i noted this trend while discussing work with my dad last week. my father works in HR at a french owned auto parts manufacturing plant here in the midwest. it turns out that they are getting more and more work sent their way by bmw for parts that would normally be shipped in from europe for assembly here. turns out now with the weak dollar and increased shipping costs, made in the usa is starting to become competitive again.

from what i've known about peak oil, i've always thought that eventually manufacturing would have to come back to the us due to shipping costs. i always thought it would take longer (like 30-40 years) before area's like the rust belt came back. having watched numerous plant closings throughout my life, its nice to see this trend hopefully start to reverse itself.

I'm hoping that this trend in oil prices will help American farmers and ranchers, especially in developing small, local farms.

Who wouldn't want to make that trade: a good job in exchange for high gas prices?

It doesn't help much if you can't afford to get to the job.

Who wouldn't want to make that trade: a good job in exchange for high gas prices?

It doesn't help much if you can't afford to get to the job.

Ah, but if you take a streetcar to work, one powered by solar generated electricity, not a problem.

All we have to do is reform our pathological land use policies so we can eliminate our disfunctional autocenteric transportation system.

One would hope, but there was a story on Marketplace (I think it was..) yesterday about hedge funds and other 'large investors' buying up farmland and farming equipment makers in the US. This will be driving up the price of farmland to the extent that it will only be the wealthy and large institutions who will be able to afford it, and look to states and localities to ratchet up property taxes as well to meet their budget needs as energy costs skyrocket and wages continue to stagnate further driving smallholders off of the land. Its a pleasant fantasy that peak oil will generate a paradigm shift to a world of relocalization and small, sustainable farms, but the wealthy will not go gently into that good night. Cheap energy and public policy have created immensely concentrated wealth and power- those with it will use it to secure their positions and control at the expense of everyone else, same as it ever was. Environmental events and constraints have certainly caused the collapse of societies and civilizations, but I don't know that they have ever caused the kind of great change we're hoping for here (wealth redistribution, localization, etc.). Wars and revolutions seem to be the only things that do that.

I see that some crazy old hippie chick torched two gas stations and a Starbucks (of course) over in Danville, CA down the road from Berkeley. Che's not dead, he just smells funny.

Straight 10% tariffs on all imports would present a stable, rational, and non-negotiable aspect to the international trade landscape instead of the draconian, byzantine and highly suspicious instrument of quasi-foreign relations that it now is. Additionally a simple and steady 10% tariff provide the funding for national infrastructure and alleviate the dependence that has developed in the last few decades on the dreaded and even-more suspicious and universally despise "income tax" which is so rife with abuses as to be hardly worth trying to "fix".

The 9/11 Truth Movement,

Free Energy Suppression

and the Global Elite’s Agenda

http://www.checktheevidence.co.uk/cms/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=182&Itemid=60

Or will developing (or developed) countries like China or Taiwan just "enforce" lower wages in order to remain competitive? In a perfect world, governments would enforce a living wage for its citizens. In this world, we have regimes that can simply instruct its workers to accept less pay.

Knappa wrote:

It doesn't help much if you can't afford to get to the job

I think this problem falls into the category of "fucked either way." If we had a viable system of local transportation alternatives this wouldn't even be an issue.

OTOH if oil prices magically fall off a cliff you can kiss all those budding manufacturing jobs buh-bye, and enjoy your 30-minute freeway commute to your awesome new job at Taco Bell.

It's weird how all that crap Jimmy Carter said in 1979 gets less corny every day.

I guess this will mean the end of “just in time” manufacturing processes that rely on many small deliveries if the price of transportation remains high for very long. What other big changes are coming?

jedi says:

Or will developing (or developed) countries like China or Taiwan just "enforce" lower wages in order to remain competitive? In a perfect world, governments would enforce a living wage for its citizens. In this world, we have regimes that can simply instruct its workers to accept less pay.

considering china has more militant labor action and civil protest (read riots) in a week than the US has in a year i doubt any regime can long enforce the sort of labor market that made china what it is today. already companies are leaving china for the cheap labor of vietnam. while for now it might make sense for cheap disposable products to be made in far off factories, the transport costs of heavier more durable products will continue to rise and make local production more and more attractive.

of coarse this assumes people can afford to get to their jobs and that people can afford to buy the products they make.

The problem is that right now a lot of our industry is in rural areas. This is for a lot of reasons. For instance, factories are big and city land is expensive. Bad actors find it easier to evade environmental regulation as there are less eyes to see the problems. Suffering rural areas often bend over backwards to get any kind of job. The list goes on.

The question really isn't about where we want and need to go; it's about how we get there. I can't help but think that there will be pain for a lot of people along the way.

On the other hand, places like LA just have no excuse.