The less crap we buy from China, the lower the price of gas will be.

[mdmc]

Poll question: The less crap we buy from China, the lower the price of gas will be.

Agree or disagree. Discuss.

[AndyA]

1. China's economy is booming right now due to their exports to America.

As such, more Chinese are buying cars than ever before, and those cars all require gas.

When America shops at Wal-Mart, they think they're being smart and saving money, but much of that savings is going right into their gas tank when they fill up.

I read a great article a few months back about it. Wal-Mart was one of China's top consumers, and it had a graph that showed the flow of money, which was pretty interesting.

I'll look later today to see if I can find it again.

[groovedaddy]

2. Life Without Goods Made in China a Challenge - NPR

A Year Without "Made in China": One Family's True Life Adventure in the Global Economy chronicles how Sara Bongiorni and her family tried to live without buying anything produced in China.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=12056295

[Demeter]

3. This However IS True: The More Solar, Wind and Water, The Lower Oil Will Be

[Tesha]

5. Now *THAT* is true!

(Oil will still rise, owing to increasing worldwide demand, but
it will rise less sharply if we're using less.)

Tesha

[Dogmudgeon]

6. I kinda doubt that

The more "alternative" energy we have, the more energy we will use in total. That's been proven too many times. There is even an economic law named after the first scholar to deeply research this effect. (The name of whom I have forgotten.)

The only things that will change our consumption habits are a) radical changes in technology; b) force of law and/or economics, or c) economic collapse.

We still have a choice, but we're squandering time.

--p!

[Strelnikov_]

8. Jevon, is that you? n/t

[Dogmudgeon]

10. Jevon's Paradox

From "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox">Jevons' Paradox" at Wikipedia:

"In economics, the Jevons Paradox is an observation made by William Stanley Jevons, that as technological improvements increase the efficiency with which a resource is used, total consumption of that resource may increase, rather than decrease. It is historically called the Jevons Paradox as it ran counter to Jevons's intuition. However, the situation is well understood in modern economics. In addition to reducing the amount needed for a given output, improved efficiency lowers the cost of using a resource – which increases demand. Overall resource use increases or decreases depending on which effect predominates.

In his 1865 book The Coal Question, Jevons observed that England's consumption of coal soared after James Watt introduced his coal-fired steam engine, which greatly improved the efficiency of Thomas Newcomen's earlier design. Watt's innovations made coal a more cost effective power source, leading to the increased use of the steam engine in a wide range of industries. This in turn increased total coal consumption, even as the amount of coal required for any particular application fell."

Thanks for the tip!

:headbang:

--p!

[endarkenment]

9. bingo nt.

[Selatius]

4. Makes sense. If we stop feeding their factories and cars with money, they won't spend on gas as much

But I don't think we will get off the fact that American corporations prefer to make China a manufacturing hub for American goods to dodge labor protections and environmental regulations and "overly compensated" labor.

[ThomWV]

7. Disagree - it would lessen world demand, but demand is not driving cost

Supply and Demand have little to nothing to do with world oil prices so a reduction in demand resulting from reduced Chineese comsumption would not have an effect on world price.

[Javaman]

11. Totally disagree. You make it sound as if America is china's only market.

yes, we buy a ton of stuff from china, but so does europe, the middle east, africa, russia and south america. We stop buying stuff, gas will not go down, it will either remain or go up, because with china's now 10% growth yearly, what ever we don't use they will.

Ships run on bunker fuel not gas. we are now getting bucket loads of goods from mexico and they are coming into the US via trucks, on top of that mexico's main oil field is failing. It dropped 5.4% last year alone. They are the second largest non-opec provider of oil to us behind canada.

Plus, if oil gets down to under 60 bucks a barrel, the people who are now heavily invested in the tar sands will get really pissed off. they won't make any money. Those "people" include mobile, exxon and shell.

The worlds easy oil is peaking. It's predicted that by 2017 that the world will need double of what is being used now. That ain't going to happen.