If they aim to bring down a U.S. President by jacking up prices then its long past time we let them find out what their neighbourhood is like to live in without US weapons to defend themselves
Cut them off and let their wahabists run columns of suicide bombers at their enemies as a way to protect their border
A fairly cynical column for sure. Rather than suggestions to solve problems the focus is on ways to dress up the problems so that Biden who exacerbated them tremendously with his policies over the last 2.5 years can hide his involvement and get re-elected. It is that type of politics first thinking that is driving the country to ruin.
What a wide majority of Americans want is for him to Not run again. Let someone younger takeover. He was a life long mediocrity that some how became president only because the press war on Trump finally succeeded with Covid policies. Greasy Gavin can give you all the spending and taxes you crave, and he is young enough to even be interviewed without hadlers and script. You hate Trump so much? ok then run someone else. Under 60 would be nice.
The oil price thing is really tricky because we've probably peaked in *cheap* oil and there just isn't a whole lot that can be done by anyone to change that fact. In the last decade, the marginal producer for 90% of increased oil supply has been the United States, mostly via the extremely expensive and increasingly expensive-to-operate alternative supplies in the Permian Basin and the like. All that wondrous lateral drilling technology has increased production, but is also really costly, as is more conventional deep-water drilling. Already, after the 1970s, American oil exploration had expanded into increasingly-expensive-to-extract supply in the Gulf of Mexico and Alaska, making up much-needed supply, but at a higher unit cost. Now our Energy Return on Investment (EROI) on marginal supplies of primary energy is worryingly low as the cheapest proven reserves of oil (e.g. in Saudi Arabia) are drying up.
This isn't always obvious in oil prices. We have some geopolitical variables affecting price in the shorter term (e.g. Russian invasion of Ukraine and OPEC+ coordination). There's also been recent and unprecedented demand-destruction from COVID and, to a lesser degree, from economic downturns. Also, above a certain price-point, oil is just too expensive, and there's demand destruction (with deleterious economic effects). But the secular trend is that supply is increasingly constrained relative to normal demand, *especially* cheap-to-extract supply.
Some future president is going to have to cry uncle on trying to every way possible to keep oil prices low and tell Americans the truth: that honeymoon period of cheap energy that we came to think of as normal is over. Especially the cheap liquid fossil fuels that underpin everything material in our lives, even as we make strides in Electrifying Everything. The Strategic Petroleum Reserve is already half-empty and seems unlikely to be re-filled any time soon at a decent price. Republicans keep talking about nixing the gasoline tax, but not only is that a small component of the price at the pump, it also funds the entire (subsidized) highway infrastructure that keeps transportation cheap. Unfortunately, that's a political hot potato that nobody wants to be stuck with. I'm sure the adults in the room understand this.
I have a hot take that, setting aside the political ramifications, illegal immigration is good actually. In my heart I'm an open borders guy, but I do have some concerns that opening the borders in the United States would lead to just a truly unmanageable number of people showing. Illegal immigration is kind of a middle ground where essentially everybody can come but there is still some level discouragement from coming.
I also think that the economy may benefit from having a class of workers or not entitled to exactly the same level of protections as everybody else. Minimum wage and other job protections are good, so I wouldn't want to throw them our entirely, but there are some jobs that just can't exist with them in place, and saying that even willing people cant take those jobs leads to dead weight loss. Illegal immigration fills that gap. I also don't feel like it is really exploiting the illegal immigrants, because they are usually going to be better off then if they hadn't come at all.
One change I would make is to set a statutes of limitations for illegal immigration - if you are here for X years illegally, you get legal status. Deporting people who've lived productive lives in the US for a while is kind of dumb. This would also reduce the extent to which illegal immigrants have to bear the brunt of lack of employment protections.
I'm not wedded to any of this, but for these reasons, I do kind of support illegal immigration as part of immigration policy.
Your opening paragraph isn’t helping with the growing partisanship issue you alluded to later in the blog. Just the fact that you felt a need to include that paragraph goes to show how divided we are.
Both these issues aren't about specific policies. They are an underlying worldview of Biden and most Democrats. They really believe that oil is evil and continued production will destroy the Earth. They really believe that borders are racist and probably nation states themselves are. These are religious convictions, not academic policy debates. As such: 1) they can not be changed easily, and 2) even if Biden were to do a 180, no one (in his own party or the other) would believe him.
Look at how the sudden U-turn on COVID policies and the lab leak theory undercut trust in our public health folks. The kind of yo-yo'ing you suggest from the President on 2 of his highest profile positions would have the same effect on a larger scale.
The solution for Biden isn't to try and "evolve his views" 1 year before the election. The solution is to convince others that his views are correct. He may fail at that, but that's his only path forward.
Now that Biden is building a border wall, he should make a deal with Republicans to do a comprehensive immigration reform: 1. Build an effective wall against illegal immigration. 2. Let the Dreamers be US citizens. 3. Let in more talented legal immigrants.
And very hard to believe that the border walls will make any difference in any time frame that could matter (they don't work very well now in the first place)...
The overall tone of the article is good - and a lot really has to do with how Biden "appears" to be doing something - most people have no actual clue what is going on with oil prices or immigration or the current state of the economy - just whatever "bleeds it leads" nonsense that they get from the media.... As Noah implies, it is the perception that matters politically.
you didn't mention tapping into the SPR as a way to reduce oil prices (in the short term), which would also have the benefit of not necessitating additional oil production (in the short term). Is the SPR just too small to make a noticeable difference in oil/gas prices, even over the relatively short period between now and Nov 2024?
Quick aside on the reality of Federal action re: increasing oil production(and importantly dowstream products like gasoline/etc). Most of this is global & not directly admin controlled obviously, but there certainly are marginal short & intermediate production impacts based on admin actions.
However, to the extent there was a chance to increase domestic production of various sorts to counter inflation, & you think that is helpful from either a policy or political standpoint, here is the bad news -
1) Production - If it is actual production impacts you are looking for, it is too late now. The window to do those actions was mostly back in the 2021-2022 range due to the lag (for example, onshore drilling permits, EPA refinery actions, or even if they would've implemented SPR re-purchase agreements, generally would take anywhere from a year to three to have impacts we'd see in the numbers).
2) Politics/Signaling - The federal oil/gas leasing cake is more or less baked at this point, especially with the release of the 5 year plan for offshore leasing only showing 3 sales, as you alluded to. So the signal has been sent, and even if they changed direction today with a nod to the election: nobody in industry would subscribe to a thesis that said "I should increase investment to juice production over the short term, because it is now safe to presume that a 2nd Biden administration would moderate based on these signals."
3) SPR - between the politics of it and the reality of SPR levels after all the releases of the last few years... there just isn't capacity here to do anything meaningful.
Polls are unreliable. Their like mood rings. But, for the sake of argument: there will be as many as 20 million first-time register voters in 2024. They come from Gen Z, the most-liberal of the generations succeeding Baby Boomers. Polls indicate that only 7% of these new voters favor Republican policies. Trump lost by 7 million votes. If political parties focus their time and resources on new voters, Trump loses by an even wider margin. But polls are mood rings, not ballot boxes.
A conversation with the very liberal old lady at the coffee stand: “What do you think about inflation?”
Me: “I think it’s come way down and is look good going forward all while unemployment stayed low. Pretty great.”
Her: “So when will prices come back down to where they were?”
Me: ...
Just enough with Saudi Arabia already
If they aim to bring down a U.S. President by jacking up prices then its long past time we let them find out what their neighbourhood is like to live in without US weapons to defend themselves
Cut them off and let their wahabists run columns of suicide bombers at their enemies as a way to protect their border
The short version is Biden should stop pandering to his base and start pandering to the voters who will decide the election in 2024.
Crazy idea I know
A fairly cynical column for sure. Rather than suggestions to solve problems the focus is on ways to dress up the problems so that Biden who exacerbated them tremendously with his policies over the last 2.5 years can hide his involvement and get re-elected. It is that type of politics first thinking that is driving the country to ruin.
What a wide majority of Americans want is for him to Not run again. Let someone younger takeover. He was a life long mediocrity that some how became president only because the press war on Trump finally succeeded with Covid policies. Greasy Gavin can give you all the spending and taxes you crave, and he is young enough to even be interviewed without hadlers and script. You hate Trump so much? ok then run someone else. Under 60 would be nice.
Hi Noah. Am I missing something?
You say drilling for oil is bad for the environment, but then suggest it’s ok for other countries to produce and export fuel.
How does this work if climate change is a global problem?
The oil price thing is really tricky because we've probably peaked in *cheap* oil and there just isn't a whole lot that can be done by anyone to change that fact. In the last decade, the marginal producer for 90% of increased oil supply has been the United States, mostly via the extremely expensive and increasingly expensive-to-operate alternative supplies in the Permian Basin and the like. All that wondrous lateral drilling technology has increased production, but is also really costly, as is more conventional deep-water drilling. Already, after the 1970s, American oil exploration had expanded into increasingly-expensive-to-extract supply in the Gulf of Mexico and Alaska, making up much-needed supply, but at a higher unit cost. Now our Energy Return on Investment (EROI) on marginal supplies of primary energy is worryingly low as the cheapest proven reserves of oil (e.g. in Saudi Arabia) are drying up.
This isn't always obvious in oil prices. We have some geopolitical variables affecting price in the shorter term (e.g. Russian invasion of Ukraine and OPEC+ coordination). There's also been recent and unprecedented demand-destruction from COVID and, to a lesser degree, from economic downturns. Also, above a certain price-point, oil is just too expensive, and there's demand destruction (with deleterious economic effects). But the secular trend is that supply is increasingly constrained relative to normal demand, *especially* cheap-to-extract supply.
Some future president is going to have to cry uncle on trying to every way possible to keep oil prices low and tell Americans the truth: that honeymoon period of cheap energy that we came to think of as normal is over. Especially the cheap liquid fossil fuels that underpin everything material in our lives, even as we make strides in Electrifying Everything. The Strategic Petroleum Reserve is already half-empty and seems unlikely to be re-filled any time soon at a decent price. Republicans keep talking about nixing the gasoline tax, but not only is that a small component of the price at the pump, it also funds the entire (subsidized) highway infrastructure that keeps transportation cheap. Unfortunately, that's a political hot potato that nobody wants to be stuck with. I'm sure the adults in the room understand this.
I have a hot take that, setting aside the political ramifications, illegal immigration is good actually. In my heart I'm an open borders guy, but I do have some concerns that opening the borders in the United States would lead to just a truly unmanageable number of people showing. Illegal immigration is kind of a middle ground where essentially everybody can come but there is still some level discouragement from coming.
I also think that the economy may benefit from having a class of workers or not entitled to exactly the same level of protections as everybody else. Minimum wage and other job protections are good, so I wouldn't want to throw them our entirely, but there are some jobs that just can't exist with them in place, and saying that even willing people cant take those jobs leads to dead weight loss. Illegal immigration fills that gap. I also don't feel like it is really exploiting the illegal immigrants, because they are usually going to be better off then if they hadn't come at all.
One change I would make is to set a statutes of limitations for illegal immigration - if you are here for X years illegally, you get legal status. Deporting people who've lived productive lives in the US for a while is kind of dumb. This would also reduce the extent to which illegal immigrants have to bear the brunt of lack of employment protections.
I'm not wedded to any of this, but for these reasons, I do kind of support illegal immigration as part of immigration policy.
Your opening paragraph isn’t helping with the growing partisanship issue you alluded to later in the blog. Just the fact that you felt a need to include that paragraph goes to show how divided we are.
Both these issues aren't about specific policies. They are an underlying worldview of Biden and most Democrats. They really believe that oil is evil and continued production will destroy the Earth. They really believe that borders are racist and probably nation states themselves are. These are religious convictions, not academic policy debates. As such: 1) they can not be changed easily, and 2) even if Biden were to do a 180, no one (in his own party or the other) would believe him.
Look at how the sudden U-turn on COVID policies and the lab leak theory undercut trust in our public health folks. The kind of yo-yo'ing you suggest from the President on 2 of his highest profile positions would have the same effect on a larger scale.
The solution for Biden isn't to try and "evolve his views" 1 year before the election. The solution is to convince others that his views are correct. He may fail at that, but that's his only path forward.
A secure border. You cannot have a nation without borders.
Now that Biden is building a border wall, he should make a deal with Republicans to do a comprehensive immigration reform: 1. Build an effective wall against illegal immigration. 2. Let the Dreamers be US citizens. 3. Let in more talented legal immigrants.
And very hard to believe that the border walls will make any difference in any time frame that could matter (they don't work very well now in the first place)...
The overall tone of the article is good - and a lot really has to do with how Biden "appears" to be doing something - most people have no actual clue what is going on with oil prices or immigration or the current state of the economy - just whatever "bleeds it leads" nonsense that they get from the media.... As Noah implies, it is the perception that matters politically.
you didn't mention tapping into the SPR as a way to reduce oil prices (in the short term), which would also have the benefit of not necessitating additional oil production (in the short term). Is the SPR just too small to make a noticeable difference in oil/gas prices, even over the relatively short period between now and Nov 2024?
Quick aside on the reality of Federal action re: increasing oil production(and importantly dowstream products like gasoline/etc). Most of this is global & not directly admin controlled obviously, but there certainly are marginal short & intermediate production impacts based on admin actions.
However, to the extent there was a chance to increase domestic production of various sorts to counter inflation, & you think that is helpful from either a policy or political standpoint, here is the bad news -
1) Production - If it is actual production impacts you are looking for, it is too late now. The window to do those actions was mostly back in the 2021-2022 range due to the lag (for example, onshore drilling permits, EPA refinery actions, or even if they would've implemented SPR re-purchase agreements, generally would take anywhere from a year to three to have impacts we'd see in the numbers).
2) Politics/Signaling - The federal oil/gas leasing cake is more or less baked at this point, especially with the release of the 5 year plan for offshore leasing only showing 3 sales, as you alluded to. So the signal has been sent, and even if they changed direction today with a nod to the election: nobody in industry would subscribe to a thesis that said "I should increase investment to juice production over the short term, because it is now safe to presume that a 2nd Biden administration would moderate based on these signals."
3) SPR - between the politics of it and the reality of SPR levels after all the releases of the last few years... there just isn't capacity here to do anything meaningful.
Polls are unreliable. Their like mood rings. But, for the sake of argument: there will be as many as 20 million first-time register voters in 2024. They come from Gen Z, the most-liberal of the generations succeeding Baby Boomers. Polls indicate that only 7% of these new voters favor Republican policies. Trump lost by 7 million votes. If political parties focus their time and resources on new voters, Trump loses by an even wider margin. But polls are mood rings, not ballot boxes.