Something that has been widely ignored on the labor shortage end. Reminds me of my dad screaming about the immigration problem while his entire landscape crew was made up of Hondurans while completely failing to see the irony beating him across the head with a bat.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/mar...xacerbated-by-immigration-slowdown/ar-AAR2qig
Oil may already be in the process of screaming back towards $50 due to a combination of increasing supply, reduced demand in Europe and a coordinated release of oil reserves. The question then becomes, are we starting a battle with OPEC+ who will slow production as their way of pushing back against the stategic oil release causing oil to surge back up? Reserves are just that, the supply is finite. If oil runs down too much then the same people griping about high gas prices will be griping about being unemployed.
The solution to the oil problem is to quit subsidizing oil and do everything in our power to go green for so many reasons.
On the inflation end, yeah we have inflation. We doubled the national debt in a few years with free money. Inflation was going to happen and I've been preaching it in the investment threads for a couple of years. Pretending it isn't being pushed into overdrive by pent up demand is also naive.
It reminds me of the saying, "If money only grew on trees". If it did, money would be worth the same amount as leaves.
In conclusion, both political sides are like cars driving down a one lane highway at full speed in opposite directions. The left want to give money away to everyone pretending the end result isn't less value of that money. The right want to pretend that we can control the price of oil without consequence when it costs us twice as much money to produce as places like Saudi.
Reduce immigration and suddenly low paying jobs aren't so low paying. Reduce immigration and suddenly the low paying jobs can't be filled and the worker shortage leads to higher pay. You would think the left would want to reduce immigration to help raise wages from the bottom up. You would think the right would want to increase immigration to keep wages low so businesses could make more money. The battle lines that are drawn in politics make absolutely no sense.
For anyone paying attention to the price of oil and wants to know how it works, it's really simple. In January of 2020 the US became energy independent. It was the first time in decades the US did not import any oil from Saudi Arabia. Within 3 weeks Saudi and Russia flooded the oil market crashing the price. Saudi and Russia can sell $25 oil and still make money. At $25 the US oil business goes belly up and they have to shut down production. Once the US production is completely disrupted then OPEC+ meets and puts production caps in place driving the oil prices back up. It takes years for the US oil production to get back up to full speed and in that process oil prices go through the roof because US companies understand that if they dump all their investments in at once to get things running that OPEC+ will just crash the market again wiping out all that investment. High oil prices don't impact places like Saudi where gas is never more than pocket change, it only impacts places like the US and Europe.
Want to add extra incentive to OPEC+ to push control over the market? Talk about green energy and green initiatives on a global scale. They know they have a product that has a limited shelf life and they are going to try and maximize the price of every drop and I can't blame them. For the US, it's like Missouri trying to compete with Louisiana in the shrimp industry, it's simply geographical advantages that can't be overcome. The only way to get energy independence is the greatly reduce the need for oil through green energy policies. The same people on the right yelling at the gas prices are the same people fighting the transition to green energy. Meanwhile, the left is pushing reducing the use of fossil fuels before the infrastructure for green energy is in place acting like it isn't going to drive prices up, even if it is all talk.
It's no wonder other countries think we are so dumb and it's no wonder Saudi can pretend to be our ally while inflicting tremendous damage to our contry without any consequence.
So just like Covid, politicize very basic function of markets and expect disasterous results. In the end, free markets will work it out and prices will stabilize but the swings getting there are going to be really volatile. At least until the next crisis unfolds and we start the process over again.