This was our view this morning. This is why we don’t plant tomatoes until Memorial Day!
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Deseret News offers coverage of a preliminary hearing in Las Vegas’s effort to build a pipeline to carry water from Utah and the Great Basin to its thirsty urban citizens (and millions of tourists). It looks a bit like many Davids facing Goliath.
With Utah’s water table already oversold, there is understandable resistance to selling yet more water, especially to a big city hundreds of miles away in another state. One can’t help but wonder about the wisdom of building a city of 2 million people in a place that doesn’t have enough water or food nearby to support it!
Tags: Utah
The U.S. can drill all it wants but it’s hard to find anybody who expects greater domestic production to move gas prices by more than, say, two percentage points in the next six months. The problem is that the market for oil is global and U.S. supply is too small to make an impact.
So says Derek Thompson at The Atlantic, who examines what factors contribute to the rising price of oil. And he has really cool charts to illustrate it.
As I pointed out a couple of years ago, all the projected offshore oil reserves the U.S. has would support our oil habit for less than two years – if we got it all out of the seabed. Our appetite for oil is voracious, and our reserves are just not that big.
Pundits are trumpeting the huge jump in job creation – an unexpectedly high 244,000 jobs that mysteriously appeared duringthe month of April, with 268,000 of them in the private sector. (Government payrolls shed 24,000 jobs in April.)
But try this one on: at the same time, the unemployment rate rose for the first time since November.
How can this be? Simple: neither number is an actual count of anything. Rather, both numbers are the result of surveys of a tiny number of employers and households, respectively, extrapolated to project the real number for the entire country. Explains Deseret News:
To calculate the unemployment rate, the government calls 60,000 households and asks people if they’re working or looking for a job. This survey includes the self-employed, farm workers and domestic help — people not counted in the payroll survey. By contrast, the government surveys about 140,000 businesses and government agencies to determine the number of jobs added.
There are over 105 million households in the U.S., so the survey samples 0.06% of them. There are about 8 million private employers. I have been unable to find out how many government entities there are, but this makes the survey sample about 1.8% of the total number of private employers. From these two minuscule samples come the figures on which momentous economic decisions are made.
Meanwhile, initial jobless claims rose to an 8-month high of 474,000 during the last week of April. Adds the Star-Ledger in New Jersey (the state hardest hit),
The increase came as a surprise to economists, who had expected claims to drop.
Uh-huh. My assessment: the analysts have no idea how employment is doing.
Tags: recession
Calwest photo (via Flickr)
When Speaker Boehner (R-OH) commented that it might be time to reconsider repealing the multi-billion-dollar tax breaks given to oil companies, President Obama quickly agreed. But Boehner and his office responded with a series of anti free market comments that remind us that the GOP only favors free markets when they’re making money:
“You know, the No. 1 issue in my district and around the country is, ‘Where are the jobs?’ And I want to know what impact this is going to have on job creation here in America.”
Use government money to create jobs… which party is that again?
How would the repeals affect our economy, aside from helping to reduce the deficit by increasing tax revenue? Gas prices would rise. Sales of large automobiles and trucks would fall, while sales of small fuel-efficient cars would rise. Mass transit systems would get approved and built, and those already existing would get more ridership. Alternative energy would be competing with the actual cost of fossil fuels, not an artificially-low, subsidized price. They would instantly become more cost-effective, and would require less (and in many instances no) subsidies to become economically viable. Over time, the number of oil and gas jobs would decline, while the number of alternative energy jobs would increase.
It is also likely that as the price of oil rises, domestic production would be favored over imports.
Would higher gas prices hurt? Of course! But free markets are free markets – or else they aren’t. The price of food is on track to double this year, yet no Republican I know of wants to use government money to stabilize food prices.
More to the point, much like the budget deficit, we’ve kept our economy afloat by keeping energy prices artificially low, stimulating consumption, and picking up the cost on the national credit card. No one wants to admit they’ve run out of money. That requires admitting that there’s a problem, followed by painful restructuring. It’s easier to live in denial and keep using the card!
Perhaps the most important effect of repealing oil subsidies would be to continue our nation’s recent moves toward an economy that is not based on spending more than we earn – at all levels from consumer to central government. And for the health of our nation and our households, that would be a good thing.
Tags: corporatism
Cross-posted from JackrabbitCheese.com
A few months ago, one of our customers asked why we use rennet that contains the preservative sodium benzoate. The answer, as we posted then, was that we couldn’t find rennet that didn’t have it. Our cheese contains so little of the preservative that you would have to eat 3,000 pounds of it to ingest the amount of sodium benzoate permitted in a single serving of soft drink. (And if you ate 3,000 pounds of cheese at a sitting, your problem wouldn’t be sodium benzoate!)
Still, this led us to ask what rennet the industrial cheese makers use, since their labels don’t report any sodium benzoate. Our search led to the discovery that almost all rennet contains sodium benzoate. Unless specifically labeled organic, sodium benzoate seems to be universally added as a preservative. And the difference is striking: organic rennet has a shelf life of only a few months, while non-organic rennet may be good for two years or more.
So why don’t those industrial cheese makers report rennet as an ingredient in their cheese? Because the law says they don’t have to. (And, it turns out, neither do we. Our dairy inspector had been a tad overzealous.) CFR101.100(3)(1) allows an exemption from food labeling for
substances that have no technical or functional effect but are present in a food by reason of having been incorporated into the food as an ingredient of another food, in which the substance did have a functional or technical effect.
Rennet acts as a preservative in the rennet, but not in the cheese, so it need not be mentioned on the ingredient label of the cheese. Similarly, if a cheese recipe includes sun dried tomatoes that contain sulfur dioxide as a preservative, the sulfur dioxide has no functional purpose in the cheese and is treated as an incidental ingredient that need not be mentioned.
The theory behind this exemption is that it would be “burdensome” for manufacturers to list every sub-ingredient of every ingredient. Having tried to squeeze a large number of ingredients onto a label, while still complying with minimum font size regulations, I can understand their concerns.
On the other hand, people want to know what’s in their food. Our customers are concerned with natural food, and want to know whether there are any added chemicals. This (very informative) article from Kashrut.com points out that those who keep kosher have similar concerns, since non-kosher ingredients are not necessarily listed on the label. Presumably the same would be true for those concerned with halal food, or vegetarian. (The label need not specify whether the rennet in a cheese came from animal or vegetable sources; ours is vegetarian but most rennet used in industrial cheeses comes from calves’ stomachs.)
As a manufacturer and a consumer, I can see both sides of the issue. Personally, I’d prefer the regulations to require more information rather than less. I don’t mind listing sodium benzoate on my cheese label, so long as everyone else has to do the same. It’s worth it to me for my customers (and myself) to know what we’re putting in their mouths.
Tags: government
Originally from Nine Inch Nails, Johnny Cash made “Hurt” his own in a video released just months before his death. His version of the song is great, the video perhaps the most poignant I have ever seen. It makes me hope I don’t have the same regrets as my own life nears its end.
This brilliant essay on Amos was brought to my attention by (of all people) the generally-secular Bob at Polizeros. Thanks, Bob!
In the past ten days, my wife and I have helped bring six baby goats into the world. Most came easily, one had its leg folded under and I had to reposition it so it could be born. All the moms and babies are healthy and happy.
There is something special about assisting the birth process. It’s not just witnessing the miracle of life, though that is something worthwhile in itself. It’s more about participating in the miracle. I did not create the life, nor did I bring it into the world, I was merely a helper and a witness, a vehicle, a conduit. The real work was done by something far greater than I. Call it God, or pratitya samutpada, or Indra’s Net, or any other word or name you choose, it is That Which Creates, that which breathes life, that which gives to us all we have.
In that sense, I find birthing analogous to my life: I am a participant, a vehicle, a conduit. But the real work is done by something far greater than I. I see this in moments of miraculous events. Sometimes in my volunteer work I sit across the table from an inmate at the jail and I see a man’s eyes light up as he realizes there is hope. Some of my good friends today were when I met them on a seemingly inevitable path to destruction and death, yet today you would never know that. In 2002 I got word that my work in Sri Lanka had helped to bring about a cease fire. These are life saving events that I have been privileged to be part of.
Yet I see it also when a cheese comes out well. A good cheese is a living, breathing organism that is not so much manufactured as nourished. Likewise the plants in my garden give me joy. I did not create them, I am merely the conduit, the vehicle; I provide water and care, but the real work is done by something far greater.
Why can’t I see this in every aspect of my life? I have two successful businesses, an impossible feat for a person with my background. I am awed by the partnership that is my marriage. The problems I have today are problems of abundance. The grace that has been granted me in my life is beyond comprehension.
Yet most days I bog down in the details, the critical issues of each day that are not really that critical. Payments to the hospital for last year’s care, payment to the vet for her ongoing services, not enough time and energy to do the things that I need and want to do. A bit of objectivity would make me laugh: my life has become so abundant that I can’t do it all! That’s not a problem, it’s a gift!
It takes something magnificent like a birthing, or a sunset, or a miracle in someone else’s life for me to regain that objectivity. It takes something so astounding that I can no longer pretend that I am the source. And with that awareness, I can contemplate the real Source – and for that moment, I have an opportunity to find peace.
Inflation: In 2001, 10 million Turkish Lira was worth about $6.
From the Wall Street Journal:
The U.S. dollar’s downward slide is accelerating as low interest rates, inflation concerns and the massive federal budget deficit undermine the currency. With no relief in sight for the dollar on any of those fronts, the downward pressure on the dollar is widely expected to continue.
This was of course predictable (and predicted).
What currencies are gaining against the dollar? The ones raising their interest rates to combat inflation. Duh.
Tags: recession
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