 | CLK08 closed around $114 (Tres Yergins) yesterday..so, in the next 60 days, the front month price of CL will... | The Oil Drum | Hydrates updated |  |
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Most families with 200k+ plus will lose their jobs.
Would you care to justify that statement ? Why ? At what oil price ? Through what mechanism ?
Anyway, I plucked 200k as a figure out of the air. I could have meant 2.5m.
I don't think you quite understand the perennial nature of the top 1% wealth; through wars and recession it just persists. I'm not talking about people with a few hundred k in their pensions or housing, I mean multi millions spread across all classes of investments from currencies, gold, t-bonds to commodities, land, businesses and stocks.
These kind of people don't lose it all in a recession, depression or currency collapse, they are too wealthy and too diversified. They have no idea what debt is and don't really need to budget.
Believe me I married into this and am constantly amazed at the casual nature of this kind of wealth. It's never flashed but quietly sits all around you, invisible to the public unless you care to check the stockholder register or the tax returns ( or lack of ).
My point is there is a sliding scale of the knock-out effect of peak oil ... starting with the 3rd world guy on $2 a day and working up to $20k america today and $100k middle america tomorrow.
My contention is that we will break through the other side of the turbulent 20-30 year journey to a non-fossil energy world with a radically changed social makeup. Only the wealthiest will have won out, most will lose.
You have to realize that many wealthy people depend on the poor people. My uncle once said to me, "Sell to a poor man, not a rich man, the poor people are poor for a reason." Rich people do depend on poor people. If the economy really falls apart, many wealthy people will fall out of wealthy and go do middle or lower class.
Also, in battery electric vehicles, it costs the equivalent of $1.00 per gallon of gasoline. Also, they are simpler and require less maintenance. Granted, they have range problems, but I'm assuming that will be overcome, literally thousands of engineers/scientists are currently working to overcome the range issue.
The bottom line is, battery electric vehicles are not just a replacement for the ICE and petroleum, they are an advancement . After battery electric vehicles become widely used, there will be a huge economic boom, much like the 1920s, 1950s, and 1990s in the USA.
Before then, there might be a large disparity between the rich and the poor.
The rich will be hung in the streets, if past history is a guideline. There is no French Aristocracy.
The rich got there by random chance, and most do not have the cognitive ability to see the predicament they are in now.
We have been living with a superstition based economic model that has rewarded the most morally corrupt of our citizens. The feedback may be a bit messy.
No one knows, the possibilities are beyond our imagination.
Madmaster
Thank you, I knew there was a way out of this mess, I just needed someone enlightened like you to help me see.
"Before then, there might be a large disparity between the rich and the poor."
That's my point. It would take something of the order of a comet hitting the earth before the people I'm talking about become working class.
Yes, rich people depend on poor people but then it is easy to argue the other way around as well. Poor people do not possess the leverage on societal needs to
On rare occasions has there been an absolute revolution and to be frank it the SHTF big time then it comes down to who owns the military and who feeds the military and that isn't the man in the street. Revolution happens through sudden change and a lack of control of the pivotal areas of media and information and there is no way Joe is going to know anything other than what he is fed.
Electric cars might be $1 gas equivalent but they cost $20-40k+ to buy and if living costs carry their recent trend then Joe isn't buying one before gas is out of sight for his income segment.
As long as the food keeps rolling in, even if it is expensive, and the lights are on some of the time then Joe will sit there and let the pot get hotter.
As for the rich being rich by accident - oh boy. yeah, of course they are, just clueless aristocratic buffoons waiting for the plucky peasant to stick his pitch fork up their behinds. This isn't 1789 or even 1917 !
Even if money devalues they own the land the means to protect it, or even seize it. There are plenty of legal mechanisms in place for this but in the crunch the soldier is asked 'would you like your family to be fed and protected ?' and he's no longer the flag bearer for democracy but the long arm of the self-preserving oligarchy.
Soldier then points gun at workers and they harvest and work - that's how it works.
The question is - do we commoditise non-fossils before we get to that point ?
Cars are just about a quarter of world oil consumption (US with 40% is something like a deviation).
For your optimism to come to fruition we will need to find ways to make all those trucks, ships, airplanes etc. run on something different than oil. Not that it is impossible but it is not that easy as you make it sound.