{"id":2713,"date":"2008-12-17T18:49:34","date_gmt":"2008-12-17T23:49:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/?p=2713"},"modified":"2008-12-18T03:27:19","modified_gmt":"2008-12-18T08:27:19","slug":"where-did-it-go","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/2008\/12\/17\/where-did-it-go\/","title":{"rendered":"where did it go?…"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>\n
This graph is of gasoline prices from 1979 to the present. In 2003, around the time that we went to war in Iraq, they started shooting up until midsummer this year when they plummeted. As we stood at the gas pump, we thought about dwindling oil reserves on Planet Earth, the Arabian Sheiks who are rich beyond measure and playing a supply\/demand game, and the American Oil Companies posting record profits,quarter after quarter. We should have been thinking about those things, and they got our attention. And we did something about it:<\/div>\n
\"Department <\/div>\n
For the first time since the dawn of time, Americans are finally driving less, and it’s persisting even as gas prices fall:<\/div>\n
\n
\n
Friday, Dec. 12, 2008
Decline In American Driving Reaches Year-Mark<\/strong><\/a> <\/div>\n
Drop of Nearly 100 Billion Miles Driven Heightens Need for Highway Finance Reform<\/em><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

Americans drove more than 100 billion fewer miles<\/strong> between November 2007 and October 2008 than the same period a year earlier, said U.S. Transportation Secretary Mary E. Peters, making it the largest continuous decline in American driving in history<\/strong>."<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n
Good Americans, doing their part? Not so fast… <\/div>\n
\n
"As driving decreases and vehicle fuel efficiency continues to improve, the long term viability of the Highway Trust Fund grows weaker. The fact that the trend persists even as gas prices are dropping confirms that America’s travel habits are fundamentally changing. The way we finance America’s transportation network must also change to address this new reality, because banking on the gas tax is no longer a sustainable option," said Secretary Peters. <\/div>\n

The Secretary noted that Americans drove 3.5 percent less, or 8.9 billion fewer vehicle miles traveled (VMT), in October 2008 than October 2007, making it the sharpest decline of any October since 1971…<\/p>\n

The Highway Trust Fund, the federal government’s primary source for financing highway, bridge and transit projects, took in substantially less in Fiscal Year 2008 than in the previous year. As a result of the continued decline in VMT and the use of more fuel efficient cars, the Highway Trust Fund<\/strong>, which is primarily funded through federal gas tax receipts, collected $31 billion in revenue between October 2007 and September 2008 – $3 billion less than it collected in Fiscal Year 2007, while federal transportation spending increased by $2 billion. "This underscores the need to change our policy so American infrastructure is less dependent on the amount of gas American drivers consume," said Federal Highway Administrator Tom Madison.<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n
Well, you can’t please everybody. With decreased driving and gas prices down, the Highway Trust Fund<\/strong> is taking a big hit and so our infrastructure revenues fall [Gasoline tax is per gallon, so the Fund actually got less<\/u> in spite of the high gas prices as there have been fewer gallons sold]. It’s called the Law of Inadvertent Consequences<\/strong><\/font>. <\/div>\n

Oh yeah, there’s another consequence, the American Automobile Industry is about to become extinct.The last ten years for our auto industry has been shaky, and recently worse than shaky, more like a disaster in the making. People don’t want to buy large cars that use a lot of gasoline anymore, and that’s what our automobile makers make. So they’ve gone from bad to worse for a while, but with Americans driving less and worried about gas prices or the environment, they’ve posted their worst sales ever – particularly with the financial crisis these last few months. The Law of Inadvertent Consequences<\/strong><\/font> strikes again.<\/p>\n

All of these things have been hanging around waiting to happen for a pretty long time [with nobody reallt looking]. And that gasoline graph at the top of the page? Was it due to dwindling oil reserves on Planet Earth, the Arabian Sheiks playing a supply\/demand game, or the American Oil Companies posting record profits? All of those things had something to do with it, of course. But the truth is that it was our belief<\/u> that it was due to those other things that sustained the huge rise in gasoline prices. The fundamental problem was an "oil bubble." When oil prices started rising, speculators on the oil futures commodity market began to trade heavily, and as prices rose an economic "bubble" formed. A "bubble" is a self sustaining situation when Capitalism gets out of hand – and the "Gold Rush" was on! Since the Deregulation in 1980, we’ve had three overlapping bubbles [Tech Stocks, Housing, Oil], now they’ve all burst. <\/p>\n

Now we’re left with a tanking Stock Market, failing Investment Institutions, haunted with the consequences of the Technology bubble, the Housing bubble, and the Oil bubble. Our infrastructure budget is dwindling and our automobile industry is in the toilet. So, driving less and wanting fuel efficient cars are good things  in the long run, and maybe they’ll help our global warming problem, but for the moment, we’re in pretty deep trouble. The speculators on the various Commodity Markets have really put us in some hot water, and  they are gearing up to keep us from doing the right thing – regulating those Markets with a vengeance<\/u>. Look for the fight to be vicious in the coming months. The people who play with these markets and frolic in the Casino of Derivatives that lies within them are going to want to keep their playground monitor-free. And all that "bubble" money we paid extra for tech stocks and houses and gasoline went somewhere. A lot of it went into their pockets<\/strong><\/font>.<\/p>\n

A friend said today, "the  people on CNBC<\/strong> are sure talking down Obama and his ‘bunch’." You bet they are. All my life, I’ve heard the terms "Roosevelt Democrat" and "New Deal Democrat" as invectives<\/div>\n

\n\n\n
\n
in·vec·tive  \u00c4\u00adn-v\u00c4\u203ak’t\u00c4\u00adv<\/strong>
noun<\/div>\n
    \n
  1. Denunciatory or abusive language; vituperation.<\/li>\n
  2. Denunciatory or abusive expression or discourse.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n

    but I never knew why that had held on so long [he died over 60 years ago]. It’s because the New Deal shut down the joys of Casino Capitalism<\/strong> and the get-filthy-rich-business-world. No more J. D. Rockefellers or J.P. Morgans. No more Biltmores or Newport Mansions. Just rich, not filthy rich. The restraints of the New Deal didn’t loosen until the 1980’s, and only came unglued at the turn of the New Century. So, what we need to do is going to slam Wall Street just like the New Deal did – speculators and good guys alike. The most important graph<\/strong><\/font> of all these endless graphs I keep posting [that put you to sleep] is this one:<\/p>\n

    <\/p>\n

    It’s the GINI Coefficient<\/strong><\/font><\/a>. It measures the concentration of wealth. Its derivation is complex but the idea is easy to understand. It compares the distribution of wealth in a population to an expected norm. What it shows is that beginning with Reagan there has been a dramatic and sustained concentration of wealth in America. Here’s another version [from Wikipedia<\/strong><\/a>] that has estimates for the years before 1967 when it started being reported officially [the far right column contains values converted to be comparable with those in the graph above]: <\/p>\n

    \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
    1929:<\/td>\n45.0<\/td>\n(estimated)<\/td>\n16.58%<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
    1947:<\/td>\n37.6<\/td>\n(estimated)<\/td>\n-2.59%<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
    1967:<\/td>\n39.7<\/td>\n(first year reported)<\/td>\n2.85%<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
    1968:<\/td>\n38.6<\/td>\n(lowest index reported)<\/td>\n0%<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
    1970:<\/td>\n39.4<\/td>\n <\/td>\n2.07%<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
    1980:<\/td>\n40.3<\/td>\n <\/td>\n4.40%<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
    1990:<\/td>\n42.8<\/td>\n <\/td>\n10.88%<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
    2000:<\/td>\n46.2<\/td>\n <\/td>\n19.69%<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
    2005:<\/td>\n46.9<\/td>\n <\/td>\n21.50%<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
    2006:<\/td>\n47.0<\/td>\n(highest index reported)<\/td>\n21.76%<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
    2007:<\/td>\n46.3<\/td>\n <\/td>\n19.95%<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n

    The last time we had a GINI Coefficient<\/strong><\/font><\/a> like we have now was 1929<\/strong><\/font>. America<\/strong> can’t sustain the system that allows this kind of concentration of wealth without ending up in a Depression.<\/strong><\/font> Ronald Reagan opened the door that allowed the concentration of wealth in 1980, and Senator Phil Gramm put a superhighway through it in 2000. The people who have been in the business of wealth concentration are powerful, and part of what we need to head off a disastrous deflationary spiral<\/strong><\/font><\/a> involves closing their superhighway. They’re going to continue to yell bloody murder [and there are still plenty of listening ears in Washington].<\/p>\n

    Barack Obama said, "spread the  wealth around<\/strong><\/font>," to Joe the Plumber <\/strong>and it echoed like an A-Bomb had exploded – "Communism," "Socialism," they screamed. But Obama spoke the truth. And it’s neither Communism nor Socialism, it’s just good common sense [and, right now, it’s economic survival]… <\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    This graph is of gasoline prices from 1979 to the present. In 2003, around the time that we went to war in Iraq, they started shooting up until midsummer this year when they plummeted. As we stood at the gas pump, we thought about dwindling oil reserves on Planet Earth, the Arabian Sheiks who are […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2713","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2713","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2713"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2713\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2713"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2713"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2713"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}