Friday, August 31, 2007

A More Serious Chart


This chart represents how much the average worker (according to the BLS) would have been paid if he had been paid in electricity (according to the Department of Energy). Why electricity? Well, clearly oil is expensive. We can't very well be paying workers in oil! That would create anarchy. Surely we can't be running out of electricity though, right? As an added bonus, who wouldn't want to see a multi-megawatt-hour sized paycheck?

In all seriousness, this chart may show three things. One, the price of oil is bleeding over into other areas and if the trend continues we're going to be hurting. Two, maybe we better rethink the idea that we can all live in McMansions. Three, if electricity is any indicator we've been living in an "illusion of prosperity" since 2002.

You knew I'd work in the name of my blog at some point. I can't help myself. I'll stop being overly hammy when the country stops being overly leveraged. Deal?

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

tellme all about it -- i got sticker shock seeing our electricity bill last night.

Stagflationary Mark said...

Hopefully things will level off.

20% of our electricity is generated from natural gas.

The trend in Natural Gas is no longer "obviously" up.

50% of our electricity is generated from coal and we seem to have an abundance of that.

Maybe we've seen the worst of it. Then again, maybe we haven't. Print enough money and you can get almost anything to rise in price, or so the theory goes.

Oil is the big concern to me. Billions of people someday driving cars just doesn't seem like good sense to me, but what do I know?