February 28, 2005
Trading Videos for Oil?
Clusterfuck Nation by Jim Kunstler : Power = power
What America definitely doesn't have is enough oil and natural gas to run the nation's economy as it currently exists -- as a chain of realtors driving SUVs to tanning booths to impress house-buyers borrowing money from lenders who flip the mortgages to government sponsored entities who can't add up a column of figures, even with the help of computers.Speaking of math, I did the oil figures a couple of weeks ago, and it's worth repeating. Of the the 80 million barrels a day the world burns, we burn one quarter of that, or 20 million barrels a day. Every five days we burn a hundred million barrels. Every fifty days America burns one billion barrels of oil. Every year we burn seven billion barrels. The US has 28 billion barrels of oil left. If we burned every last drop of our own oil, and somehow lost access to foreign imports, our oil would last four more years.
Four more years of easy motoring, bargain shopping, RV vacations, and trading up to bigger houses farther out in the rural gloaming.
If I was a young economist, I would reflect on this situation and perhaps conclude that the American economy doesn't have great long-term prospects.
[snip]
It's a good thing that friendly nations like Saudi Arabia, Russia, and Venezuela are willing to sell us oil. That way, we don't have to use up all our remaining oil in four years. And its a good thing we can pay for that oil in dollars. What else could we trade for it? Tanning booth hours? Back episodes of "Sex in the City?" Free day passes to Six Flags?
Oh dear.
Posted by TY at February 28, 2005 4:59 PM
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