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Comment by j7ake | Hacker News Reader

I recall back in the previous boom of 2006-2007 they were paying high school graduates $200k to work in the fields. They would even fly you in and you work a few days then fly you out.

I wonder if salaries have changed since then.

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They discuss wages. $45 / hour was average in the US. They’re losing people to Amazon driver jobs etc. It’s hard to empathize when clearly they could simply pay more.

They make more money by shipping less oil, these pieces are placed to make it look like they are trying to increase supply which is not an incentive.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jun/18/marathon-pet...

The problem is that if oil companies make multi-year investments to increase production, what happens if the Ukraine conflict ends in a few months and Russian oil is tolerated again, or OPEC ramps up production? Companies and investors are tired of repeatedly having the rug pulled out from under them, investing during high price periods and then eating losses when the price of oil falls. If the government wants more domestic oil supply, they will need to craft policy to encourage that, not just complain in press releases.

Gas prices aren't high because of Ukraine, they are high because of oil company profits https://twitter.com/IAmPoliticsGirl/status/15180483663194808...

I pulled up one example, Exxon Mobile. Their net profit margin is 8.21%. BP is at 4.8%. Meanwhile the average for the S&P 500 is at 12.4%. So if these companies decided to operate as non-profits, we'd see maybe a drop from $5.00 gas to $4.80 or $4.70 (assuming the whole discount gets passed on to consumers). Prices were already up before Ukraine thanks to the resurgence of demand post-covid, but it certainly didn't help.

Also, please don't argue via linking obnoxious TikTok-style videos. If you have a point, make it yourself.

Exxon net profit is at an all time high, they don't need to increase supply and reduce prices. I never said they have to operate as a non-profit, what a ridiculous thing to bring into the discussion.

https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/XOM/exxon/profit-m...

My point was that major oil companies already operate with low profits relative the the S&P 500, and that even an extreme reduction to 0% profit would not significantly reduce prices at the pump. An 8% profit does not explain gas prices doubling since 2020. Also the "all time" high profits are something like 0.05% above 2018, that language seems like headline clickbait. It might be technically true, but it's rather misleading.

The smart move would be to nationalize oil and procure oil services by bidding process.

That will never happen of course.

I was skeptical that this was some conspiracy theory, but according to the article there is/was a temporary tax incentive for them to lose money during the pandemic.

I cant image Amazon and Target paying even 1/2 that so clearly pay is the factor keeping people from taking the jobs.

Though I do wonder by you believe "they could simply pay more"

I think Walmart was advertising long distance trucker jobs around $95k+ and that wasn't owner operator setups to my understanding[1]. How much of these figures are unrealistic or have hidden agendas, I don't know.

[1] https://www.nbcnews.com/business/business-news/walmart-truck...

I was just at a Walmart DC outside of salt lake this morning and they had a sign coming in to the truck gate say (IIRC) $87k/year + $8k sign-on bonus. Walmart has always paid at the higher end of the spectrum so they have more strict hiring requirements.

This is for the Walmart fleet though, that Walmart trailer that almost took you out last week was most likely driven by one of the outside companies that run dedicated for them and they for sure aren’t as strict on who they hire.

I met a guy a few weeks ago who works in a Walmart warehouse near Salt Lake. He was making the equivalent of $32/hr about a year in to it.

It’s nasty work. But Walmart is smart enough to understand that they need labor to operate.

There are RNs making less than that.

That's a wild guess and I have no insight into the industry, but I wouldn't be suprised if it's yet another race to the bottom?

Labor seems to be one of the few things where supply and demand dont apply.

Happy to be wrong.

> Labor seems to be one of the few things where supply and demand dont apply.

I don't understand this. From my perspective, the labor market in the United States today is possibly the best example of supply and demand mechanics.

Lol. No.

At the low end, the market is directly supported by welfare programs. In the middle, supply friction is distorted by health insurance. There are meaningful market forces at play at the upper echelon, but it’s more a social market than tied to actual business outcomes.

Obvious distortions exist, the ones you noted, plus minimum wage and so forth.

However, discussion to this point notwithstanding, I still believe it's the most exemplary mechanic of supply and demand today.

Adam Smith only mentions markets in the context of a free labor market.

It’s the only supply and demand metric he ever describes.

It was generalized into everything is a market, with jargon cottage industry springing up around everything; market is a hammer, and we pound nails.

That's not true at all. He talks a lot about land rent, and argues that at the end of the day a farmer who rents crappy land and a farmer that rents good land should make about the same, since the difference in rents will about balance the difference in yields. A tenant farmer is a small businessman, not an employee.

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