hmmm... dropping energy isn't going to help with the big costs families face in terms of health insurance and costs, day care, college costs, or housing.
Am i wrong :)?
Am i wrong :)?
But I agree that health insurance, day care, and college would not get magically fixed by lower energy cost. I believe those costs have risen for other reasons.
Also I am not totally convinced by grandparent's theory that energy cost is what caused the decoupling of wages from productivity. Maybe.
This includes healthcare, day care, college costs. Even if only indirectly.
In other words: if the average worker salary suddenly rose by 100% in every area except classical musicians (let's say there's some magical new productivity technology that increases productivity for every job except music, and further say that the workers capture that value) then the classical musician salary would also rise, because otherwise people would stop becoming musicians at the same rates. Nowhere in this thought experiment did the supply of labor change.
>because otherwise people would stop becoming musicians
It's about as cleanly supply and demand as you can get. The supply of musicians willing to work for $x decreases, since they now have the option to do other work that is more preferred than being a musician for $x. Therefore, you now have to pay more than $x to continue incentivizing a musician to be a musician.
Going back to your string quartet example, which I do not know if it's true or not, but let's suppose it is:
>The reason a string quartet costs more now isn't because there are fewer people who can play instruments, it's because other things pay better.
The reason a string quartet costs more now is because there are fewer people who can play instruments (relative to demand, since price is where the supply and demand curves intersect). Because other things pay better, fewer people (again, relative to demand) might choose to play instruments, causing less supply (relative to demand), causing prices to rise.
My point is that it's all still just simple supply and demand curves. If the demand for corn skyrockets, causing the price of corn to increase, and farmers choose to plant corn instead of wheat, then causing a decrease in the supply of wheat, then causing the price of wheat to increase, is that anything other than supply and demand?
I wouldn’t say that because I disagree there is any difference in the application of supply and demand curves between labor and goods. If anything, Baumol’s effect clearly demonstrates that price (wages) is set by supply and demand just like goods, and it’s entirely unsurprising.
As you reduce the supply of laborers for labor type A because those laborers have better options, then the price for labor type A rises. That’s what Baumol says. That’s what supply and demand says. I fail to see the significance.
Cheap energy is good, but i worry more about our ability to afford those things.
If gas was $.10/gallon, cars would be cheaper. We wouldn't need ridiculously complex gas engines tuned to yield another 1 mpg, or electric cars with $30,000 of Lithium-ion. They could be low-mpg and cheap and it wouldn't matter.
If gas was $.10/gallon, everyone's wages would, effectively, increase since every person who owns a car would spend less on gas, which for many people is a lot of money.
If jet fuel was $.10/gallon, flying would be cheaper. Importing and exporting goods from faraway places would be cheaper.
It's worth noting that due to Jevon's Paradox, investments in energy efficiency also result in greater energy consumption.
There is one mode of transportation that is currently REALLY cheap and that's huge ships. That's why we import so much from China -- sending a huge ship across the ocean is really cheap. If all forms of transit were that cheap (trucks, flights) the world would be very different.
Would cheap energy lower land costs for a house or flat? Cheap energy would improve situation. But a lot of competition comes from productivity and wages. Low wages in Asia made possible to import goods cheaper from Asia rather than produce locally.