New York City has 16,000 fewer employees than 2001…but spending on salaries and wages has increased from $3.8 bn to $10.8 bn; and spending on pensions has increased from $1.3 bn to $8.3 bn over that same period.

What can’t be sustained, won’t.  We’ll be seeing this all over the country before long.  Economic reality can’t be denied, however politically unpopular that might be.

It occurred to me the other morning that nothing has any value except that which an individual gives it.  To some, this probably seems simplistic.  For me, it was a minor revelation—perhaps even an epiphany.  It was, in some sense, a recognition of perception in an area that I thought was almost completely objective.

The invisible hand that guides the market place cannot be denied.  If a government fiddles with supply then price changes and demand changes.  If a consortium fiddles with a price, then demand changes and supply suffers either glut or scarcity.  Based on the truth of this, I somehow assumed that a thing has a certain intrinsic value.  I now believe this to be untrue.

Here are the examples with which I played:

Gold has a market price.  That is essentially an average measure of the value placed on it by the people who are willing to buy it.  For me, gold is virtually worthless.  I buy some now and again as a trinket for my wife.  But, it’s not the gold that’s worth something.  It’s shaped and beset with stones and I may like this one or that one depending on its appeal to me when I see it.  But a hunk of gold?  What do I want it for?  It is a gambling token.  It might go up in market value.  It might go down.  I would only hold it for that reason.  I can’t eat it.  I can’t smoke it.  I can’t bathe with it.  For me personally, it is an expensive paperweight.  I get more value out of a good pizza.

An episode of Cheers once revealed that Sam carried around a squashed bottle cap.  The cap was a talisman of sorts that had helped him through tough times while recovering from alcohol addiction.  He describes nights he spent squeezing the cap, trying to avoid grabbing for the booze.  I seem to remember him talking about blood, sweating, and tears.  I can’t imagine what some alcoholics must go through to beat the addiction.  At any rate, the bottle cap is simply an old mashed cap.  You might find it’s identical twin in the parking lot of the local 7-11.  But the two caps have very different values.  Sam’s is worth more to him than he can imagine.  He spent long nights putting the value into it.  (Even this phrase is a misnomer.  He put no value into it.  Rather, he developed a relationship with it.)  The one found at the convenience store is trash.  To anyone else, both bottlecaps are worthless.  Sam can attempt to reveal the value of his by telling his story.  But, even then, the value they place on the cap depends on the value they place on Sam.

What is breathable air worth?  What is drinking water worth?  Our very lives depend upon it.  Its abundance has made it nearly worthless.  Does it have some objective or intrinsic value?  No, not really.  It only has the value that we as people place on it.

I suppose, in the end, “value” must have two parts.  It must have a “thing” and it must have a “recipient”.  Nothing has value in and of itself.  Can this thinking be applied to people?  Do I have some intrinsic value?  What does that even mean?  Certainly, I have value as an income provider to my family.  I hold some value for my employer.  I may be valued by my colleagues.  I have value for Todd in that I converse with him about interesting topics and I blog on his site when he slumps.  But do I have intrinsic value?

Given my argument above, I guess I don’t.

This has been your Depressing Thought for the Day.

The U.S. House of Representatives approved a controversial bill Thursday that opens up vast stretches of the U.S. coast to oil and gas drilling, paving the way for a reversal of a 25-year ban on energy exploration off a majority of the country’s shoreline.

Unfortunately, the bill will probably die in the Senate.

We need to do this.  While I’m certainly in favor of alternatives, the reality is we need the supply now while the alternative technologies work their way into the market.  Those hoping for a mass conversion to electric or whatever are simply denying the reality of economics.  These things take time.

As for finally putting offshore exploration back on the table, it couldn’t come at a better time.

There are new reports out circulating that Chinese firms are planning to slant drill off the Cuban coast near the Florida Straits, tapping into U.S. oil reserves that are estimated at 4.6 billion to 9.3 billion barrels. This compares with 4 billion to 10 billion barrels believed to be beneath the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge, where drilling is held up in Congress due to the objections of environmental groups which warn of endangering caribou. Permission to drill in the refuge, which experts are certain will not present any environmental hazard, has failed by just two votes in the Senate.

They might have been congratulated for their “green” efforts in an area of heavy air pollution.

Instead a group of French cleaning ladies who organised a car-sharing scheme to get to work are being taken to court by a coach company which accuses them of “an act of unfair and parasitical competition”.

The women, who live in Moselle and work five days a week at EU offices in Luxembourg, are being taken to court by Transports Schiocchet Excursions, which runs a service along the route. It wants the women to be fined and their cars confiscated.

Not much more to say about that…

I meant to post this some time back, but my blogging has been sporadic. Trying to catch up with things I consider important.

SPIEGEL: Mr. Shikwati, the G8 summit at Gleneagles is about to beef up the development aid for Africa…

Shikwati: … for God’s sake, please just stop.

SPIEGEL: Stop? The industrialized nations of the West want to eliminate hunger and poverty.

Shikwati: Such intentions have been damaging our continent for the past 40 years. If the industrial nations really want to help the Africans, they should finally terminate this awful aid. The countries that have collected the most development aid are also the ones that are in the worst shape. Despite the billions that have poured in to Africa, the continent remains poor.

SPIEGEL: Do you have an explanation for this paradox?

Shikwati: Huge bureaucracies are financed (with the aid money), corruption and complacency are promoted, Africans are taught to be beggars and not to be independent. In addition, development aid weakens the local markets everywhere and dampens the spirit of entrepreneurship that we so desperately need. As absurd as it may sound: Development aid is one of the reasons for Africa’s problems. If the West were to cancel these payments, normal Africans wouldn’t even notice. Only the functionaries would be hard hit. Which is why they maintain that the world would stop turning without this development aid.

Read every word. And stop destroying Africa with money!

So, gas prices are higher then at any time in the recorded history of humanity?

The $2.33 mark remained well below the inflation-adjusted high — $3.03 a gallon, in March 1981.

So, if we really do want to reverse this recent trend, are we willing to go drill?

“Wal-Mart critics often note that corporations like Ford and G.M. led a race to the top, providing high wages and generous benefits that other companies emulated. They ask why Wal-Mart, with some $10 billion in profit on about $288 billion in revenue last year, cannot act similarly.”–New York Times, May 4

“Standard & Poor’s Ratings Services cut its corporate credit ratings to junk status for both General Motors Corp. (GM) and Ford Motor Co. (F). . . . The decision by one of the nation’s most respected ratings agencies comes as the two iconic American automakers are losing market share at home to Asian automakers, seeing sales soften for their most profitable models and are facing enormous health care and post-retirement liabilities.”–Associated Press, May 5

Priceless…

For many years now, GM hasn’t really been a auto company so much as a finance company. I read somewhere that the vast majority of profit comes from the finance arm, GMAC. I’m not sure about Ford. And with the high-profit SUV lines softening under the gas price pressure, it looks to be a bleak time for most of the domestic auto manufacturers. Time for the UAW and others to reconsider the inevitable future.

Meanwhile, don’t take advice from the NYT.