I read this comment on Calculated Risk the other day:
It's captioned: For miner Ed Martinez, the answer to his T-shirt might now be "I couldn't care less." He was laid off and has since moved on.
If you're older than 40 you probably remember this time... back-to-back brutal recessions, double-digit real unemployment, small hand-held electronic gadgets were in vogue, sky-high energy prices, boom times in flyover places like Texas and Wyoming, unpopular presidents. It must have felt like "the end of the world is near" to parents at the time. Some things never change.
This National Geographic special edition is fascinating to read and I highly recommend you try to find a copy. It was big on coal, oil, uranium, solar and geothermal. Very little (if any) content on wind and tidal. One fascinating drawing on page 33 depicts what appears to be a modern Toyota Prius, with the same shape and hybrid engine.
What I said above about some things never changing: Some things do change. While families are running scared like they were 30 years ago and we are seeing boom times in places like Midland, Gillette and North Dakota, we are not seeing boom times in Big Oil centers like Houston. I just haven't seen the crazy construction boom like I did when I was a kid. The oil majors learned a hard lesson and they haven't forgotten it, even now with $100+ oil.
Tying into my previous post, I do think we entered part 2 of the Great Recession in late March of this year, similar to the short, very deep second recession seen from late-1981 through 1982. Will we be off to the races a year from now, like we were then?
creditcriminalslovetarp wrote on Wed, 5/2/2012 - 9:32 pm (in reply to...) a brother in law just moved to Gillette, Wy..left the railroad for cnc and welding job at repair-instustrial shop...all the work they want, took him 4 months to find home...It instantly made me think of this picture from a National Geographic special edition on the energy crisis published in 1981. (I wrote about this before.)
If you're older than 40 you probably remember this time... back-to-back brutal recessions, double-digit real unemployment, small hand-held electronic gadgets were in vogue, sky-high energy prices, boom times in flyover places like Texas and Wyoming, unpopular presidents. It must have felt like "the end of the world is near" to parents at the time. Some things never change.
This National Geographic special edition is fascinating to read and I highly recommend you try to find a copy. It was big on coal, oil, uranium, solar and geothermal. Very little (if any) content on wind and tidal. One fascinating drawing on page 33 depicts what appears to be a modern Toyota Prius, with the same shape and hybrid engine.
What I said above about some things never changing: Some things do change. While families are running scared like they were 30 years ago and we are seeing boom times in places like Midland, Gillette and North Dakota, we are not seeing boom times in Big Oil centers like Houston. I just haven't seen the crazy construction boom like I did when I was a kid. The oil majors learned a hard lesson and they haven't forgotten it, even now with $100+ oil.
Tying into my previous post, I do think we entered part 2 of the Great Recession in late March of this year, similar to the short, very deep second recession seen from late-1981 through 1982. Will we be off to the races a year from now, like we were then?
5 comments:
it depends if zombie Reagan can come back and save us again
Was one-sixth of the country on food stamps in 1981?
Also, I think much of the alleged "prosperity" from 1983 to 2000 was fraudulent, Ponzi-style stuff, and led to the economic catastrophe of today.
I'd say that 1996-2007 was Ponzi-style stuff, rotating from the biggest stock market bubble in US history to the biggest housing bubble in US history. ISTR 1983-1989 as being pretty good years, despite the S&L crisis.
Lots of people try to place blame on an originator. I blame Johnson. I think it all went off the rails beginning in 1965. Every president since has been trying to cope with what he wrought.
It's not going to magically get better, since we simply don't need many people anymore.
Here the local tobacco plant which employed 20,000+ in 1981 was replaced with a highly automated plant 5 years ago that needs only a few hundred people.
And those they do need are highly trained, not 'barely managed to graduate from high school' like their labor force 30 years ago.
There are a LOT of people out there who are unskilled and not able to work in a modern manufacturing plant.
The more I think about it, the more I think you're right. I can buy us being in 81ish economy right now. Sadly, there aren't any Reagan's that I can tell.
China is where Japan was in 81 as far as I could tell. They did that shift from being famous for really cheap crap and owning all our debt/land to, potentially, changing that. Of course, that also will come with the inevitable melt down when someone else does it better cheaper.
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