Mysterious Forces

Children aren’t keen on spankings.  Occasionally, though, when kids persist beyond the borders of minimal respect or safety, a reintroduction of the physical laws of life can pull them mercifully and lovingly back to us, hopefully before real harm has occurred.  There are many who would not agree; but then, living the good life these days seems to embrace a higher precept, that of permissiveness.

We wondered about deep drilling for oil.  Can we completely control the forces needed a mile under the ocean’s surface?  We read from an article by David Lynch for Alexander’s Gas and Oil Connections:  "It takes a lot to drill these wells nowadays.  It's not as easy as it used to be. … The equipment needs to be more robust, bigger, heavier-duty," says Marty Hebert, offshore manager for Transocean.

Lynch explains, “One reason is the extreme conditions associated with operating in very deep fields.  The oil trapped below the ocean floor is under pressures that reach 20,000 psi—perhaps twice the force of a shallower well—as well as temperatures approaching 400 degrees Fahrenheit.  Releasing the oil safely is akin to handling a giant ketchup bottle full of sluggish fluid but ultimately prone to an explosive release.”

Because we really need additional oil to maintain our lifestyles, we are required, reluctantly, to drill at these extreme ocean depths.  How else could we survey fellow shoppers in the strip mall parking lot from the envied heights of a seven thousand pound sport utility vehicle?  How else could our harried oil executives garner the multi-million dollar annual salaries?

What we learned from the 1969 Santa Barbara oil spill…was…that although accidents will happen, technology will triumph.  Conservation has become a tired cliché for most.  We talk about greening-up, capping carbon, going clean-energy.  If the deal is right.  We are on our way.  Right after the economic crisis.  After Congress sorts this election out; first things first.

All this does not amaze the history buff who observes several highly developed civilizations in man’s history, each failing in turn at their peaks of achievement.  Even those favored by God were not beyond retribution for their iniquities.  It would seem beyond naiveté to believe that pervasive social injustice, or profligacy, or nefarious behavior can long sustain itself.  More, it would seem a great hubris, even indifference.

Material success notwithstanding, America has today shrewdly eviscerated many labor-intensive industries through globalization.  Encountering a spirited rebuttal by those claiming economic efficacy and we might be timid in our reply.  It’s reported that the U.S. still produces more goods than any other single country ($1.6 trillion).  Yet, despite continuing high-end industry dominance, numerous high-paying producers have gone offshore and with them, dreams of prosperity for many.

Visualize, if you will, a veritable cascade of trained workers competing for remaining lower-skilled employment as inner-city manufacturing and jobs vanish overseas—jobs that actually paid a living wage.  It seems one new urban growth-industry has become illicit drug production and marketing.  Beleaguered public officials, quick to verbalize on any successes, privately turn palms upward at the epidemic.  Legislators focus on incarceration to placate an anxious populace.  Most of us struggle to keep the social and moral decay of the ghetto out of our awareness but may read with great reluctance:  "The United States has 5 percent of the world's population and 23.6 percent of the world's prison population."  While the accuracy of Third World statistics may be called to question, this would seem an abnormal distribution.  Disregarding social costs, incarceration in 2006 alone penalized the American taxpayer over sixty-eight billion dollars.  Not “small change” to an economy under stress.

Only a small minority would refute the benefits of world trade, especially balanced trade conducted on a “level playing field.”  Our concerns rise over ongoing trade deficits, especially since the 1990s when U.S. trade deficits approached half a trillion dollars annually.  Though numbers have improved lately, largely from reduced imports to our beleaguered economy, we are by no means on a level playing field with our competitors.  Why?

According to a 2007 Forbes.com article, “On a per-capita basis, the average Chinese worker….makes 21,001 yuan ($2,756) a year…”.  This is 90 percent less than the average American worker.  Such an advantage could be considered a “subsidy”.

The fact remains that monetarism and Keynesian over-stimulation have contributed to American wage and price inflation which in turn impels consumers toward low-cost foreign goods.  We might begin to remedy our unemployment problems by re-assessing trade policies.  Before falling upon conventional wisdom that protectionism causes depressions, we might scan a few articles.

We read a piece by Pat Buchanan, “Refuting the Global Mandarins” in a 2000 Wall Street Journal article.  He offered that “When Smoot-Hawley passed, imports were only 4% of GDP; and two-thirds came in free.”  We continued to read, “The cause of the depression was massive credit expansion by the Fed, creating a market bubble that, punctured in 1929, wiped out a third of the U.S. money supply.”  The prestigious “The Economist” concurred—“In fact, few economists think the Smoot-Hawley tariff (as it is most often known) was one of the principal causes of the Depression.  Worse mistakes were made, largely out of a misplaced faith in the gold standard and balanced budgets.”

We could wonder if our leaders intended American workers to compete head-on with others having subsistence wages, poor healthcare or retirement provisions, and almost non-existent environmental protections.  What will our electorate be willing to exchange for inexpensive consumer imports?  What will our leaders decide?

We ponder then, man ruling man; the great leap of representative government.  Certainly the cry will go up, “Do you want dictatorship?  How ‘bout Mussolini or Stalin?”  Despotic monarchy?  Will, indeed, our representatives in government represent us well?

Will we ourselves be insisting on lots of benefits and entitlements without costs; pandered by leaders indifferent to the fact that they are unaffordable beyond their elected terms?  Do we even care?  Do we have the fortitude to address the myriad social and economic issues needed to regain our slipping life standards?  Will we in the end,  remove “In God We Trust” from our currency and rely solely upon mysterious forces?