allen Paulos. That and Demon Haunted World would be good for a lot that ails this country.
I take it you've been hearing this little ecology myth all over lately like I have. "It'll be good if gas goes to $100 a barrel." It's similar to a myth I used to believe -- "It'll be good if George W. Bush serves two terms because then people will realize what freedoms they've lost." Note that I believed this back in 2000 before we saw exactly how much damage Bush could do in just one term, let alone two.
Gotten into some flame wars over it, too. BTW, I've edited some of my math. I originally stated Spiff would have a $200 co-pay and laundry bill?
I was wrong. It's $2,000. I have corrected it.
As for it being good if Dumbya serves 2 terms, well, I'm with you NOW. I don't really think the Murkan Sheeple are going to learn their lesson from their 8-year "Sit down for a Beer" with him. They'll vote for another Neo-Con puppet who talks like a hill-jack and promises to keep them safe from homos and Muslims and..."Ah'm gwynna give y'back more'n yer own MUNNY!"
I have long thought that "Demon-Haunted World" should be required reading in high school. But then, the Xians would bitch about teaching the "religion" of critcal thinking...
Round and Round it Goes...
I think you are forgetting something here: People are only as rich as the system that supports them.
If the poor can't get to work, they will be unable to make him any money.
What I think we are seeing now is some kind of "exploratory".
The PTB have already realised that we will accept higher energy prices, well, because what else are we going to do?
They're just fine-tuning the model to find the point of "maximum yield". Sort of like a manuver I learned in flight training called a "chandelle", which was defined as a maximum-performance climbing turn. sounds pretty racy, right? well, all it meant was that you forced the aircraft into a turn as hard as you could and climbed as fast as you could without the A/C stalling and falling out of the sky.
They've got us in a chandelle, and they're just seeing how tight they can turn the screws before the whole thing grinds to a halt.
And the Oil company execs try to explain their obscene profits on incredible sales... I know 51% of the people in this country are stupid enough to buy that, but not me.
Round and Round it Goes...
That the energy companies are trying to get a feel for exactly how much the market will bear, but in direct response to your comment Paul, the one thing I worry about is whether or not the proverbial they are smart enough to figure that out. You know, I kind of fear that the monied class, much like the lower classes, no longer knows what is in their best interest. And if you're not playing the game that way, if you're maximizing short term gains at the risk of long term losses, if you're playing the 'defect always' strategy in this big Iterated Prisoner's Dilemma game we call capitalism... then it all sort of falls apart.
I really hope I'm wrong though.
