🚨 BREAKING: Flames dance with fate at Iran’s Parsian Ivanki refinery, claiming one life, injuring 25. Smoke whispers danger in Semnan. #IranFire #OilCrisis #BreakingNews #DnnPress

to fascists, LOOKS ARE EVERYTHING. they live by mirages and mirrors.

you can see this in 1980s fashion: the minute Republicans were successful with their #OPEC #oilCrisis, and then #IranHostage & #IranContra twofer coup against Jimmy Carter, shoulder pads popped on everything.

out went the dailywear of working class clothes like tshirts and jeans. everything became a riff on the business suit.

business suits are the uniform of USA corporatist fascism & Mussolini understood that… 🧵

I'm as Mad as Hell, and I'm Not Going to Take This Anymore. Speech from the #film Network (1976). Looks like I got another movie to add to the list. This sure seems familiar almost 50 years later. So... what are you ganna do about it? #Politics #depression #recession #Russia #MAGA #1984 #protest #CrimesAgainstHumanity #OilCrisis
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZwMVMbmQBug

#536: 1973 (Clip)

https://vigilante.tv/videos/watch/ba9c6ef6-6363-44eb-a2f7-27d0ad769275

@Dianora There are a few other economic concepts which are IMO key to developing any remedies and/or alternatives. I'll try to touch on the major ones here.

Wage/Rent pricing, mentioned above, is a key stumbling point. Smith:

A man must always live by his work, and his wages must at least be sufficient to maintain him. They must even upon most occasions be somewhat more, otherwise it would be impossible for him to bring up a family, and the race of such workmen could not last beyond the first generation.

https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Page%3AThe_wealth_of_nations%2C_volume_1.djvu/135

The Law of Rent and Iron Law of Wages (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_rent https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_law_of_wages) dictate that these dynamics are always in conflict and play, and crush the working class, most especially those who live by wage labour (or worse: piecework pay, see Smith's discussion of this for an eye-opener), and rent rather than own their domeciles. Both concepts date to the 18th / early 19th centuries, but are largely ignored in contemporary orthodoxy.

The "obvious" solutions, of, say, providing free/subsidised essentials to the working class or of critical goods and services (food, clothing, housing, education, healthcare) largely further exacerbate the existing perverse market dynamics. I am not saying DON'T help those in dire need. What I am saying is that if this is the sole and widespread remedy, that the underlying problems get worse: wages fall (because "welfare" benefits subsidise its costs rather than employers paying a living wage), education, housing, healthcare and other services get more expensive (because subsidies provide additional revenues).

Winston Churchill (another unlikely champion) noted this in 1906:

Some years ago in London there was a toll bar on a bridge across the Thames, and all the working people who lived on the south side of the river had to pay a daily toll of one penny for going and returning from their work. The spectacle of these poor people thus mulcted of so large a proportion of their earnings offended the public conscience, and agitation was set on foot, municipal authorities were roused, and at the cost of the taxpayers, the bridge was freed and the toll removed. All those people who used the bridge were saved sixpence a week, but within a very short time rents on the south side of the river were found to have risen about sixpence a week, or the amount of the toll which had been remitted!

https://www.landvaluetax.org/history/winston-churchill-said-it-all-better-then-we-can

Instead, a dual strategy of taxing rents (generally: providers of the goods/services above or those acting similarly economically), and providing for increased labour bargaining power though an improved best alternative to negotiated agreement (BATNA) and coordinated negotiation power (a/k/a Labour Unionisation) is necessary. Both of course run into the Wealth is Power and Logic of Collective Action (Mancur Olson, 1965: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Logic_of_Collective_Action) problems.

Direct subsidies / contributions as emergency measures directed at dire immediate circumstances are ABSOLUTELY of value. **But they should result in direction to directly addressing the rents/wages dichotomy.

A business which cannot pay a living wage and survive economically is a charity conducted to the benefit of its owner at the cost of its workers, or is provisioning public goods which should see a subsidy in their provision through tax revenues and transfer payments. Below-subsistence wages and labour supports only exacerbate the underlying problem.

Private ownership of real estate is a surprisingly recent development, displacing earlier feudal or monarchical rents (often very long-term leases) largely in the late 19th century. Among the few explorations of this history I've found is Simon Winchester's Land (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_(book)). And of course there's Henry George's Progress and Poverty (https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Progress_and_Poverty_(George,_D._Appleton_%26_Company,_fifth_edition)), championing the Land Value Tax (along with: Adam Smith, David Ricardo, and Milton Friedman (!!!), to name just a few. Social housing has its failures, but also successes, including the Fuggerei (Augsburg, Germany, created by the Fugger family in 1516 and continuing to serve to this day: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuggerei), Vienna, and Japan (through both market and government actions, in part through some idiosyncratic practices).

Housing cannot be both affordable and an investment asset. And of the two, the first function is primal.

Incidentally, I suspect that a large part of the US growth in homelessness may be directly attributable to going off the gold standard, itself a response to the country's peak-oil moment and reliance on foreign energy imports, driving banks and financial institutions to find an alternate asset class: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21304603.

Next are some more obscure economic principles, somewhat addressed in the mainstream, but highly underappreciated ...

2/

#economics #orthodoxEconomics #critique #wages #rents #LawOfRent #IronLawOfWages #MancurOlson #UBI #unions #LogicOfCollectiveAction #RealEstate #homelessness #OilCrisis #PeakOil #Fuggerei #ProgressAndPoverty #HenryGeorge #DavidRicardo #SimonWinchester #AffordableHousing #AssetHousing #BusinessAsCharity #tootstorm

🛢️ Alaska’s oil industry is fading
🧊 Permafrost is melting

Full story 👉 https://www.ryanjhite.com/2025/04/18/alaskas-oil-crisis-the-resource-that-built-a-state-and-what-happens-after-it-ends/
#Alaska #OilCrisis #MiningUSA

🇻🇪 Venezuela’s nightmare:
Maduro’s 3rd term.
Trump back in office.
Oil lifeline cut.
With allies faltering & dirty crude out of favor, the nation spirals deeper into crisis.
🛢️ Full story: https://www.ryanjhite.com/2025/03/30/venezuela-in-crisis-how-trumps-return-and-maduros-re-election-collided-to-deepen-a-national-nightmare/
#Venezuela #Trump2024 #OilCrisis #Maduro #Geopolitics

A fond reminiscence of the oil crisis of 1973. https://youtu.be/2HpjnfekaJw?si=D1aImb3XV14MEN0b
#oilcrisis #1973 #israel #palestine #oil #nixon

A fond reminiscence of the oil crisis of 1973. https://youtu.be/2HpjnfekaJw?si=ILxiQLTvoT_zI5DN
#oil #1973 #oilcrisis #history #coldwar

#TuneTuesday 🎷 #歌謡日
おはよう御座います

The slogan "Be kind to the Earth and protect our limited resources" has roots in the #70s’ #OilCrisis, but it continues to be echoed today through the SDGs.

Like in Tower of Power’s song, I felt the importance of making an effort not to leave the burden to future generations.

　
#70年代 の #オイルショック から「地球に優しく、限りある資源を大切に」と言われ、今もSDGsとして受け継がれています

タワーオブパワーの曲のように後世にツケを残さないようにしたいです
#aiart #wrtn #GPT4o

Only So Much Oil In the Ground / Tower of Power
https://youtu.be/GORzhOH3NMs

तेल के संकट से आ रही कंगाली, शाही महल किराए पर लगाएगा सऊदी अरब
#SaudiArabia #OilCrisis

https://www.navodayatimes.in/news/national/-poverty-due-to-oil-crisis-saudi-arabia-will-put-the-royal-palace-on-rent/241953/

Iso Rivolta Fidia #photography #autoworldbrussels #belgie #belgien #belgium #brussels #museum #auto #bruxelles #brüssel #car #cars #highlight #isofidia #isorivolta #isoautomoveicoli #giorgettogiugiaro #ghia #nardi #chevrolet #ford #maseratiquattroporte #oilcrisis #modena #johnlennon (Flickr 20.12.2022) https://www.flickr.com/photos/7489441@N06/52575623412

@Centurion480

I put what I call #PeakCivilisation at the 2008 #FinancialCrisis, but the year 2000 #DotComCrash is another possibility. Some put it as early as the 1973 #OilCrisis. Everything past the peak is on the falling side of the curve.

Another financial crisis is coming for sure. Predicting exactly when it will hit is hard but I'm betting sooner rather than later. I'm also betting that higher inflation and increasing cost of living aren't going to go away, just get worse.

#Collapse #CivilisationCollapse #Overshoot #EcologicalOvershoot

🛢️US oil reserves at record low since '85! ⚠️ OPEC actions & dollar shift signal economic challenges ahead for the US.
https://youtu.be/w2Lzms_FA4k

#OilCrisis #EconomyWoes #News

PS:

imagine a world in which #JimmyCarter had been re-elected in 1980.

i refuse to call 1980 the "Reagan Revolution"

not when minutes after he was sworn in, all 52 hostages in Iran were released with nary a peep.

not when years later Bush came out unscathed from #IranContragate

not when, before that, the #OPEC #OilCrisis was not just manufactured; but meant to turn USA into a servant-state of the Saudis

not when today's #ClimateCrisis is a direct result of those 1980 elections

@loren @GottaLaff

The discussion is very much needed, yes.

However, from a fiscal and economic point of view, debt ceilings, spending limits, and the like are very much needed. Many countries and supranational bodies like the #EU use this sensible measure (https://economy-finance.ec.europa.eu/economic-and-fiscal-governance/stability-and-growth-pact_en).

The reason being that all states need to spend more in times of crises, e.g. the #Pandemic or the #OilCrisis of the 1970's...

Notes on Industrialization of Sweden

#economy #oilcrisis #deregulation #sweden #socialdemocracy