Saturday, August 25, 2012

Regulations and high gas prices even in the face of a US oil and gas boom could easily be addressed if someone wanted to save the middle class

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Obama has outdone his recent predecessors in adding suffocating regulations. Smaller businesses, America's historic engine, are less able to deal with increased regulation so they fall by the wayside. Regulations are more costly than anyone knows: fed. gov. doesn't measure 22 of 166 major regulations. Also exlcuded are costs of thousands of minor regulations, compliance costs, costs shifted to consumers, and hit to GDP. The US has an oncoming oil and gas boom but somehow gas prices go up and up taking half a point from GDP per 50 cent increase. This drastically affects middle class consumers, employees, and bosses. "Every 1 cent increase in gasoline decreases U.S. consumer disposable income by about $600 million per year."

8/21/12, "Regulations a rising economic burden to manufacturers, report says," Washington Post, Peter Whoriskey

"
The economic burden of federal regulation in the United States has risen dramatically over the past 20 years, particularly affecting the nation’s manufacturers, according to a report by an industry group to be released Tuesday.

The average number of major federal regulations — those expected to have an economic impact in excess of $100 million — that have been finalized each year has risen with each recent administration, according to the report.

Under President Bill Clinton it was 27 per year. The number rose to 35 under George W. Bush and stands at 44 per year between 2009 and 2011 under President Obama.

“The increasing number of regulations has harmed the manufacturing sector’s production,” the report said. All aspects of manufacturing “are impacted negatively by the myriad regulations.”

David Montgomery, the principal investigator on the report for NERA Consulting, which was commissioned by the Manufacturers Alliance for Productivity and Innovation, added that “the cost of regulation has been growing substantially faster than industry output.”...

The report uses the federal government estimates of regulatory costs in compiling its figures.

But that doesn’t count the impacts of the regulations for which the federal government doesn’t estimate a cost. It also leaves out the costs imposed by thousands of minor regulations.

For example, the report found that the regulatory burden on manufacturers has more than doubled over 10 years, growing from about $80 billion in 2001 to more than $164 billion in 2011.

“Some of the most onerous regulations imposed on the manufacturing sector over the last decade involve those affecting the manufacturing sector’s energy use and emissions from its facilities,” according to the report.

But as the report makes clear, those figures leave out significant compliance costs.

It doesn’t include the costs stemming from 21 of the 166 major rules believed to affect manufacturers, because the federal government hasn’t calculated their costs....

Finally, while the compliance costs may be borne most directly by the manufacturers, at least some of the burden may be shifted to consumers, particularly on automobiles."...

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8/9/12, "Fact Of The Day #11: Small Business 'Engine' Sputters During Economic Downturn (INFOGRAPHIC)," Huffington Post

"Small businesses, typically cited as the “engine of growth” for the American economy,
shed jobs faster than larger companies in the past decade. Businesses with less than 50 employees lost 3.8 million jobs during the 2007-2009 recession."

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George Bush was continually blamed for gas prices but Obama is not. The media won't allow it and the GOP is asleep. But Obama is the guy who could save this country. The price of gas is such an obvious drag on the country and could be easily addressed. And not by releasing reserves. We don't get most of our fuel from the Middle East so that's not the problem. The US is now facing a huge oil boom in our own country. We even export fuel now. Even if a president thinks he can't do anything about it, he's got to tell the American people the truth about what's going on behind the scenes that's destroying this country. Obama won't even tell us about the coming oil boom.

Bush was blamed but Obama isn't:

4/27/2005, "Bush fails to persuade Saudis to cut oil price," by Michael Gawenda, Sydney Morning Herald Correspondent in Washington

"With US petrol prices up almost 25 per cent in six months and with polls showing that Americans blame the Bush Administration for these price increases, Mr Bush said oil was top of the agenda at his meeting with Prince Abdullah."...

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The average price for a gallon of gas in 2005 was $2.30, per Answers.com

Gas price was $1.79 when Obama was inaugurated, January 20, 2009. Rated true by Politifact. via Breitbart News

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Reuters reports gas prices don't matter under Obama and won't matter to voters. To make sure you get their message, Reuters has a big picture of a voter going into a polling place to vote for Obama in 2008:

8/22/12, "Rising gas prices not a big concern for voters," Reuters, John Whitesides



Reuters caption, "A voter arrives at a polling location to vote
in Portland, Maine , Nov. 3, 2009" (When Obama was elected
over fake candidate McCain).

"Even as President Barack Obama considers using U.S. oil stockpiles to halt rising gasoline costs in an election year, a Reuters/Ipsos poll released on Tuesday shows economic pain at the pump is not a big concern for voters."...

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"U.S. drivers are paying $149 million more each day for gas than in early July (2012)."

8/20/12,
"Summertime blues for drivers: Gas at August record," AP via Bloomberg

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5/27/11, "Gas tanks are draining family budgets," AP, J. Fahey

(parag. 13): "Every 50-cent jump in the cost of gasoline takes $70 billion out of the U.S. economy over the course of a year, Hamilton* says. That's about one half of one percent of gross domestic product....

*"James Hamilton, an economics professor at the University of California, San Diego, who studies gas prices."...

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7/23/11, "Could U.S. Gas Prices Rise Above $5 Per Gallon?" IBTimes (International Business Times)

"No one knows precisely at what point oil begins to substantially hinder consumer spending and slow commercial activity - but this much is known: every $1 per barrel rise in oil decreases U.S. GDP by about $100 billion per year and

  • every 1 cent increase in gasoline
  • by about $600 million per year."...

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2/23/11, "What Do Rising Oil Prices Mean for U.S. Economic Growth?" DailyFinance.com, Peter Cohan

"According to the International Monetary Fund, a $10-a-barrel increase in the price of oil

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As of third week of August 2012, data from St. Louis Fed, via notJimCramer:

via Zero Hedge, 8/24/12, "On This Week In History, Gas Prices Have Never Been Higher."

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"Four countries will lead the coming oil boom: Iraq, the United States, Canada and Brazil."...What both common sense and expert consensus assure us to be true very often isn't." The 'America is on the decline' rap is canceled.

8/9/12, "The next oil revolution - and its impact," Reuters, Chrystia Freeland

"Forget America's fiscal cliff, Europe's currency troubles or the emerging-markets slowdown. The most important story in the global economy today may well be some good news that isn't yet making as many headlines - the coming surge in oil production around the world.

Until very recently, our collective assumption was that oil was running out. That was partly a matter of what seemed like geological common sense. It took millions of years for the earth to crush plankton into fossil fuels; it is logical to think that it would take millions of years to create more. The rise of the emerging markets, with their energy-hungry billions, was a further reason it seemed obvious we would have less oil and gas in 2020 than we do today.

Obvious - but wrong. Thanks in part to technologies like horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracking, we are entering a new age of abundant oil. ...Crucially, at a time when one of the biggest social and political problems in the United States is the disappearance of well-paid blue-collar work, particularly for men, oil patch jobs fill that void.

What Maugeri dubs the next oil revolution also has tremendous geopolitical implications. One way to understand the battlegrounds of our young century is through the pipelines that flow beneath them. The coming surge in oil production, particularly from North America, will transform that geopolitical equation."...

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3/5/12, "U.S. A Net Gas Exporter For First Time In Decades," NPR

"The U.S. has become a net exporter of gasoline for the first time in fifty years. Thanks to rising production at refineries and declining demand, the United States exported more gasoline than it imported in December. The unusual development reflects the segmented U.S. energy market — the East Coast needs to import gas while the Midwest produces a surplus."

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8/23/11, "The Alarming Cost Of Climate Change Hysteria," Forbes, Larry Bell

"The Small Business Administration estimates that compliance with such regulations costs the U.S. economy more than $1.75 trillion per year — about 12%-14% of GDP, and half of the $3.456 trillion Washington is currently spending. The Competitive Enterprise Institute believes the annual cost is closer to $1.8 trillion when an estimated

  • $55.4 billion regulatory administration and policing budget

is included. CEI further observes that those regulation costs exceed 2008 corporate pretax profits of $1.436 trillion; tower over estimated individual income taxes of $936 billion by 87%; and reveal

  • a federal government whose share of the entire economy
  • reaches 35.5%

when combined with federal 2010 spending outlays.

A U.S. Energy Information Administration economic forecasting model indicates that a proposed 70% cut in CO2 emissions will cause gasoline prices to rise 77% over baseline projections, kill more than 3 million jobs, and

  • reduce average household income
  • by more than $4,000 each year."...
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Gas price was $1.79 when Obama was inaugurated, January 20, 2009. Rated true by Politifact. via Breitbart News


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