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Click to enlarge.
This chart shows what happens if we convert wage and salary disbursements per capita into barrels of oil.
We peaked at 1,376 barrels in December 1998.
The low was 150 barrels in April 1980.
As of December 2011, we're back down to 218.
Update:
Click to enlarge.
We may have fallen off one exponential trend, but at least we found another! Hurray!
Gallows humor.
Source Data:
St. Louis Fed: Custom Chart
6 comments:
You know, maybe this chart really says it all?
All of life is competition for energy from the sun. Why would our economy be any different?
CP,
Perhaps we can all live in caves. Sigh.
So many taps on the middle class.
So little money.
KD's calls to stop the deficit spending crack me up.
He's right, but the period of adjustment to the new, harsher reality would be a real doozy!
My thesis tells me land values would collapse (along with rents) as the last major monetary supplementary injection into the toiling middle quintiles was removed.
Congress is already fighting the piddly 2% cuts to rate of growth in defense spending.
We are Japan, and some day we too will have a 230% of GDP national debt, though it won't be 95% owned by us.
One does wonder if say 100,000 capable libertarian-minded people could just go Galt somewhere.
My dream is floating platforms out in the tropics.
Kinda like this I guess, but in reality we'd be lucky to end up with this.
There's a SimXYZ game there somewhere!
Yes, I think that if you got rid of ag subsidies, farmland prices would fall by at least half.
What can't continue, won't!
And that includes exponential growth of all kinds.
Troy,
KD's calls to stop the deficit spending crack me up.
He's right, but the period of adjustment to the new, harsher reality would be a real doozy!
KD wants to rip the Band-Aid off. There is certainly some appeal to that.
I'd be happy if we stopped applying more Band-Aids on top of the existing Band-Aids. At some point we might want to consider getting stitches for our massive head wound, lol. Sigh.
CP,
Few seem to understand or appreciate the inescapable power of an exponential trend failure.
You'd think we'd all have mastered the concept by now. There have been *so* many of them.
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