Letters: Video dating and rose coloured glasses

Video dating

In the Eureka TV and Webinars section, could you please start including the date on each video so it’s easy to tell when it was filmed? Everything else you do is dated clearly, I think the videos should be too. 

Carol Green

Editor’s response: Thank you for the valuable feedback. We have begun including the date in the summary section of each video.

Rose coloured glasses

I would like to pose a few questions regarding the supposed US recovery: If the US has indeed recovered, why is the Dow Jones at 14,000 when it was 14,000 in October 2007? Why is gold at $1600 when it was at $700 pre-GFC?  Why is gasoline nearing $5 a gallon when it was at $2.80? And why are food stamp recipients numbered nearing 50 million when they numbered 27 million before the crisis? These are hardly signs of things improving, especially when the money supply has increased by 44% in that time.

On the topic of US shale and oil, the notion that the US has discovered some huge new source of energy is actually very far from the truth. The depletion rate for oil and gas wells in the Bakken formation in North Dakota is around 40% in the first year. A well costs around US$10 million to drill, while most of the reserves are depleted by the end of the second year. The 4,500 wells in the Bakken produce an average of 138 barrels each per day, hardly enough to make a huge profit and drill a new well in three years’ time.

Richard Kleeman

Self-sufficient self-funded retirees

In these days of self-centred individualism it is heartening to see so many self-sufficient self-funded retirees writing to these letters pages. I am a very heavily subsidised retiree generously supported by taxpayers with a tax-free pension and earnings in my DIY fund. They also pay for many other things I don't need like a seniors health card, and associated perks such as a telephone allowance, as well as free public transport most of the time and rebates on my council rates, electricity bills, and private health cover. I could also get them to pay for a part aged pension, with still more perks, but with so many selflessly independent self-funders out there, surely it would be far too socialistic to even consider it.

But hang on, I'm a taxpayer too. Maybe my income taxes could pay for that pension.

Harry Lawrence