Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right

by Arlie Russell Hochschild

One defense of oil jobs was that they were highly paid, and that salaries would “trickle down” through consumption that increased jobs and wages of other workers. But did it? “Not much,” Templet says. That’s because oil wages don’t trickle down; they leak out. As he explained, “Most of the plants are owned by foreign companies. Sasol is based in Johannesburg. Royal Dutch Shell is based in The Hague. BP is based in London. Citgo is a wholly owned subsidiary of Petróleos de Venezuela. Magnolia LNG is based in Perth, Australia. Phillips 66, spun off from ConocoPhillips in 2012, is based in the United States but not in Lake Charles. So most top executives in these companies are not building luxury homes and swimming pools in Lake Charles, Sulphur, or Westlake. Stockholders aren’t spending their dollars there either, but rather where they live, in Greenwich, Connecticut, say, or Mill Valley, California.”