Not sure. But if or when we do run out of oil I have a hell of a lot more faith in private corporations coming up with solutions than Government entities. They can't even spend within their budget.

Oh, you want to use logic? How many private companies have gone out of existance in the last 200 years, because they couldn't keep within their budget? How many of the top 100 companies a century ago in the US even EXIST today?

How many US or State Governments have gone out of existence in the last 200 years?

You want to go on the basis of historical record? THAT is the record.

This sounds interesting.

I had known the Germans got around the oil embargo, but I wasn't thinking about it as a solution to the oil problem.

50-60 bucks a barrel?


Is that real? we should be talking about that.

Why didn't we just print more money in response, if that would have actually increased the value of the dollar? What purpose does intentionally deflating the dollar serve?

Yes that will increase the value of your currency - just print more of it!

If you look at the radios, cars, airplanes, and all the rest that we had in 1938 and compare them to what we had by 1947, you'd see a HUGE, IMPRESSIVE and ASTONISHING improvement in all of them technologies. Radios got TREMENDOUSLY better circuit designs. Car design was INCREDIBLY advanced. Airplanes DOUBLED in capacity and speed and altitude and everything else. Manufacturing ability changed STUPENDOUSLY!

But they're even more in debt than we are, 80% 0f their GDP, versus our measly 60%

"Economists constantly debate the effects of debt on a currency. It also depends on who is holding the debt, ours is mostly overseas and Japan's is mostly internally held."

Yes that is the common dodge, although "printing more money" is one of the least imaginative

Again, not a single repub I've ever spoken to will dare debate this topic, and I make a point of bringing it up every chance I get

Not on this site, and not face to face

They're like zero for 50 at this point

It's like holding the cross up to the vampire - they hiss, screech, and vanish, baring their fangs and swearing revenge

And then they change the subject

So the average of the Y axis is about 25 Billion, right?
This graph shows 32 years.
The gives us $800 Billion. You are right, less than a Trillion, but I think I said "nearly a Trillion"

As for Peak Oil, there are a couple theories out there, one that says Oil is not a fossil fuel at all, it is produced by a chemical reaction in the Earth. Sounds ludicrous, but the Fossil fuel theory does not explain how oil can be found hundreds of kilometers deep in a Craton. How did those Dinos get down there?

Not sure. But if or when we do run out of oil I have a hell of a lot more faith in private corporations coming up with solutions than Government entities. They can't even spend within their budget.

Similarly, liquid coal facilities could cost as much as $125,000 per barrel of daily production capacity. A commercial-scale, 50,000-barrel-per-day facility thus could exceed $6 billion in capital costs....Liquid coal, meanwhile, is an untested technology that produces nearly twice the lifecycle global warming pollution as conventional petroleum fuel. Coal gasification power plants built without carbon capture and storage would emit about as much global warming pollution as a new coal plant using more traditional technology. As such, each liquid coal plant or coal gasification power plant would represent a dangerous step in the wrong direction, directly undermining U.S. climate protection efforts and threatening our nation's ability to avoid the worst consequences of climate change. Additionally, deployment would dramatically increase coal mining and its attendant disadvantages, including groundwater contamination, habitat loss, and despoilment of natural landscapes.

The euro would be worth nothing were it not for the Germans, the hardest working and most conservative Europeans. They are the last bastion of a work ethic in the collectivist Euro union. The Germans are the ones bailing out all the socialist slackers as we speak.

No its called private enterprise, you know, the only known economic system proven to work in the modern context.

I lived in Germany and Italy for 4 years.

Psst, Donald, Germans have universal health care (and it costs half as much per capita as in the US,and the outcomes data shows that they provide better quality care overall).

Except that 800 billion wasn't remotely spent. The graph uses 2010 inflation adjusted dollars and thus would say my parents paid $400,000 for their house in 1963 when in reality they paid $29,000. Of course, there's something to be said for adjusting for inflation but you better state that when you say a trillion was spent. it wasn't

Psst, Donald, Germans have universal health care (and it costs half as much per capita as in the US,and the outcomes data shows that they provide better quality care overall).

When I say a Trillion, I mean a Trillion in today's dollars. I would hope nearly everyone understood that. You always have to correct for inflation, unless you are Al Gore and you want to create a nice exponential ramp up at the end of the graph...

Reagan TRIPLED the national debt, so far Obama has increased it by 23%

Somehow I think if I said that Reagan increased the national debt by 5.1 trillion dollars, that somehow the conservatives on this site would cry foul. It's true by inflation adjusted numbers, even though Reagan only raised the debt by 1.8 trillion in 1980s dollars.