The Oil Drum | Sunday Open Thread

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westexas on March 26, 2006 - 11:55am

Peak Oil Action Plan & Peak College Enrollment--a Looming Crisis?

After laboriously typing out my comment, I found myself at the bottom again, so I'll move to the top of Sunday.

Peak Oil Action Plan
Two plans for action that address a lot of concerns and that make sense together: (1) Alanfrombigeasy's rail electrification plan and (2) scrap the highly regressive Payroll (Social Security + Medicare) Tax and replace it with a fossil fuel and/or liquid transportation fuel tax.

Peak College Enrollment--a Looming Crisis?
In regard to education, the New York Times had an interesting article today on the problems with retraining programs. They frequently don't work, in the sense that once airline mechanics are laid off from high paying jobs, it is unlikely that they will ever get their old lifestyles back.

The article also discusses the reality that the number of college graduates is growing faster than the number of jobs for collage graduates. This results in a lot of people graduating who find that they can't find a job that will pay both their student loans and their cost of living on their own.

This situation will only get worse, especially as we approach Peak College Enrollment. I believe that the all time record high peak high school enrollment is going to be around 2007-2008, leading to the all time record high college graduation a few years later, right into the teeth of the Mother of all Energy Crises.

I have noticed a fascinating situation regarding even Peak Oil aware parents and their own kids. When I explain the new reality for Baby Boom Echo generation, invariably the response is "But there will still be a need for policy makers." Translation: it's okay for your unemployed college graduate to work in agriculture, but my college graduate will have a cushy white collar government job. I don't think so.

Parents and prospective college student are making tragic mistakes right now. They should be looking at technical schools that will give them practical training, with a special emphasis on repair work and agriculture. The last thing that you want to do is to go into debt to release another unemployed law school graduate into the marketplace.

Of course, law school applications are headed toward record levels.

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joule on March 26, 2006 - 12:28pm

When I graduated high school (class of '63), it was received wisdom, particularly among working-class families like my own, that if you just got that college diploma, the American Dream would automatically be yours.

Though such a mindset seems hopelessly naive today, it wasn't all that far from reality during that time period, for when I subsequently graduated from engineering school (class of '67), the members of senior class had an average of of something like 4.3 job offers each, and not one of the 270-odd graduates was without a job offer. No one thought that to be particularly remarkable at the time.

Today, as is so painfully obvious, a college degree has far less value, particularly if it is a liberal arts degree rather than one of the 'trades' like engineering or business administration. It is quite sad and disturbing to see so many college graduates doing menial jobs for which they are far over-qualified.

And getting more education can only make it worse by making you even more over-qualified. If you want to ensure that your son or daughter remains permanently unemployed, have him/her get a PhD in something like particle physics. I think many young people in graduate school are there because they couldn't find a decent job and feel that they are at least doing something positive by being back in school.

I really think that once this reality sets in, we are going have some very angry young people in a truly ugly mood. I also think that colleges are now getting close to the peak of a bubble, much akin to the real estate bubble. So many of the large universities have embarked on outrageously expensive expansion programs, largly consisting of impressive but marginally useful physical facilities, the main purpose of which appears to be to improve their status, lure the better students, and provide a justification for obscenely expensive tuititions. Universities seem to compete among each other in much the same way that posh resorts do. I think it's going to come down, because our economy just doesn't need all of these college graduates, particularly with increased outsourcing of white-collar jobs.

The American middle class will continue to shrink.

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odograph on March 26, 2006 - 12:40pm

As it happens there was a C-Span show on college costs and debt yesterday. I caught the last half of it. this is it.

A couple interesting factoids stick with me:

The age of college students has increased in recent years, to mid 20s.
Most students start within a year or two of high school graduation, if they start at all.
The time-to-degree is longer, with 6-8 years becoming common.
The first generations in families to reach college tend to go for the more practical degrees. The "trade" oriented degrees.
The more secure second/third generations going to college go for the less practical liberal arts.

(How "rational" #5 is may be in they eye of the beholder. It was painted as reasonable by the presenters, but I think those affuent kids are the ones who get the rude surprises.)

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odograph on March 26, 2006 - 1:18pm

Oh, the moderator painted the bottom line as "since a degree at a state school can be had for $20K, and can be financed by loans, it is still (in today's world) a relatively low cost investment."

I think someone else pointed out that the average state college education costs less than the average new car.

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Descolada on March 26, 2006 - 4:18pm

$20,000... which state school was he talking about? I might transfer there. I'm at UTexasSA and my yearly tuition is around $8000. Add to that the money you take out for cost of living, which you really do need in order to make it day to day, and it jumps considerably. I average about $12,000 a year in loans.

So much for affordable education.

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odograph on March 26, 2006 - 4:31pm

You might enjoy this:

http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0417,kamenetz,53011,1.html

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odograph on March 26, 2006 - 1:20pm

Sorry, I keep thinking of these things one by one.

Another interesting factiod was that either Australia or New Zealand had a policy of charging less tuition for practical degrees and more for liberal arts.

I think that is a good policy (that would be unlikely to fly here given the entrenched control liberal arts exert on our campuses). It certainly drives home to the student what is a "luxury" degree.

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Descolada on March 26, 2006 - 4:23pm

That's a poor assessment. I'm a first generation college student, and I'm double majoring in political science and psychology, two of the most useless liberal arts majors in existence. The difference, and this is what you left out, a grad school is usually the next step for a liberal arts major, where they learn a profession like law or finaince, or they work for their PhDs, which while they're becoming more so, are definently not useless degrees.

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odograph on March 26, 2006 - 4:29pm

One of my formative experiences was hearing of a newly married couple. Recent college graduates. He, with a history degree, went to work selling furnature at Levitz. She, with an english degree, went to work selling clothes at Broadway.

Should they have become lawyers? Perhaps. I suppose the rubber meets the roads in the stats - the precentage of liberal arts majors who leap to high income professions.

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Fletcher on March 26, 2006 - 4:51pm

I'm sorry but my patience with the cracks on liberal arts majors and lawyers has worn thin. Both groups are absolutely essential to a civil democratic society. It is unfortunate that the current employment market undervalues those with an education designed to provide the tools for rational and reflective thought, a historical perspective, and the ability to use language fluidly and with precision. Would anyone here really appreciate a society only run by engineers? The trains would run on time, but much of the Constitution would be lost in the bargain, as it is inefficient and costly.

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Oilrig medic on March 26, 2006 - 5:01pm

Of the founding fathers how many were engineers and how many were political science majors with a double major in art histrory (after they changed majors 2 other times)

Universities generate new knowledge through research. Vital function. We have more lawyers percapita than any other country. This is the reason nobody coaches little league and OBGYN's are hard to find.

Legal representation is neccesary. But we have more than enough.

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joule on March 26, 2006 - 6:39pm

Oilrig Medic -

I must inform you that during the time of our Founding Fathers the profession of engineering did not exist, at least not in any formal sense. There were surveyors, and people who learned how to build things and who learned about machines. It was mostly learning by doing. But you did not go to college to become an engineer, because there wasn't any engineering curricula at the time. Engineering as a formal profession is relatively young, largely getting its start in the mid-19th Century.

Most of our Founding Fathers were well-connected and well-educated aristocrats, the elites of the day, if you will. While there were exceptions (such as Ben Franklin, one of the most capable and versatile geniuses of all time, right up there with Leonardo), our Founding Fathers were not middle class people.

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Oilrig medic on March 26, 2006 - 7:26pm

I was joking, there were not BA students who spent seven years in college then either.

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Fletcher on March 26, 2006 - 7:26pm

I'll remember that the next time one comes seeking my legal services: "I'm sorry about your car collisioin and the fact that the insurance company is only paying a small fraction of your medical costs, but you see ... well, there are too many lawyers . . ."

Lawyers work in a very competitive market and if there isn't the work they don't eat. Private clients hire attorneys to advance their goals and defend the rights. More than any other profession, it's a self regulating one. Unlike the medical professions they do not work together to limit their numbers.

The Bar bears substantial responsibility for the growing disconnect between what lawyers do and how the help society and market efficiency and the increasinly majoritarian view that they're leaches or pilot fish, sucking the life blood of the body politic and the market economy.

Incidentally, no other Presidentail administration has been as hostile to the legal profession and the Bar and had so little regard for the rule of law as that of George W. Bush - and it became apparent a few days before the 2000. election.

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odograph on March 26, 2006 - 5:02pm

Ah well you see, I think a liberal education is possible, desirable, and practical ... in those "trade majors."

But unfortunately there is confusion now between a liberal education and a liberal arts major.

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odograph on March 26, 2006 - 5:09pm

Put another way, I got my chem degree and went to work engineering medical instruments. I then started reading good books in the evenings.

That made sense to me. More sense than reading the books first, and worrying about the job later.

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step back on March 26, 2006 - 5:24pm

my patience with the cracks on liberal arts majors and lawyers has worn thin

Actually the "cracks" (and by the way, that is a Freudian slip-wise, well chosen word) are not aimed at liberal arts or legal studies per se; but rather at any specialization in education which leaves out the need for studying other areas. It is because we subdivide ourselves into spealized areas that things slip between the "cracks"; very important things, like no one worrying about how the whole thing comes together. We all are taught to believe that some invisible being --often called the invisible hand-- will make everything work out. But it doesn't. The markets don't provide. Your underemployed college graduates are "evidence" that the markets don't provide.

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oil on March 26, 2006 - 10:29pm

Stepback,

Would you prefer to live under a socialist system where everybody is employed in spite of being useful? The market is a dynamic feedback system, fluctuating between the extremes of chaos and routine.

It seems obvious to me that we all are born with a specialized talent, i.e. musician, writer, engineer, mathematician, biologist. I know you are aware that the division of labor is especially evident in other species, i.e. bees´ and ants´. What does this tell you? My guess is the DNA "masterplan" produces x percentage of engineers, poets, writers, lawyers, and musicians in order to promote sustainablity. Insects have been around for hundreds of millions of years.

P.S. Thanks for posting the picture last week.

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step back on March 27, 2006 - 3:59am

oil,
My message was nothing of the sort. Instead, it means that all of us need to get educated in each other's specialties. The economist needs to learn some basic thermodynamics AND APPLY IT to the theory of economics. The engineer needs to learn politics and APPLY IT to the decision making process that determines which projects are funded and which are not. Politicians need to learn how real science works and to stop pretending Global Warming is not real because it is politically inconvenient. Most of all, all humans need to learn how their brains work so they do not become easy prey for mass media manipulation and smiling propaganda faces on the MSM news networks. We are herd animals and we are irrational, fearful and easily manipulated. The sooner we admit it, the sooner we can start seeing how we are all blindly following the main herd towards the edge of the cliff. The sooner we can learn that "stay the course" is not about loyalty but rather about irrational behavior.

p.s. what picture?

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Dan Ur on March 27, 2006 - 10:34am

Late in the game but..

I went to two colleges, The University of Arkansas at Little Rock and Mississippi State Unitversity. I was classified as and Un-decided at UALR and as A Landscape Architecture Major at MSU. While at UALR I took any class I wanted to know about. I worked part time, Kept a Garden at my parents house and Helped with other things, Even helping them pay some of thier bills. I did all the same chores I ever did growing up and a few more. I took classes that interested me. I disliked when I was told you need this or that to get your degree. What degree I was going there to learn things, not to get a degree. I did decide I really liked Landscape and designing the world around me and When my younger brother was heading to college. We looked at only the schools in the nation that had his degree AeroSpace engineering, and L. A. at them, about 20 at the time. We sent out the apps and Mississippi Picked both of us, and off we went, roommates and brothers, we were there to help each other and be family in school and he had a better college going to class ethic than I did, till he failed to make the grade and Lost his 4 year Scholarship. He did get his degree after 6 years. But me, I got the same run around, do this, do that and you will be better. I never liked folks telling me what I needed to learn. I like learning what I want to learn. I slowing got down to where they would not let me stay on campus, so I moved off campus, my brother was living with his girlfriend and future wife. I got a great deal on a great house, and we slowly went to classes and I left for other places. He finally got his degree, early in my first marriage. I never got a degree, But I loved learning what I wanted to learn.

Jobs. I have worked a whole range of jobs, from the 3.35 an hour to 15.00 an hour and done things I have really enjoyed. If I did not like the job, I did not stay there long.

With My VERY well rounded education, I am going off to Re-build my Girlfriends Free and Clear paid for House. I will be in charge of all fixs and Landscaping, and make it What we both want, but also What I know we will need with the coming events of PEAK OIL. She does not need to worry about PO just yet, I can handle that detail just fine.

I have Always said, that a college should not be where you go to learn a career it is where you go to learn things that you want to know about, things you don't know, anything about. To learn the well rounded information that some of the practical work experience can't teach you.

Hey, my family thinks I am a failure. I write books, Stories, Poems, Children's stories, and have as much fun every day of my life as anyone I know. I have no worries. but my brother is uptight about money all the time, and Is in debt up to his eyeballs while he is standing on his wife's shoulders!! Me, no debts, No worries and able to do anything I want to do.

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joule on March 26, 2006 - 6:20pm

Fletcher -

Of course we need lawyers; but do we need so MANY of them?

The last time I looked countries like Japan seemed to be gettingt along just fine with but a tiny fraction of the lawyers per capita that the US has. A well functioning system of law, of course, is absolutely essential for a civilized society and free-market commerce. However, the legal system can become a drain upon society when it becomes an industry onto itself and the society becomes more and more litigious.

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Fletcher on March 26, 2006 - 6:35pm

Asain societies, Japan and China, have very diffent political cultures. Neither have tradions supporting the Western view of individual rights. To be sure Japan adopted a constitution imposed by General MacArthur, but their political, social, and economic culture favors the sciences and engineering. In that balance, note that inidivual intiative and individual expressive rights are not as highly valued as in this country. That explains in part the fewer attorneys.

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odograph on March 26, 2006 - 6:40pm

Do you suppose there might be a "feedback loop"(*) between the number of lawyers in a society, and the litigiousness of that society?

* - to borrow a term from an "engineering education"

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Fletcher on March 26, 2006 - 9:18pm

Most definitely. I might add that everyone's in favor of alternative dispute resolution and mild cooperative attorneys until their attorney plays nice with the other side.

It is my view that effective lawyers will become especially important and necessary as energy resources decline.

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joule on March 26, 2006 - 11:08pm

Fletcher -

Well, now why would that be? Are we going to sue our way into energy abundance?

Our legal system, both civil and criminal, has become truly grotesque. Laws and regulations are passed by lawyers largely to make more work for lawyers. (It's called featherbedding.) That is why I can say from firsthand experience that excessive legalism is the reason why the environmental field has become so screwed up.

Our government is largely run by lawyers, and look what a wonderful job they have done. Lawyers, as far as I can tell, have absolutely no sense of cost-effectiveness. They do pro bono work to assuage their consciences against all the negative things they have done. They produce nothing.

No, I would not be at all proud to call myself a lawyer in contemporary America. And please don't give me this crap about lawyers protecting our rights, etc. A lawyer advocates that which his client pays him to advocate, be it torture at Guantanamo or illegal search and seizure. Lawyers are the instrument by which a totalitarian state paints a thin veneer of legitimacy over the cold crimes they are committing.

As it has been since the beginning, lawyers largely serve power and money. And I don't think you can deny that. Public defenders are a joke, and plea bargaining is the way most criminal cases are settled. If you have lots of money you have a shot at justice; but if you're lower middle class, you're dead meat and at the mercy of the system.

No, as an American, I no longer believe in the American legal system.

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AlphaMaleProphetOfDoom on March 27, 2006 - 3:53am

"Public defenders are a joke, and plea bargaining is the way most criminal cases are settled."

I worked at the San Francisco Public Defender's office all through law school. I'd trust my life with most of the attorneys working there.

There's a great pbs documentary about the office:

http://www.pbs.org/kqed/presumedguilty/4.0.0.html

Best,

Matt

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step back on March 27, 2006 - 12:49pm

lawyers largely serve power and money.

Matt,
You cannot deny the truthfulness of the above block quote (Id. :-). The "Invisible Hand" forces most lawyers into having to chase after where the money is. TV paints a false picture about what real lawyers actually do. The poor and downtrodden do not get fair access to legal expertise. Neither do the middle class. It is only the rich and powerful who can afford a lawyer.

Lawyers cannot afford to burn their billable hours doing work for clients who cannot and never will pay. The rich & powerful fool the common folk by canning misleading messages like "tort reform" when instead it is about letting wrongdoers off the hook while leaving the bag in the hand of the wronged, of the victims. Doctors do f*ck up. Hospitals do screw up. They know when they do it and they give you a deceitful, we're to help you smile as they do it from behind the white coat. It's all about maximizing profits.

It is a good thing Matt, that you and a number of other lawyers here at TOD (Fletcher & who knows how many other esquires here) have caught onto the Peak Oil phenomenon. It shows you are able to break out of the mold. You've grown beyond Marbury v. Madison. You've discovered that Mother Nature is the Supreme law of the land. Kudos to you.

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Leanan on March 27, 2006 - 1:00pm

My sister is a lawyer. She actually went into law after finding her career as college professor wasn't making as big a difference in the world as she'd hoped. She is not chasing the money. She likes things like environmental law - sue the big corporations and force them to clean up their pollution. Or protecting poor people from slumlords.

She can do this because she was careful not to rack up a lot of loans. This is not easy in the law field, but she chose a relatively low-cost law school, and she paid for a lot of it with her savings. Many are not in the position to do this, and end up having to take the high-paying corporate positions, just to pay off their loans. (One of my friends ended up working as a lawyer by day, and moonlighting as a mall sales clerk at night, just to pay off those loans.)

My sister was warned she was "ruining her career" by not going to a pricier, more prestigious law school, like Berkeley, but she didn't want to get into that much debt. It's looking like a pretty smart decision now.

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Magnus Redin on March 27, 2006 - 12:24pm

That lawyers would be especially important and necessary if energy supplies are contracting is about as smart as stating that therapists will be especially important if people are starving. Could be nice to have while dying but they dont help with the solving the basic problems, do they?

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Descolada on March 27, 2006 - 10:17pm

Well, yes, but if I state your same opinion another way it sounds alot different:

While they don't help to solve the basic problems, therapists are useful to help soothe the suffering.

Under your logic, we would never treat soldiers returning from war with PTSD because we can never end war. Same analogy goes for lawyers.

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Magnus Redin on March 28, 2006 - 4:04am

True, even very poor societies have priests that among other things try to sooth suffering.

But if you have a crisis and limited resources it is better to minimize the support function if that can solve more of the problem. To take a military example, is it best for a small country in risk of being attacked to buy field hospitals or anti armour weapons? They need both but if they cant afford both they will have to accept more deaths from wounds to win the war.

Lots of lawyers could help in times of economical turmoil if their work results in a much quicker redistribution of resources from unproductive and failed enterprizes to new enterprizes. But I expect them to have the opposite function. That the legal system and lawers will try to keep old companies, old money and "intellectual capital" that could be masscopied living on the new enterprizes that do start. And in the process keep machines, facilities and "intellectual capital" unused while people battle for the value left in them.

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Descolada on March 28, 2006 - 4:37am

I'm willing to admit that the majority of lawyers are into it for power and money. These kind of guys tend to come from the upper middle class and they will sell their soul to the corporate machine in order to rise above their parents, fulfilling that ever-more-elusive American Dream. They will advocate pretty much any opinion they are told to with a swiftness and logical force that completely blindsides the unexpecting. They are damned good at their job, it's just they've lost their ability to derive moral pleasure from their job.

But, there's also the street lawyers who often make less than their clients do. Sure, that's a much smaller part of the population, but are they not doing the good work? I guess I'm resistent to the idea that being a lawyer means automatically prostituting yourself, as people can stand up and take the harder route.

I guess I'd like to say that I'd take that harder route, but I can't be certain I will. Even now I'm already having the arguement in my head, "Well, you could be a patent and IP lawyer and come out of school making nearly a hundred grand a year, but that would require advocating a position that you're against, and you'd be lieing to myself. Or, you could do something pithe like become a human rights lawyer and make perhaps $30,000 a year and be paying off student loans for 40 years. But at least your work would be good. But who really wants to live that poorly? Nobody really likes to admit it, but money has an important impact on your family and social life. Whatever, as long as it's not an actual trial lawyer, as that sounds like the shittiest of shitty specialization. Oh, wait.. you forgot about the damned Peak Oil thing, and none of this really matters as you have at most 10 years of normalcy left, but more like 3 to 5. Well... that sucks."

Sorry, I went a little Stream of Consciousness on you. Since Saturday evening I've slept about 5 hours total and I'm kind of in a weird subconscious state right now. It sucks because this happens about every 6 weeks, that I'll spend about three or four days completely intuned to Peak Oil, reading nonstop, and then crash from the horrible hours I've kept and not really pay attention for another 6 weeks. I haven't really learned much more in the year since I first learned about PO and went on the first crams. And I never walk away with any sense of advancement.

So tell me, Internet friend, what's the thing here I'm not getting?

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Oil CEO on March 28, 2006 - 4:55am

Sleep?

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Magnus Redin on March 28, 2006 - 5:01am

Do not let one crisis take all your time.

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R W Reactionairy on March 27, 2006 - 12:46am

"Do you suppose there might be a "feedback loop"(*) between the number of lawyers in a society, and the litigiousness of that society?"

Yup. And with system of only positive feedback. Althought the term in general use does not have a positive connotation, there is something to be said for "dithering." :-)

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Fletcher on March 26, 2006 - 11:03pm

"Fletcher, proof-read and then do it again," and my one minor excuse for these lapses of my fingers was that I too was cooking dinner - for my daughter."

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avalon on March 27, 2006 - 12:07am

Biting my tounge big time, big time.. I actually know Fletcher and the quality of his work.

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strandk on March 26, 2006 - 9:38pm

Look at this link (http://mwhodges.home.att.net/trust.htm#lawyers). America has 281 lawyers for every 100,000 people, compared to Britain with 94, 33 in France and a mere 7 in Japan. France is among undisputed western societies even from your standard. As the author of this link pointed out, it seems to me that lawyers are among big factors draining wealth from US economy.

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Twilight on March 26, 2006 - 10:12pm

IMHO, the need for more and more lawyers has to do with the transistion from a government by, of, for the people to one by, of, for the corporations. The people get pissed off from time to time and try to access their rights through the law, and it takes a lot of lawyers to protect the corporations. That should peter out soon though, as you don't need as many lawyers when you own the courts and the law makers - it's much more efficient.

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AlphaMaleProphetOfDoom on March 27, 2006 - 3:50am

This is EXACTLY what everybody says right up until the point they find themselves in a real pinch and need a damn
good attorney to save their ass.

Best,

Matt

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Seadragon on March 27, 2006 - 10:47am

Well, Matt and Fletcher are doing a fine job explaining why my profession isn't as useless as most people think it is (until they need one, as Matt points out) so I think I will not jump in, except to point out that people who come to see me are REALLY in trouble and seem to appreciate my efforts, for the most part.

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AlanfromBigEasy on March 26, 2006 - 6:24pm

The better course may be a more liberal education for technical majors. I took a hard course in Roman History, Russian and several other interesting (but not so hard) courses in my education. A pretty good intro course in Economics in my public high school. (Don Sailorman would NOT have been dismayed at the discussion of Keynesian theory and Milton Freidman, that elasticity curves often have a time dimension, the inverted demand curve for potatoes during the famine, etc. in high school).

A technical degree does bring with it a degree of intellectual rigor that is useful in the liberal arts, IMHO.

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wkwillis on March 27, 2006 - 6:14am

The Constitution is what keeps the political locomotive from blowing up. It's inefficient not to keep the safety valve tied down and your engine running at less than full load, but you don't sink as many steamboats that way.
The steamship companies had the political power to override the safety committees, and did, till they lost too many steamboats and locomotives, and then they didn't.

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wkwillis on March 27, 2006 - 6:20am

The US armed forces are now getting a very expensive education in what happens when you don't abide by elections or exercise restraint in exercising power as an elected government.
It's funny, but despite the fact that the armed forces are more conservative than the people of the United States, our armed forces have no interest in overthrowing the government here because their job is to go in an clean up when someone else has screwed up on democracy and consensus politics. The lesson keeps getting reinforced.
Latin American armies have to learn this lesson the hard way because they rarely leave their country. Maybe we should finance them to do peacekeeping missions more often as a way to build democracy in Latin America?

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odograph on March 27, 2006 - 11:20am

Quite a lot has been hung off my post above, as if it was critical of lawyers. Actually, if you look closely you'll see that it is not, and is in fact about statistical outcomes for liberal arts majors ... well, to repeat:

Should they have become lawyers? Perhaps. I suppose the rubber meets the roads in the stats - the precentage of liberal arts majors who leap to high income professions.

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westexas on March 26, 2006 - 12:59pm

Re: Welfare & Immigration

Baby Boom Echo kids entering the work force, increasing illegal immigration and overseas competition for jobs will drive down hourly labor rates --just as the economy contracts because of Peak Oil and because of the deflationary effect of our explosive increase in debt.

This will result in what used to be the middle class having a more and more difficult time being able to support familles. What then happens as the formerly middle class continues to be taxed in order to financially support those on welfare who are having children--especially illegal immigrants having children?

I think that you will see an explosive increase in resentment toward those on welfare and toward illegal immigration. It may not be too far in the distant future that unemployed college graduates will be competing with illegal immigrants for agricultural jobs.

Which brings me back to the organic farm idea. At least it gives your unemployed college graduate something useful to do.

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wkwillis on March 26, 2006 - 1:10pm

We've deported illegal immigrants before. Sometimes the legal ones, too. And the Republicans that want illegals in to lower wages and raise rents are now in increasingly acromonius conflict with the Republicans who've figured out that illegal immigrants have legal kids who require schooling and medicaid.
Bush Jr. wants to make it so we get the workers in to lower wages and raise rents, but not their kids. He wants the kids not to get citizenship and therefor not get education and medical care. He's trying to get a bill that lets him make a "signing statement" to that effect, regardless of the wording of what passes. He only wants unskilled workers are technical workers, too. No middle class types, and especially no lawyers or MBAs.
The Democrats are dead set against it. Either we don't let them in, or we treat them like Americans. Specifically the Democrats want to fine employers that hire illegals. The Democrats figure that if we are going to lose our privacy to the TIA, we ought to arrange for the illegal immigrants to lose their privacy, too.

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Leanan on March 26, 2006 - 1:23pm

I think immigration is going to be the other big issue in the next election. (Along with energy prices.) Immigration is something the voters care a lot about, and neither party supports the popular view. The people want a crackdown on illegal immigration. TPTB do not. The Republicans want the cheap labor. And immigrants, legal and otherwise, are a key Democratic demographic. Yes, even the illegals. One, they have friends and family that vote, and two, the census counts all residents, not just the legal ones, so illegal immigrants - generally in Democratic-leaning areas - increase Democratic electoral votes.

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Richrd on March 26, 2006 - 1:19pm

Westexas - you and alanfrombigeasy are among the most profound posters on this list that I so much enjoy reading and find inspiration. I think Alan's frequently repeated analysis deserves better exposure here on Oil Drum.The reading audience to give serious consideration to building and implementing real alternatives to automobiles for personal transportation and to replace commercial interregional truck and aircraft traffic with an electrified rail system.

Alan posted

'My approach (which is also the Swiss approach) results in one to two orders of magnitude reduction (1:10 to 1:100) in energy consumption without a decline in the standard of living (actually an improvement I would argue)using VERY mature, well proven technology.
Electrify freight railways (add semi high speed service in limited corridors), build Urban Rail wherever anyone wants it, and put in trolley buses on busy bus routes. Simple, relatively cheap and major steps can be finished in ten to twelve years (more in twenty years, still mroe after that).'

I have looked at the analysis of other people who also support this viewpoint. It is such an obvious conclusion than we need to discuss why this option has not been put on the head of our collective action list for PO transition methods.

It is highly significant that the Hirsch report did not even include this option , not even on the radar. To 'Electrify freight railways (add semi high speed service in limited corridors), build Urban Rail wherever anyone wants it, and put in trolley buses on busy bus routes.' will require courage from our leaders and enlightenement of the people.

Now is the time to start.

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Twilight on March 26, 2006 - 2:07pm

1. It's boring. No technology fairy (love that!) is needed.

2. Electrified rail is pubic transportation. We don't like public transportation - we are only interested in liquid fuels that will burn in our cars so we don't have to change our lifestyles.

3. It is easier to consider technologies that are a long way off - closer to the theoretical stage. Something fairly simple technologically that can be implemented now is intimidating, because there are too few handy excuses for not doing it. It requires getting into the messy stage of actually doing something. And of course those things will require changes in lifestyle. Then of course, we begin to see the ugly reality of what large scale implementation takes, why we aren't doing it, that we probably won't do it, which in turn leads to unpleasant possibilities......

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TJ on March 26, 2006 - 3:03pm

Isn't light rail the antithesis to the exurban American dream?

I live in Buffalo. IIRC, 5 years ago it came to light that the suburban mega-mall refused to allow any bus service to its doors. They relented after a lot of pressure, but obviously regarded requiring the ownership of a car as a necessary screening mechanism. Not being anywhere near public transportation was a feature, not a bug.

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AlanfromBigEasy on March 26, 2006 - 3:47pm

> Isn't light rail the antithesis of the exurban American dream ?

One would think so. But exurbs north of Dallas have figured out recently that Light Rail may be a necessity.

Quote from one of several articles about DART plans 2015 to 2030; "City leaders in Richardson, Addison and other northern suburbs recently began a major public relations push to get light-rail trains on the Cotton Belt".

The Cotton Belt is a railroad ROW that DART bought decades ago.

Light Rail going from exurbs towards Dallas is already part of plans till 2015. Now they want a light rail route that crosses north of Dallas towards DFW airport, and are spending hundreds of thousands "studying" it and lobbying DART (which prefers another Dallas-centric route).

So the North Dallas exurbs want Light Rail connections between them and to the airport.

An excellent change in attitude ! :-)

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xaxat on March 26, 2006 - 8:31pm

I remember a story on just that subject from some years ago. It seems some poor soul who had the pleasure of a minimum wage job at said mall was killed trying to cross the usual 4 lane to get to a bus stop to go home after work. Saints forfend a bus might have stopped at the employee's entrance. Thank you, Google. 1 or all

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westexas on March 26, 2006 - 3:44pm

Thanks for the kind words. I am literally sending Alan's stuff to everyone to everyone I can think of, and I am posting it all over the place. One of the fascinating things about the Simmons/Kunstler event in Dallas last year was how Matt and Jim's views on Peak Oil had basically merged (they had never met until the Dallas gig). They both heavily emphasized the importance of rail transport (I have forward Alan's stuff to both Matt & Jim).

BTW, at the Simmons/Kunstler event last year, Matt Simmons said that if we don't start taking some kind of concrete action to address Peak Oil, "Jim Kunstler (listed as Defcon One on TOD) will turn out to have been an optimist."

Also, in the FYI department, the May issue of Outside Magazine (on newsstands around 4/15) has a long article about Jim Kunstler and the Simmons/Kunstler event by journalist John Galvin. Apparently, I play a minor supporting role in the article. The three of us--Jim; John and I--had a memorable road trip around Dallas, when I took them on a tour of the New Urbanism sites in the Dallas area. Basically we have little islands of sanity surrounded by a sea suburban insanity.

Jeffrey Brown

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prole on March 26, 2006 - 5:42pm

Hi Jeff,

We met at a Peak Oil event promoted by yourself and sponsored by the Sierra Club in early 2005. I remember your comments on planning for the Simmons/Kunstler presentation.

To jog your memory, I was the audience member that challenged the SMU professor to get real which quite disturbed the genteel Dallas audience.

I wonder if that same chapter of the Sierra Club has embraced Peak Oil or are they still stuck in the mud of denial?

Keep up the good work.

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Descolada on March 26, 2006 - 7:00pm

This topic has came up before, but I've noticed that there's a lot of people from Texas here. We should really look into forming a state TOD, so we could coordinate things like speakers, events, etc. I would have loved to see a Simmons presentation, but I had no idea it was going on. Plus, it's always a nice thing to counteract the idea that everyone in Texas is an oil baron.

What do you think? Email me.

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westexas on March 27, 2006 - 9:19am

I've had some discussions about another Peak Oil presentation, but nothing definite yet. Check out the following website: http://www.heathershome.info/

This is a demonstration project West of Fort Worth. They will be doing tours in April. It's a 2,000 square foot home, with a construction cost of about $100 per square foot, and total average energy costs of about $15 per month.

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Descolada on March 27, 2006 - 10:22pm

But, let's look at this rationally.

Yes, the home may be built efficiently, but it's a very good possibility that it's carbon footprint will be larger in the long run because of it's exurb location in the Kingdom of Sprawl known as DFW.

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AlanfromBigEasy on March 26, 2006 - 4:23pm

The Hirsch Report, with the overlooked option of "Electrification of Transportation" is precisely the target of the paper that I wrote during my summer evacuation. Link (for any newbies) http://www.lightrailnow.org/features/f_lrt_2005-02.htm I have eMailed Mr. Hirsch with drafts without response and called Mr. Hirsch twice at his home (during business hours) and "he was too busy ATM" each time. I would like to convince him that Electrification of Transportation is a viable, and preferred, policy option. I believe in the "make no enemies" approach to lobbying. I also beleive in broad based coalitions. I have discovered in New Orleans that cityscape improvements are the largest single driver for more streetcars. Not transportation, not Peak Oil, not Iraq, not Global Warming, but "they look nice". So be it. A City Public Workd engineer and I worked out a cityscape on North Rampart that EVERYONE bought into (after out-of-town consultants spent 8 figures & failed). The City of New Orleans would rebuild North Rampart (one traffic lane, one bicycle lane each side, 36' wide neutral ground in center with two grass running streetcar tracks to replace two traffic lanes each side). This would be the first half of the Desire Streetcar Line. Mayor Nagin was going to announce this ~45 days after Katrina and it would be a key to his re-election campaign. Per RTA chairman, this plan ahs survived Katrina and is still planned. We get a major link in a future streetcar system. Why ? Because it looks nice.

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AlanfromBigEasy on March 26, 2006 - 4:32pm

Photos at my Yahoo Group, Streetcars Desired Everywhere. http://us.a2.yahoofs.com/groups/g_12551487/56ee/__sr_/13fc.jpg?grgRzJEBFlYlKRbF Hope it works (I need to learn HTML :-(

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davebygolly on March 26, 2006 - 8:58pm

Re: Peak College

Yes, interesing article. And all too true, training for what? For many, college and univ is a big scam -- money spent that won't ever be recovered.

After taking a corporate buyout, I did a little adjuncting at a local college for more than ten years. What a shock! Most of the students graduating college wouldn't have been allowed to graduate from my high school back in the late 50s.

From the corporate point of view, a college degree is required just to get, possibly, basic literacy. It used to be absolutely guaranteed by a high school diploma or less in my grandparents' day.

I got a liberal arts degree back in the mid 60s, (an MS in math after). Anthropology, philosophy, lit, many, many things that are still with me and are part of my life to this day. There was no thought in my head of training for a career! I (and others) were interested in the world, all of it! Eventually, I dropped out the PhD program, joined a Marxist group, tried to overthrow the existing order, failed (I used to say: luckily--now I'm not so sure) drove a truck for ten years, etc.

What is it now? Training, NOT education, and training for what? For jobs that aren't there all too often. The students today have NO idea what it was like to go to school to learn about the world, no idea what it could possibly mean.

Between undergrad and grad school, I joined the Peace Corps, taught math in Nigeria. I'll never forget one incident. I showed the students a proof. They thought it was so beautiful they threw their books in the air! It was the purest and most exuberant expression of intellectual curiosity I would ever see. A few later, these same students would have the exuberance beat out of them, when faced with life and death determining exams at the end of 6th form: follow the syllabus, Master! They were right. Those that failed would have next to zero job prospects.

Today's students are deprived of a true education, to the point that they have no idea whatsoever of what it is they didn't get, and are instead given training for that which doesn't or won't exist. The one thing they do get out of it is a mountain of debt.

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Twilight on March 26, 2006 - 10:26pm

And I wonder what the appropriate education will be for today's youth. It's more than an abstract question for me, as I have a 12 and a 7 year old. My father is a professor, so naturally I've always assumed a college education would be the only way to go. But now I truly wonder, both if it will even be possible financially, and what areas of study would make sense? Have to find something that cannot be easily outsourced! I'd lean toward environmental sciences, climatology, etc, but I really don't know if it would be possible to make a living that way. Probably better off in studying organic agricultural techniques.

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davebygolly on March 26, 2006 - 11:44pm

Obviously there's no simple answer. Neither of my kids has finished college, both grown. One is a networking guy, the gal lives on a commune. My nephew is in construction, my niece I think actually got a degree and teaches art to young kids. My kid brother did 8th grade three times, and stopped. Has his own greenhouse (which his employess run for him because he can't read!), has an endless queue of construction work people want him to get to, etc. Doesn't do a damn thing he doesn't enjoy doing.

My other brother got a degree in architecture, got arrested for trying to overthrow the state of Louisiania (60s - innocent, he was trying to overthrow federal gov't), only now has Bush done it for him, is an artist, does art shows, did very well, but the art show circuit is collapsing now because even wealthy people are scared shitless.

There is no simple answer -- but it is certainly not impossible to survive without an academic degree if one has the right non-academic skills. The times are, however, much, much less forgiving than they were when I was young.

The only thing I would say is: don't waste money making them do something they don't want to do.

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Twilight on March 26, 2006 - 11:57pm

"The only thing I would say is: don't waste money making them do something they don't want to do."

Heck no, they will pick what they want to. My job is to brainwash them before they get to that point! They already know their parents think a little differently than most folks they know, by then it should be clear if we were right or just nuts.

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