Economy sheds another 84,000 jobs

[TXplt]

Originally Posted by Coeloptera

And this stuff happens, too.

The 65 mpg Ford the U.S. Can't Have

65mpg car. Seats 5. Made by Ford. Won't be sold in the US.

Because it runs on diesel.

*sigh*

- Coeloptera

I drove alot of great diesels in Europe and the UK. They are wonderfully efficient (several had higher MPG than hybrids). They'd be just the ticket here.

I agree--it's really too bad wacky environmental extremists have caused the banning of these great vehicles through inane emissions laws (as well as royally screwed with our diesel supplies). Imagine it; "green" Europe can drive diesels we can't by law have here. They're actually cleaner than most other vehicles on the road. We need to fix this.

[Deersniper]

Was it Nafta or Cafta or the WTO or the EU? "These trade unions create more jobs" is BS. One state will now penalize companies from out sourcing, cutting off their TAX BREAKS. I say tariff the crap out of them and tilt it toward rewarding the American Entrepreneur and giving him tax breaks for ten years, That's five years longer than the Indian and Muslim companies are getting for taking over corner stores all across America. They are trying to put us on the trains and buses. I say INVENT, and give inventors big tax breaks, especially in the area of alternative fuels but not like misused farm subsidies. BUY AMERICAN MADE!

[toolman]

Originally Posted by Rambo

I noticed McCain mentioned the current economic conditions regarding the loss of jobs NOT ONCE last night during his speech. But he did go on and on about his life. There's a guy who is really in tune or even concerned about the economic conditions of our workforce.

Economic ups and downs are a natural occurrence in ANY country, which is why I don't make a big deal of them. They also tend to follow, rather than parallel a presidents' term. I always find it interesting when people think that it's the government's job to make them more $$$, I must've missed that in the constitution.

[troy2000]

I don't think citing the oil industry's profit margin on a gallon of gas is necessarily the only way to look at it. In the first place, they have pretty much a vertical monopoly: they're buying a lot of the oil they refine into gasoline from themselves, or from each other.

And an 8.3 percent profit on a four-dollar gallon of gas is twice as much profit as the same 8.3 percent profit on a two-dollar gallon of gas, no matter how you spin it...it doesn't make the four-dollar price tag any more reasonable.

[TXplt]

Originally Posted by troy2000

I don't think citing the oil industry's profit margin on a gallon of gas is necessarily the only way to look at it. In the first place, they have pretty much a vertical monopoly: they're buying a lot of the oil they refine into gasoline from themselves, or from each other.

And an 8.3 percent profit on a four-dollar gallon of gas is twice as much profit as the same 8.3 percent profit on a two-dollar gallon of gas, no matter how you spin it...it doesn't make the four-dollar price tag any more reasonable.

It's kind of funny to hear you try to spin this into something it's not (I don't like the facts, so lets us all look at it a different way ). I believe you're trying to "look at it" to force an agenda and find some way to blame the "mean old oil companies" for our energy plight. Oil companies (in the US at least) are absolutely NOT monopolies in any way, shape or form (not sure where you learned economics). OPEC is--a cartel--we have little control over this save drilling our own oil and developing non oil (nuclear, coal, renewables that are economically viable) energy sources. The oil companies' profits and return on investment are exactly the same (and lower than many) as for any other sector--they were equivalent to GE's -- this is from several independent sources including the WSJ. You're welcome to look it up. These are facts; cold hard facts. No conspiracy. There are many articles on the subject (a link to one of which I posted in a recent thread about the folly of the "windfall profits tax" proposed by you know who)--you very well may not like them because they're the truth and do debunk the "bad oil company" myth. The numbers are just big and people like to play up big numbers.

8.3 percent return on gross receipts is 8.3 percent--period. It doesn't matter if you're selling fuel, computers, steaks, cars, or widgets. Moreover, this doesn't include taxes or capital re-investment. I don't know where you're getting your definition of "reasonable" -- in your world would you be want to dictate and enforce what you consider a "reasonable" profit margin across all manufacturing sectors ? (I used to sometimes in my younger days use this word along with "responsible decision" when making presentations if I knew the facts weren't totally on my side and I was on kinda shaky ground--it can lend some verbal bulliness or obfuscuration to what you're trying to say unless you've got someone smart who calls you on it. As I got older I began to personally consider things like this intellectually dishonest). Oil companies are providing a valuable commodity and useful good. You don't have to buy it--you can walk. There's absolutely no evidence of collusion amongst different oil companies, and the market tends to eliminate this anyhow (at least if our government weren't getting in the way and would allow us to drill here to trust bust OPEC--if anything, government interference is causing a great deal of the problem). OPEC also to some extent falls apart anyway (not that we have any real control over OPEC) as people cheat and increase supply worried about their oil futures tanking. It's simply supply and demand (and in the futures market the threat of oversupplies or undersupplies--this can actually be favorably exploited to bust OPEC by threatening an increase in supply by US drilling everywhere, including ANWR as well as developing nuclear power). Our demand, BTW, has decreased to the point they're worried about the lack of fuel taxes now not being able to support infrastructure. Maybe we should have fenced it better.

It is absolutely amazing that people (especially liberal congresspersons) think "big oil" is involved in some type of conspiracy to gouge the American public. The "Klinton Body Count" theory has much more validity than this. Yet some liberals will choose to believe one and not the other just to drive a totally non-fact based agenda. BTW, I believe neither.

[troy2000]

Originally Posted by TXplt

It's kind of funny to hear you try to spin this into something it's not (I don't like the facts, so lets us all look at it a different way ). I believe you're trying to "look at it" to force an agenda and find some way to blame the "mean old oil companies" for our energy plight. Oil companies (in the US at least) are absolutely NOT monopolies in any way, shape or form (not sure where you learned economics). OPEC is--a cartel--we have little control over this save drilling our own oil and developing non oil (nuclear, coal, renewables that are economically viable) energy sources. The oil companies' profits and return on investment are exactly the same (and lower than many) as for any other sector--they were equivalent to GE's -- this is from several independent sources including the WSJ. You're welcome to look it up. These are facts; cold hard facts. No conspiracy. There are many articles on the subject (a link to one of which I posted in a recent thread about the folly of the "windfall profits tax" proposed by you know who)--you very well may not like them because they're the truth and do debunk the "bad oil company" myth. The numbers are just big and people like to play up big numbers.
8.3 percent return on gross receipts is 8.3 percent--period. It doesn't matter if you're selling fuel, computers, steaks, cars, or widgets. Moreover, this doesn't include taxes or capital re-investment. I don't know where you're getting your definition of "reasonable" -- in your world would you be want to dictate and enforce what you consider a "reasonable" profit margin across all manufacturing sectors ? (I used to sometimes in my younger days use this word along with "responsible decision" when making presentations if I knew the facts weren't totally on my side and I was on kinda shaky ground--it can lend some verbal bulliness or obfuscuration to what you're trying to say unless you've got someone smart who calls you on it. As I got older I began to personally consider things like this intellectually dishonest). Oil companies are providing a valuable commodity and useful good. You don't have to buy it--you can walk. There's absolutely no evidence of collusion amongst different oil companies, and the market tends to eliminate this anyhow (at least if our government weren't getting in the way and would allow us to drill here to trust bust OPEC--if anything, government interference is causing a great deal of the problem). OPEC also to some extent falls apart anyway (not that we have any real control over OPEC) as people cheat and increase supply worried about their oil futures tanking. It's simply supply and demand (and in the futures market the threat of oversupplies or undersupplies--this can actually be favorably exploited to bust OPEC by threatening an increase in supply by US drilling everywhere, including ANWR as well as developing nuclear power). Our demand, BTW, has decreased to the point they're worried about the lack of fuel taxes now not being able to support infrastructure. Maybe we should have fenced it better.
It is absolutely amazing that people (especially liberal congresspersons) think "big oil" is involved in some type of conspiracy to gouge the American public. The "Klinton Body Count" theory has much more validity than this. Yet some liberals will choose to believe one and not the other just to drive a totally non-fact based agenda. BTW, I believe neither.

You milked a whole lot out of my three or four sentences that I don't remember putting in them, TXplt. Didn't mean to get you going...I guess I'm not safe in the Powder Keg, either.

[TXplt]

Oh, you're plenty safe here

It just bothers me when people try to blame oil companies for something that isn't true and isn't their fault at all. It's kind of like kicking your best hunting dog because you got a flat tire on the way home from work. We have solutions to this; none of them involve congressional hearing shams or "windfall profits taxes." They all involve drilling everywhere and building new power sources. We can and should look forward and use some oil revenue to fund new sources of energy that aren't there yet (but will be); other government impeding has been the source of our problems.

[troy2000]

Originally Posted by TXplt

Oh, you're plenty safe here
It just bothers me when people try to blame oil companies for something that isn't true and isn't their fault at all. It's kind of like kicking your best hunting dog because you got a flat tire on the way home from work. We have solutions to this; none of them involve congressional hearing shams or "windfall profits taxes." They all involve drilling everywhere and building new power sources. We can and should look forward and use some oil revenue to fund new sources of energy that aren't there yet (but will be); other government impeding has been the source of our problems.

I believe I was making a very simple point: as long as oil companies can maintain a more-or-less fixed profit margin no matter what the prices are, they have no incentive to hold down prices and costs. In fact, it's quite the reverse: the higher they can drive them without reaching the point where they kill the goose, the more money they'll make.

When I was in construction, cost-plus contracts were the holy grail for small contractors. If they could write one for cost plus ten percent (the most common), they had very little reason to hold their costs down: the more they spent on materials, labor and fees, the more profit they made.

[TXplt]

Oil companies cost structures are similar to other companies, and they remain in competition with each other (Conco competes with Devon, competing with Exxon, etc. They all compete with BP and Shell). This creates an incentive to keep costs down (they function just like every other private for-profit company). I'll bet if you talk to any of the CEO's of these companies, they are no less interested in keeping costs down than Andrew Carnegie was. (I read an intersting book about he and Frick--part of their successful strategy was although they couldn't control the market, internal costs were something they could control). Lower costs mean more profits. If we want to examine things boosting oil company costs we might look to government interference via environmental regulation, taxes of all kinds including FICA and unemployment insurance/claims, unionization/labor/benefit costs (you can debate the social value of this, but it does hike costs in any case when you look at it objectively), liability, and litigation. If one's interested in a company's incentive to control costs, taxing profits is probably the worst thing we can do--it takes away the incentive to drop costs (What's the point of using resouces or money to save 10 dollars per widget on manufacturing costs if you're just going to turn around and tax this cost savings later ?)--this actually fosters the "cost plus" scenario because profits count against them tax wise, costs and losses don't. OPEC does act as a monopoly at times, but we have little control of this save what I said before.

Found 2 interesting articles.

What Is a 'Windfall' Profit? - WSJ.com

Who reaps a Windfall? Exxon? Apple? or Obama?

The reason why this meddling is so horrid is we've got the perfect storm going on. Energy costs (which drive every other cost in our nation) are high (and drilling/building is the only way to fix this--American's have drastically cut down in discretionary travel). Combine this with real estate values plummeting, a very high consumer debt loading--blame whomever you like--both houses and everything else, increased foreign competition, a huge government debt, and a devaluating dollar (largely caused by the Fed's futile attmpt to try to deal with all of this by blowing $ into the economy) and we've got a real problem. The energy costs have been what's been pushing us over the brink.

How do we fix this ? America's blessed with 3 things: a fairly clever people (the work smarter principle), a capitalistic market system (capable of enhancing efficiency), and abundant natural resources. The abundant natural resources let us get a handle on costs; however, like absolute idiots we've locked them up via government regulation/overregulation. We need realize we can have both drilling/mining/coal burning and clean air and water and simply get government obstructions out of the way. That's all it takes. For the fairly clever people part, we need redirect our efforts away from screwing each other (again, via intervention, telling us what we "can't" do, blaming "the man," trying to get what we know we don't deserve, and suing each other--this usually accomplishes nothing productive) and redirect these efforts to something positive. Our only solutions to our economic problems are to productively use our own resources and people (and pay down the national debt, doing it never again), or go to war and take them from someone else.