Showing posts with label trends. Show all posts
Showing posts with label trends. Show all posts

Sunday, March 17, 2024

Subsidiarity Economics 2024. The times more or less locally, Part I. And then the day arrived (part two).

Our lifestyle, our wildlife, our land and our water remain critical to our definition of Wyoming and to our economic future.

Dave Freudenthal, former Governor of Wyoming/

 

January 2, 2024

The Energy Information Administration’s Short Term Energy Outlook Report states that combined generation from wind and solar will overtake generation from coal by more than 90 billion kilowatt-hours this year.

US coal production will drop to its lowest amount since the 1960s, with it taking more miners per ton to produce in the 60s than it does now.

Pennsylvania's Flying Fish Brewing Co. filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.

January 11, 2024

January 17, 2024

From the Trib:

According to a report put out by the Wyoming State Geological Survey this month, the state’s oil production has not yet surpassed its 2019 high, while nationwide oil production has surpassed pre-pandemic levels.

More than 95 million barrels of oil are expected to be produced in Wyoming in 2023, which is about 3 million more barrels than in 2022. The drilling of new oil wells has helped greatly.

In the first half of 2023, a total of 110 newly drilled oil wells were completed, most of them in the Powder River Basin. This is in line with the first half of 2022, when 118 oil wells were completed.

January 22, 2024

Flying Fish Brewing has declared bankruptcy.

January 23, 2024

U.S. oil production has been holding at or near record highs since October, topping the previous peak from 2020, even though the number of active domestic oil drilling rigs is down by nearly 30% from four years ago.

New technology is the reason why there is higher production with fewer rigs.

And also:

The U.S. set a new annual oil production record on December 15, based on data from the Energy Information Administration. Although the official monthly numbers from the EIA won’t be released for a couple of months, we can calculate that a new record has been set based on the following analysis.

Prices at the pump have been declining.

January 25, 2024

In spite of repeated Republican declarations about how bad the economy is doing, the economy grew 4.9% in the third quarter of 2023, for which the latest figures are out.  This grossly exceeds expectations.

This is interesting for a lot of reasons, one of which the "bad economy" is a consistent theme of Republicans in the current election cycle, when in fact this is a classic "good economy".  It's frankly bizarre.

Some of that might reflect, however, an ongoing retention of a return to the 1945-1975 economy by Rust Belt voters, and anxiety over an inevitable decline in the fossil fuel economy in the West.  The post-war economy is of course never returning, and the change in the direction in the energy economy cannot be arrested, although it too is doing well right now.

January 28, 2024

The Administration plans on providing billions for microchip subsidies for US producers to assure production can be made in the US.

It's worth noting that with war looming with China, there's more than one reason to do this.

The Biden Administration has paused all pending export licenses for liquified national gas (LNG) to consider the climate impacts.

February 8, 2024

Getting Wall Street out of our houses

February 10, 2024

US Credit Card debt is at an all-time high.

World's Foremost Authority On Solar Sheep Advising Wyoming $500 Million Solar Farm

Jobs, Jobs, Jobs


February 11, 2024


It is estimated that over 10% of Canadian craft brewers will close this year.

February 13, 2024

The city of Gillette and BWXT have agreed to work together to look at the possibility of having nuclear facilities and operations in Gillette 

February 15, 2024

While this should be no surprise, given what we earlier reported here:


Remington, in its new form, will close its facilities in Ilion, New York, in March.

Colorado has filed suit to stop the Kroger Albertson's merger.

February 21, 2024

Japan's Nikkei stock index soared to an all-time high.

Rivian, the electric truck maker, is laying off 10% of its salaried staff.

This will cause piles of cackling from those who are convinced electric vehicles, which have taken off, will never take off.  Rivian was an automotive start-up, something that's really tough to do.  Basically, their business model depended on getting into the saturated truck market before other maker went to electric, a real gamble.

Wyoming Gets a Big Win in Court for Coal 

 

CHEYENNE, Wyo. –Wyoming’s coal industry’s earned a long-awaited legal win today, as three Ninth Circuit judges unanimously sided with Wyoming’s arguments in support of the continuation of the federal coal-leasing program. The decision vacated a lower court order that reinstated Obama-era coal-leasing restrictions and required federal officials to perform duplicative National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) analysis. 

“This ruling is an unequivocal win for our coal industry and a reminder that the Biden Administration has to follow the law,” Governor Mark Gordon said. “The Department of Interior now has one less excuse to thwart its federal coal leasing responsibilities. I appreciate the Attorney General and her staff for their excellent work on this case.” 

The complicated case spanned seven years and involved conflicting orders issued by former Interior Secretaries, in which Secretary Jewel issued an order to cease federal coal leasing and conduct a Programmatic Environmental Statement on the entire coal leasing program. Before that review was complete, Secretary Zinke rescinded the Jewel Order so coal leasing could resume; lastly Secretary Haaland rescinded the Zinke order. The district court ruled that the Department of the Interior needed to conduct additional NEPA analysis before resuming coal leasing under its existing authorities.  Wyoming argued that the case was moot, because the Zinke order was rescinded by Secretary Haaland.

Litigation costs for Wyoming were covered by the Federal Natural Resource Policy Account as directed by Governor Gordon.   

-END-

March 15, 2024

Nippon Steel proposes to take over U.S. Steel.

March 17, 2024

Tyson, the giant chicken corporation, announced that it's closing a plant in Iowa in June which will result in 1200 people, 15% of the entire town, losing their jobs. Simultaneously, the company is working with an asylum advocate group to hire 2,500 asylum seekers who are cleared to work elsewhere.

Um. . . we've been running a series on our companion blog entitled An Agrarian Manifesto. . . might be worth reading, perhaps particularly these:

A sort of Agrarian Manifesto. What's wrong with the world (and how to fix it). Part 2. Distributism


A sort of Agrarian Manifesto. What's wrong with the world (and how to fix it). Part 5. What would that look like, and why would it fix anything, other than limiting my choices and lightening my wallet? The Distributist Impact

Last Prior Edition:

Subsidiarity Economics. The times more or less locally, Part XVI. And then the day arrived.


Recent Related Threads:



Saturday, March 9, 2024

Missing the point: Blog Mirror; Dennis Sun: Biden's Climate Change Actions Will Be & How They Affect Agriculture

From the Cowboy State Daily:

Dennis Sun: Biden's Climate Change Actions Will Be & How They Affect Agriculture

The real thing that will affect agriculture, particularly the beef industry, is in failing to attempt to arrest climate change.

I've long been utterly baffled by; 1) grazers failure to get a clue over climate change, and 2) ongoing agricultural admiration for the Republican Party.

More than anyone, those who graze ought to be able to freakin' wake up and notice that the climate ain't what it used to be.  I'll hear ranchers talk about it, but they seem incapable of closing the circle. Gee, it's been warm. Gee, it's been dry. Gee, we have no grass.

D'uh.

But climate change? Nope, not happening.

Now there are some exceptions. The late Pat O'Toole, who married into a Carbon County ranching family, was one.  But by and large ranchers simply refuse to believe that something is happening, even while worrying about what is happening.

Hmmm. . . 

And ironically, practices in the industry which gave it a larger carbon footprint are quite recently  Older ranchers can easily look back on an industry that wasn't diesel powered.

On the GOP, ranchers seem to have a really dedicated belief that the Republican Party protects their ability to do what they want.  In reality, the Democrats have preserved ranch lands themselves. The GOP is more of the development party, which never ends up actually benefitting ranchers.  I'll them complain about this too, but not close the circle.  Why is this oil company in my pasture?  Why are squatters trailers showing up all over.  Why are out of state rich buying this up and not doing anything about it?

Why indeed?

Maybe because of how we vote and whose support we choose to ignore.

Thursday, March 7, 2024

The Agrarian's Lament: What's wrong with the world (and how to fix it). Part 4. A Well Educated Society.

The Agrarian's Lament: What's wrong with the world (and how to fix it). ...

What's wrong with the world (and how to fix it). Part 4. A Well Educated Society.

Each new generation born is in effect an invasion of civilization by little barbarians, who must be civilized before it is too late.

Thomas Sowell

Civilization is not inherited; it has to be learned and earned by each generation anew; if the transmission should be interrupted for one century, civilization would die, and we should be savages again.

Will and Ariel Durant

A democratic society, let alone a just, functioning society, can't survive or function without its citizens being solidly educated.  And that means learning things you (or your parents), don't want you to, and some will fall behind, and drop out.

In envisioning how a more just society, in every fashion, and one that comports with reality, might be constructed, we have to concede that it can't be if people operate in a state of ignorance.

Unfortunately, we live in a manifestly ignorant age.  This year's national political contest is ample evidence of that.  On one side we have a body that's contemptuous of human nature and thinks it can be existentially and individually remade.  On the other, we have a group that effectively assumes that everything that came after 1958 is existentially wrong, including every real advance in science or knowledge.

We let one generation somehow proceed into barbarity, and it's running the show right now.  As part of that, one of its pet projects is to create a system where younger generations can be prevented from being educated in anything that suggest that it's really not 1958.

Getting back on track won't be easy, but it needs to be accomplished immediately.

Now first of all, we have to admit that this is not universal by any means. Contrary to what people like to assert, and often the poorly educated, there's no one educational system in the US and therefore there are school districts that are excellent. Wyoming has long been blessed by those, but even in Wyoming, modern inroads of limited education are advancing.

All of this may seem bold when we consider that high school graduation rates and university education is much more common than it used to be.  The national high school graduation rate is 87%, which is massively high. The Wyoming rate is 82%.  Consider this chart, for a moment (which will be hotlinked to its source).

Table 110.High school graduates, by sex and control of school: Selected years, 1869-70 through 2019-20
School yearHigh school graduatesAveraged freshman graduation rate for public schools3Population 17 years old4Graduates as a ratio of 17-year-old population
Total1SexControl
MalesFemalesPublic2Private
TotalMalesFemalesTotal
1234567891011
1869-7016,0007,0648,936 815,0002.0
1879-8023,63410,60513,029 946,0262.5
1889-9043,73118,54925,18221,88221,8495 1,259,1773.5
1899-190094,88338,07556,80861,73733,1465 1,489,1466.4
1909-10156,42963,67692,753111,36345,0665 1,786,2408.8
            
1919-20311,266123,684187,582230,90280,3645 1,855,17316.8
1929-30666,904300,376366,528591,71975,1855 2,295,82229.0
1939-401,221,475578,718642,7571,143,246538,273604,97378,2295 2,403,07450.8
1949-501,199,700570,700629,0001,063,444505,394558,050136,2565 2,034,45059.0
1959-601,858,023895,000963,0001,627,050791,426835,624230,973 2,672,00069.5
            
1969-702,888,6391,430,0001,459,0002,588,6391,285,8951,302,744300,0005 78.73,757,00076.9
1970-712,937,6421,454,0001,484,0002,637,6421,309,3191,328,323300,0005 78.03,872,00075.9
1971-723,001,5531,487,0001,515,0002,699,5531,342,2751,357,278302,0005 77.43,973,00075.5
1972-733,034,8221,500,0001,535,0002,728,8221,352,4161,376,406306,0005 76.84,049,00075.0
1973-743,073,3141,512,0001,561,0002,763,3141,362,5651,400,749310,0005 75.44,132,00074.4
            
1974-753,132,5021,542,0001,591,0002,822,5021,391,5191,430,983310,0005 74.94,256,00073.6
1975-763,142,1201,552,0001,590,0002,837,1291,401,0641,436,065304,991 74.94,272,00073.6
1976-773,139,5361,551,0001,589,0002,837,340302,196 74.44,272,00073.5
1977-783,128,8241,546,0001,583,0002,824,636304,188 73.24,286,00073.0
1978-793,101,1521,532,0001,569,0002,801,152300,0005 71.94,327,00071.7
            
1979-803,042,2141,503,0001,539,0002,747,678294,536 71.54,262,00071.4
1980-813,020,2851,492,0001,528,0002,725,285295,0005 72.24,212,00071.7
1981-822,994,7581,479,0001,515,0002,704,758290,0005 72.94,134,00072.4
1982-832,887,6041,426,0001,461,0002,597,604290,0005 73.83,962,00072.9
1983-842,766,7972,494,797272,0005 74.53,784,00073.1
            
1984-852,676,9172,413,917263,0005 74.23,699,00072.4
1985-862,642,6162,382,616260,0005 74.33,670,00072.0
1986-872,693,8032,428,803265,0005 74.33,754,00071.8
1987-882,773,0202,500,020273,0005 74.23,849,00072.0
1988-892,743,7432,458,800284,943 73.43,842,00071.4
            
1989-902,574,1622,320,337253,8256 73.63,505,00073.4
1990-912,492,9882,234,893258,095 73.73,417,91372.9
1991-922,480,3992,226,016254,3836 74.23,398,88473.0
1992-932,480,5192,233,241247,278 73.83,449,14371.9
1993-942,463,8492,220,849243,0005 73.13,442,52171.6
            
1994-952,519,0842,273,541245,543 71.83,635,80369.3
1995-962,518,1092,273,109245,0005 71.03,640,13269.2
1996-972,611,9882,358,403253,585 71.33,792,20768.9
1997-982,704,0502,439,0501,187,6471,251,403265,0005 71.34,008,41667.5
1998-992,758,6552,485,6301,212,9241,272,706273,025 71.13,917,88570.4
            
1999-20002,832,8442,553,8441,241,6311,312,213279,0005 71.74,056,63969.8
2000-012,847,9732,569,2001,251,9311,317,269278,773 71.74,023,68670.8
2001-022,906,5342,621,5341,275,8131,345,721285,0005 72.64,023,96872.2
2002-033,015,7352,719,9471,330,9731,388,974295,788 73.94,125,08773.1
2003-047 3,054,4382,753,4381,347,8001,405,638301,0005 74.34,113,07474.3
            
2004-053,106,4992,799,2501,369,7491,429,501307,249 74.74,120,07375.4
2005-063,122,5442,815,5441,376,4581,439,086307,0005 73.44,200,55474.3
2006-073,198,9562,892,3511,413,7381,478,613306,605 73.94,297,23974.4
2007-083,313,8182,999,5081,466,3031,533,205314,3105 74.74,436,95574.7
2008-098 3,318,7703,004,570314,200 74.74,336,95076.5
            
2009-108 3,306,2202,991,310314,910 75.64,311,83176.7
2010-118 3,251,7202,937,170314,550 
2011-128 3,221,9902,905,990316,000 
2012-138 3,200,1302,890,740309,390 
2013-148 3,176,3002,868,100308,200 
            
2014-158 3,170,5602,872,470298,090 
2015-168 3,201,0602,906,330294,730 
2016-178 3,223,0002,933,220289,780 
2017-188 3,273,6902,988,630285,060 
2018-198 3,265,0202,984,530280,490 
2019-208 3,245,9002,953,060292,840 
—Not available.

That's great, right?

Well, maybe.

But maybe not.

People have to know how to read statistics and what's behind them.  A really well-educated friend of mine who is in obviously very poor physical shape is an example of this.  HE takes his age, and likes to cite the "at my age, X% of men make it to age 90".

Well, that's because you kill off a certain percentage of men every year, meaning that your odds of making it to 90 are poorer every year.  At age 90 100% of men make it to age 90, if they've lived that long.  It's a diminishing number every year.

With education, the fact that 87% of people graduate from high school means, quite frankly, that extraordinary steps have been taken to make that occur. Some of the steps are good, some of them are bad, some of them are mixed. The rate itself, 87%, is pretty good proof that we run people through high school who really don't have the capacity to graduate a rigorous educational system.

As noted above, Wyoming's schools are very good.  I was stunned, for example, when my daughter was in high school, and she came home and prepared for a test of Weimar Germany that was unbelievably advanced.  This speaks well of our system.  Also speaking well of it is that it offers advanced certificates for high school degrees, something it did not do when I graduated there in 1981.

And frankly, our community college system is excellent as well.  We have only one university (which is another topic) but its good as well.

Still, I think it can be maintained that compared to the mid 20th Century, certain things have dropped off as mandatory subjects.  I have around here somewhere a German novel that was my father's, from high school, and a Latin primer that was one of my uncle's (from a much different school system).  There was a time when learning languages was mandatory in high school , and learning a language broadens out the welatanshung considerably, n'est pas?

One thing that had very much occured is the rise of homeschooling.  People have done this for a long time, but it was almost freakishly uncommon in most areas and often due to remoteness.  Starting in the 90s, however, it really grew for a variety of reasons.

One is that in some areas people lived in bad school districts where there was little opportunity for a good primary education.  But another one is that, particularly amongst Protestant Evangelicals, and then spreading to Catholic Trads, who ironically sometimes hold very Protestant Evangelical societal views, that the education system was educating the young in vice and perversity.  Most recently this has seen its expression by inroads onto school boards by populists who use names like "Mom's For Liberty" for their organizations.

What often characterizes these organizations is a desire to prevent education in something.  It started off as early in the 1960s with an effort to prevent education on matters sexual.  Interestingly, when I was in high school, in spite of living in the least religious state in the US, and one that has always had a rough and transient population, community standards remained so high that what there was in the way of sex ed was pretty minimal.  I can recall that when I was in grade school we were supposed to watch films in 5th and 6th Grade, just as we were hitting our early teens. We watched one of them, but it conveyed so little information that it was truly harmless in the extreme, much less harmful than the information that was later distributed on the playground about what the next installment, which we never saw, was supposed to contain (which was, I'd note, biologically inaccurate).  The next time this came up was in junior high, and then again in high school biology class, in which we were required to tell our parents they could opt us out.  Nobody did.  I think we received a day of education, or not more than two, on the topic, which was biological and accurate.

Of course, I grew up in the 70s for the most part, and most of the kids in school with me were locals.  That might have made a big difference, as even the poor kids were from pretty stable families.  Divorce was incredibly rare.  A significant minority were from ranching families who were well aware of how biological processes worked (that Agrarian thing again) and therefore the knowledge wasn't shocking.  As for the impact, I can recall five girls that I knew to some extent getting pregnant in high school, and one of them was married.  One of the other ones was from a family where that ran through it like wildfire.  The graduating class was 500 or so students, so that's not a huge number.

It's not just sex ed that caused the boom in alternative learning, however.  By the 1970s evolution was an established scientific fact, even if still termed a theory, and it was taught in our schools outright.  The resistance to it being taught, at that time, didn't seem to exist, but it rebounded strongly later on in much of the country.  Overall, moreover, a decline in science teaching set in the U.S. during the 1980s thanks to Ronald Reagan, whose administration didn't support it.

Indeed, the Reagan administration was big on local control of things, and that has an impact here. As a Distributist, it might seem that this is one of the areas where we'd be big backers of that sort of thing, but in reality, the principal of subsidiarity advocates doing a thing at its most local effective, efficient, and just level.  As knowledge is literally global, it calls for large scale.  Physics and science are the same in Brooklyn as they are in Botswana.

A person might also note that our sometimes romantic attachment to Agrarianism recalls a day when less than 50% of males graduated from high school. That's quite true, but they also lived in an age in which many of them had been already well armed by their educations for the lives they would lead, so it was not accurate to suggest they were uneducated.  One of my grandfathers left school (a Christian Brothers school) at age 13, and yet ran a business successfully and could do calculus.  A major office building in this city is named after a man who was sent here in his early teens to open a branch of his father's pipeyard business and who went on to become a multimillionaire.

Additionally, if we go way back, we'll find that yeomanry, while they could be completely uneducated, could also be relatively well educated as well. Some were educated in basic matters through local churches, but often they were educated through community funded or subscribed schools.  John Adams, who started off life as a yeoman, was educated in that fashion, and his wife ran such a school (integrated, we might note) later on.

While on it, we might as well additionally note that the American South, at least since sometime prior to the Civil War, has been a real backwater of education, something that used to horrify northerners.  Little noticed, however, is that there's been a mini Great Migration of white Southerners out of their native region and into the rest of the country, where they've brought their views, including about education, with them.

And part of this is the byproduct of the 1960s.  Up until the 60s, while education was massively uneven in a country that has no central education system, there was a general consensus on what a person needed to learn in order to graduate from high school.  That can't really be claimed from region to region anymore.

So here, applying the principal of subsidiarity, the national government really needs to take a hand and set some basic standards, including learning the truth on scientific and historic matters.  And it needs to be rigorous.  If that depresses the graduation rate, so be it.

And there's really not a moment to lose.