The Price of Tomorrow: Why Deflation is the Key to an Abundant Future

by Jeff Booth

At 9 percent of GDP, it makes up a lot of jobs around the world. In the US alone, 3.6 million direct jobs are in the traditional energy industries, including production, transmission, and storage, with another approximately two million jobs in energy efficiency.30 But the role of energy in our economies is much higher than that. We still need to factor in how much of the world’s military complex is built mainly to ensure continual access to energy at reasonable prices. Low-price, abundant energy is a critical component of any nation’s competitiveness, since it is used in every industry. Beyond that, we must factor in the damage cost of extreme weather events and flooding due to climate change, which is, at its root, caused by the way we extract and use energy today. And those costs—from insurance increases to clean-up and rebuilding—also contribute to our economies.