I fully expect these images to appear.
Careful though. Declining gas prices have traditionally come with recessions. I recognize that Joe Biden is NOT responsible for the economy. But the President is always blamed for economic issues.
The overall issue at play is that Chinese growth has stalled out, and so has the consumption of many other countries… and meanwhile the USA ramped up production of oil dramatically. This is only useful if we spend the oil on something (ie: economic growth) here on out. But if we too enter a recession, then all this oil basically gets wasted.
I think we have a ton of space in our strategic reserves (Ukrainian war + Russian shipping issues + OPEC forced us to use our strategic reserves a year ago). So refilling up our reserves is good. But we can’t enter a long, deep recession (its surprising how small the strategic reserves are in the great scheme of our economic engine. A few months of recession is all we need to fill up the strategic reserves and then we’re forced to concrete-weld the oil shut / other expensive tricks to block out our oil wells). We need to hope that our economy remains afloat for all this to work out.
My hopes is that all of the economic problems are associated with other countries and somehow the USA is immune to it. But we do live in a connected world today, there’s a chance that the Chinese slowdown spreads to over here through unknown (or at least, arcane) mechanisms.
I hate to break it to you but we’re already in a recession.
People on the internet have been telling me that we’re “already in a recession” since 2010 man.
I’ll believe it when it happens. Not a minute sooner. I definitely see the risks of a recession though, but I’m not going to call it until the data says so.
A recession, not a depression. And yes half the country has been struggling for 20 years now.
Recession isn’t about what people feel though. Its about the productivity of the country. People can feel bad, but if the country continues to produce more stuff, then we’re economically booming.
I feel like a lot of these issues is that the public is just ignorant to what a “recession” or “depression” really means. Employment (ie: how many jobs are available) indicate booming economies (aka: us making more stuff) because it means that companies are trying to make more stuff and need more workers.
A recession is the opposite. When our means of production get shut-off for whatever reason. When this happens, people start getting laid off from jobs leading to unemployment.
We did have a brief COVID19 recession as theme parks, hotels, restaurants, and cruises closed down. As the hospitality sector closed, they laid off workers, unemployment grew, etc. etc. etc. This cascaded to other sectors: tourism declines, air-travel declined. Gasoline usage dropped and oil producers cut off production. It was starting to get out of control until policymakers took swift action with new loans (PPP loans, and other programs) to get the economy somewhat-artifically churning again, but it did work and the job boom kinda-sorta hampered the COVID19 recession.
We never came out of the 2008 slump.
until the data says so.
If you don’t think the data hasn’t been “massaged” for a decade, to make it seem better than it actually is, you haven’t been paying attention.
On top of the classic “you can prove anything with statistics” it’s a bit of a joke.
The worker shortage continues today. We have record low unemployment, all my friends are working jobs (and some multiple jobs) because their boss doesn’t care enough to check in on them because there’s too much work to do.
The economy today is rather strong. But there’s some headwinds that I’m seeing (ex: a somewhat isolated freight recession that’s playing into this decline of gasoline prices). Some items in our economy can change rather quickly, so I’m not going to confidently state that everything’s okay. There’s a lot of shakiness here. But nothing suggests yet that we’ve entered a general recession (like say, China has, or some other countries).
Even my buddy at WeWork hasn’t been fired yet, lol. I know there’s been a lot of tech layoffs, but it seems like there’s so much programming work everywhere, that everyone basically gets rehired instantly.
There’s troubling signs in some sectors. I’m worried that spreads to the rest of the economy. But those numbers just aren’t there for the “general economy” yet.
We have record low unemployment, all my friends are working jobs (and some multiple jobs)
Try getting a third job, maybe that will help.
Lmao. Life is okay for you so fuck the statistics. That’s why we can’t get any economic reform in this country and y’all are going to be left wondering why the bottom fell out one of these days.
Gotchya, it’s all a conspiracy and every time some economics grad student checks the publicly available data for a standard project they are inducted into the ever growing secret conspiracy. It’s obvious!
Don’t ask a grad student. You’ll stop believing in the economy. It’s the news doing stupid shit. Just a few days ago CNBC brazenly printed a headline proclaiming the end of the cost of living crisis and that wages beat the inflation from the pandemic.
Turns out they meant the actual pandemic, as in the less than 1 percent inflation in 2020. 2021-2023 is still fucked at record levels though. And the actual data they did manage to print was backwards to the headline.
Then there’s the actual data we can easily access. Like the unemployment number. If you don’t get a job in the next 6 months it just stops counting you. Most measures of wealth distribution available stop at 100,000. Effectively grouping the middle class with billionaires. (Even researchers at Rand have complained about that one) The further you look, the more shenanigans you find. For example go pull the median household income for the last 30 years from BLS. (The agency cited all over the Internet for those numbers in articles.) I can tell you exactly how many teenagers died by slipping in the bath tub with like ten clicks. But finding the most basic economic data from the government is like pulling teeth.
Yes, free online news that relies on clicks isn’t the most reliable. That’s why you don’t see that nonsense in most respectable journalism.
As for the 6months not counted, you’re misunderstanding. Typically, folks have to have looked for a job in the last 6 months. (Once they pass that, they are considered a discouraged worker.) Which seems a pretty fair measure, you don’t want tp include people not looking for work, what you want out of the unemployment numbers is “of those working or looking for work, how many are currently unemployed.”
Here it is by worker, broken down however you’d like. It took a minute and a half of googling and meandering through the website:
https://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/surveymost?le
While household income is less of a good measure (do you only count married folks as people, how about households where one partner doesn’t have to work as the house is already owned etc) you can similarly find that with a quick google.
Based on what measure? I won’t argue the economy is all unicorns and lollipops for us normal folk, but that doesn’t mean we’re in a recession either.
The official definition is to do with the stock market. But the stock market is fully divorced from the real economy.
Based on what measure?
There is a measure - Let’s talk about the misery index telling us to be less miserable - things aren’t looking too bad either.
Needing more jobs to meet your basic needs is not an indicator of joy.
I predict that oil and gas companies will collude and drive prices up like they always fucking do
I remember paying $5/gal during Bush’s final years. I’d just started driving in the Midwest. It’s below $3 right now, so idk what this comment means. The price of standard goods like bread, milk, and housing are up, for sure, but gas is fuckin weird
It’s an election year. Gas prices are going to be “record lows” in October.
Because you think the president controls gas prices?
The President doesn’t have much direct control other than use of the strategic reserve and whatever political pressure they can exert with a “pretty please”, but OPEC has significant influence over production and thus worldwide prices, and they have demonstrated a penchant for supporting the American politicians that keep us most tethered to fossil fuels rather than renewable energy sources.
Which would mean we could expect prices to go the opposite direction that GasBuddy is predicting here. I guess we’ll see.
You know what else could reduce gas spending but without relying on the market? Making it possible to exist in America without a car by building walkable cities and public transit.
I agree, but how long do you think it would take? I feel like if we started today, it would be decades before the demographics were transformed to a good situation.
And if we dont start it just continues car dependancy for decades. It is not just the gas spending, car centric design is bleeding cities economically and enviornmentally. Suburbia and strip malls were a new and experimental development in the 40s-50s, we now know these developments cost more to maintain than they generate in taxes as well as waste massive amounts of urban space contributing to urban sprawl.
High gas prices should get higher.
I say this as someone who would be significantly effected by this.
We’re all dependent on this fragile fishbowl from one moment to the next, but by all means, lets make it as easy as possible to strain that shared habitat harder and harder and hope some other generations have to deal with the externalities.
This is discounting ice water on the Titanic. That said, sometimes I forget who we are, so glug glug glug lets burn this fucker down I guess, and fuck electrics! They’re slightly less convenient to power than fossil fuel vehicles, and that’s all that matters.
That’s just going to harm people at the bottom in both the short and long term. Wealthier people can pay the inflated prices. Lining the pockets of oil company executives isn’t going to bring about sustainable policies with regards to climate change. It’s just going to be yet another grift on the working class like all the others.
That’s all true, and the reality is there is no solution that averts mass unnecessary suffering, because the fact is, the wealth class can do a lot of things to help and bear a lot of brunts of problems they themselves created on our backs, but use their power to assure they never will. Kind of the point of capitalism. They have all the power and none of the accountability, and only care about the future if it’s a fiscal quarter in front of their face.
They will maximize profit until the last sucker drops dead or says no with no subsistence opiates left to lose. If that means enjoy the cheap gas in these waning days of willful denial, I guess that’s better than nothing.
I disagree. Gas prices affect the working poor in a significant way. People with money like to bitch about gas prices, but it doesn’t really affect them. We need to push renewables while still keeping gas affordable in my opinion (and I fucking hate the gas companies).
Products and services that have gone up because fuel costs more wont be going back down though.
It’s already fallen pretty drastically these past 6 months or so. It’s around $2.89 near me which is a full dollar less than it was over the summer.
How am I going to justify the purchase of an EV if these gas prices keep falling? 😅
Still better for the environment if you go EV!
I’ve seen strong arguments that Hybrid or PHEV are better for the environment.
Full EV is a waste of batteries, and batteries are incredibly dirty to manufacture in practice. Hybrid is like 30%+ reduction in oil/gasoline, while PHEV can be 50% to 80% reduction (depending on driving habits / conditions), despite only using a small fraction of the dirty Li-ion batteries.
EVs are of course 100% reduction in gasoline. But the battery question and how much you need to factor in all the acid that was poured into mountains to gather that Lithium… or the children who gather Cobalt, (etc. etc.) for the rare-elements needed to build a Li-ion battery. I know Toyota is working on Solid State Silicon Batteries (ie: primarily based with Sand as a chemical composition), so future tech will change this debate dramatically.
Many PHEVs qualify for the $7500 Federal subsidy as well. My expectation is that PHEV is the best for environment, for government, and for people ($7500 off, still cheaper than full-electric cars, etc. etc).
I think this is a short sighted take. The current batteries being produced will be useful for decades, even if they don’t support the full duty cycle for cars during that lifetime. If they degrade to being only able to charge/discharge to 70% of original duty cycle, they can be used for home solar systems in that state for decades. I fully expect this business model of repurposing degraded batteries to emerge as significant numbers of battery electric cars end useful life in a decade or so.
In the meantime, there will be alternative battery chemistry options that will become commercially viable and will continue to improve. A car based on sodium batteries launches in early 2024. It’s not as good a range / capacity as lithium chemistry, but that’s not going to be the case forever. Battery chemistry will continue to improve rapidly, there’s lots of competition in the space and good incentives to drive research.
Also, charging infrastructure continues to improve, battery charge times improve, battery only vehicles becomes a feasible option for more people, utilities introduce time of use plans to incentivize off-hours charging, etc.
I’ll naturally change my argument as new tech comes into play. I’m simply talking about today’s Li-ion cells and based on industry changes.
Today, only an estimated 1% to 5% of Li-ion batteries are recycled. Yes, recycling technology is ramping up, but it doesn’t exist yet in any practical scale. We’re basically throwing away 95% of all that filth into our landfills and wasting the metal.
The current batteries being produced will be useful for decades
These Li-ion cells are only designed for a few thousand recharge/discharge cycles. You can somewhat hamper this degeneration process by building larger batteries and spreading the recharge/discharge among more cells, but on a cell-per-cell basis, the amount of recharge/discharge cycles is basically fixed and predictable. From an evironmental point of view, the optimization is to minimize the use of cells (IE: Hybrids or PHEVs), rather than building larger vehicles and wasting the batteries even further.
But give me one Li-ion cell, and charge / discharge it 3000 times or so (or whatever its endurance is), and it will be worn out and near worthless by the end of that. (Below specs on power, storage, etc. etc.). That’s just how they work chemically, the process isn’t purely reversable. The internal chemicals get mixed up and degrade after every use. They innately have a limited lifespan.
When technology changes, I’ll talk about that. My biggest hope is not the Sodium Batteries, but Toyota’s Silicon / Solid State Batteries. (Aka: built out of Sand). The Lithium still exists (its really a Silicon/Lithium battery), but at least the Cobalt and other dirty chemicals in the anode have been removed.
These Li-ion cells are only designed for a few thousand recharge/discharge cycles.
And if a pack gives you 300 miles of range, 2,000 charge cycles equates to 600,000 miles driven off a single pack. Compare that to a standard engine and transmission with a lifespan of 150,000-300,000 miles (depending on manufacturer) and the difference is clear.
90% of steel from cars is recycled.
Less than 5% of Li-ion batteries are recycled.
One of these things is not like the other from an environmental point of view. Multiple car engines, transmissions (etc. etc.) can be built, rebuilt, and recycled through our recycling process. Every Li-ion cell made for these EVs? I don’t think so. Li-ion recycling infrastructure today is incredibly shit. So yes, I’ll focus very much upon the mostly unrecyclable batteries and the colossal amounts of waste involved in the Li-ion chemistries.
Hybrids also last longer than EVs. And it’s not even close:
As per the results, on average, EVs are 79% less reliable than ICE-powered vehicles - despite having fewer moving parts and simpler drivetrains. The results also show that plug-in hybrids fare even worse and are 146% more problematic compared to conventional ICE models. However, traditional hybrids were ranked the best - producing 26% fewer problems than even ICE models.
Call me selfish, but I like really expensive purchase to last as long as possible.
Well I did buy one already. And I can afford it. But I love seeing those higher gas savings numbers.
In December 2022, GasBuddy projected gas prices would average $3.49 a gallon in 2023. That forecast was nearly spot-on, with actual gas prices averaging $3.51 a gallon so far this year.
That’s something. I’m curious how they did in previous years.
I suspect there are a number of state and local budgets are not prepared for gas tax revenue’s to continue to fall.
Not that I’m unhappy to see lower prices.
My state jacked up registration costs for EVs and fuel efficient ICE vehicles and is piloting a pay by mileage program. I admit they have to do something, but currently they’re just incentivizing people to buy gas guzzlers because they pay the least amount out of anyone tax wise.
The fairest thing would be to tax tires, since they’re mileage rated and size would be indicative of infrastructure wear. Except that it would incentivize people to drive on unsafe tires.
First time I’ve hear of a tire tax proposal. I really like the idea.
Even gas taxes suck because they don’t account for the weight^4 scaling of road damage. But tire wear should be proportional to road wear.
I mean, why not just cut to the chase and tax mileage driven? That’s what gas taxes indirectly do already. The only issue there is the tax goes wholly to the state where the vehicle is registered, rather than where it is driven.
The problem I have with this is that it doesn’t account for actual road damage (which is a factor of weight and not distance) and incentivises states to reduce public transit and low cost housing options. The further your citizens have to move from their jobs means more cash in the coffers.
Is it that big an incentive though, or just reducing the disincentive? Even if you get a $500 discount on your taxes, I’m guessing the gas guzzler eats up more than $500 worth of gas extra. That’s like, 2-3 gallons per week over the course of a year.
Probably not that big of an incentive for the driver of a gas guzzler depending on how much they drive, but the state shouldn’t penalize people for driving more fuel efficient ICE vehicles especially one like mine that loves to give lip service about climate change while not really doing anything concrete to reduce it. I could see charging more for EVs as they pay zero gas tax, but ICE should either all be the same or tiered in the opposite direction to further disincentivize people from commuting in a '92 Suburban versus something like a Prius.
I thought the gas tax was a fixed number rather than a percentage, wouldn’t that mean the revenue would stay the same?
Ish. Gas prices fall because people don’t drive as much. The whole supply-and-demand thing.
In this particular instance, everyone who is into Trucking knows that logistics / truckers are losing jobs left-and-right. We are already in a “freight recession” (sector-wide recession), no promises it spreads to the general economy. But when truckers enter a recession, there’s less taxes because less gasoline is being consumed.
That’s why people fear falling gas prices. Because it means the economic engines (trucking, freight, deliveries) are slowing down. And that absolutely has an effect on taxes. Even fixed-taxes like gas taxes.
I imagine many places do. My city has a sub 1% tax.
Fewer people buying gas means less overall revenue. This is due to EVs, more fuel efficient vehicles, and people driving less from things like work from home policies.
Don’t worry MI is one who is gouging the EV drivers. They have a flat EV tax added on the plate registration no matter how many miles driven. My bro who drives about 200 miles a month is has to pay about what it would cost if he used gas and drove 3000 miles per month.
Hard to buy gas when you can’t even afford the rent…
Hopefully diesel too.
At least the price of something will go down.
Ugh. That is definitely not something we need.
I hope Biden does not expect Republicans to acknowledge this. My parents are already convinced that oil drilling will be over of Biden is re-elected is so far removed from reality that it seems like parody.
We need to up the rebate for EVs. And we really need those fast chargers to role out that we have almost a billion for. There is no reason that small PUDs couldn’t take advantage and install them to get more money. We don’t need shit companies like Electrify America to have a network of broken chargers who only rolled them out because Volkswagen cheated on emissions.
