In rec.woodworking
"Leon" wrote:

Sure, let's kill the industry again. I lived through that ill conceived
idea, right her in Texas buddy. It put hundreds of thousands on the
streets and killed the city of Houston for a decade. Screw that.

While some may have been out of jobs in Houston, I recall Houston in the 70
as being a boom town with it being hard to hold on to good help by 1974. It
very easy to find a job in the 70's in Houston. At least every one I knew
that was looking for a job including engineers were tossing coins to decide
which company to go with.

Leon, Houston was indeed booming in the 70s and employing tens of thousands
of displayed auto workers from Michigan and other mid eaetern states. The
Windfall Profits Tax was proposed by Jimmy Carter and was enacted in 1980.
By 1983, Houston was a dustbowl with over 2000 forclosures a month, the VA
and FHA were selling forclosed homes in lots of 100 for about .25 cents on
the 1980 dollar.

While the rest of the US prospered on the low price of energy, we in the
south floundered and even our own legislators and a Texas president could
have cared less. Republican Phil Graham voted against federal money to
retrain displaced oil workers. GWB did nothing to help us either.

Those engineers that were tossing coins to decide where to work? They
didn't have coins to toss. I know guys that were making $5000 a month in
1980 that ended up working for $8 an hour 5 years later. Homes bought for
$150k were forclosed and sold at auction for less than 1/2 that. One
friend put $65,000, his entire life savings, down on a home and later lost
it to forclosure. Even after that much down, he couldn't sell it for less
than he owed.

All you folks despise the "evil" oil companies and forget that real people
with families are working for them, just like you. We're trying to pay our
bills, raise our kids and enjoy our lives too. Gasoline is, by an order of
magnittue, the most inflation proof comodity there is. If the price of
gas appreciated like the price of cars, you'd be paying $15 a gallon for
it. But do you see me whining about the excess profits of GMAC, which are
in fact, HUGE!! Nope because I want folks working in Michigan. It is good
for this country. Ross Perot was right about that huge sucking sound of
jobs going to Mexico and I hate it. I know it isn't good for the country.

Incidentally, I've done my part. I just bought a brand new GMC Yukon,
nearly $40,000, and I did it with OIL money.

Bruce