After The Oil Runs Out

Well, I, for one, am not willing to go back to oxen. They are too slow and too stupid, and they don't make good pets. Call me decadent, but I want a horse, even if he does require more farmland to feed.

Seriously, though, the problem is that the conversion from oil to a post-oil economy requires an investment now, and the old people who run our economy are not willing to make that big an investment in the future. And as we've seen, voters don't want to pay higher taxes now to prevent a catastrophe that they don't understand and don't want to believe in.

We Prius owners have shown ourselves willing to pay some money for a greener car (a junker would provide cheaper transportation) but not willing to change our lifestyle. The Prius is so successful precisely because it requires no sacrifices at all.

 

Have you noticed that they never film those while its raining? : )

 

Daniel, here is my problem with higher taxes. Our tax money is wasted so badly, that the government could function on a fraction of the amount it now requires, and still offer much of the welfare that it does now. Get rid of the welfare, and this country could very likely operate in a nearly tax free manner, as it did prior to WWI. So long as my tax money is squandered like a gambler blowing their winnings in the pursuit of getting more, I will never support another tax increase.

 

"My father rode a camel. I drive a car. My son flies a jet airplane. His son will ride a camel."

Saudi saying.

Perhaps they know something we don't...

 

There is a strong sense of the wheel of fortune in Arabic literature. One day you are down, the next day you are up, the next day you are down again. The Thousand Nights and a Night is full of stories of people going from poor to rich and back to poor again, and vice versa.

Wolfman, prior to WWI there was poverty in this country comparable to the third world. There were people working for nothing but room and board and there were armies of hobos riding freight trains from one end of the country to another starving and desperate for work.

We often hear conservatives repeating the mantra that government is wasteful and inefficient, as an excuse to pay less tax, but I don't buy it.

However, we would cut the welfare burden to a tiny fraction of what it is now if it were illegal to pay workers less than the cost of living. Your taxes are subsidizing Walmart (and other minimum-wage employers) because their full-time employees cannot afford the rent on an apartment.

Most of the poor in this country work full time. But you cannot live on a minimum-wage job unless you have some other source of support.

An excellent book on the subject is Nickel and Dimed. On (Not) Getting By in America by Barbara Ehrenreich.