Tylenol is made from crude oil!

Now that Donald Trump has got the USofA into a fossil fuel war. I figured I ought to know more about oil in our lives. Obviously, the big issue is petroleum in several forms -- gas and diesel fuel for cars and trucks. And also in some areas for heating. But it turns out there is so much more that we do with oil, including with the ubiquitous petroleum-based scourge of modern life: plastics. 

The video here explains how Tylenol is made from a component of crude oil with a lot of help from appropriate bacteria-eating plastic. Really. This is a clear explanation and mind bending fun. Even the fund pitch in the middle is smart and bearable. Enjoy.

There are a huge lot of everyday items that use oil in some way. If the current disruption of the global oil economy goes on, the Donald will have succeeded in screwing up everyone's lives. Seems in character.

Click to enlarge.

The economist Paul Krugman observes our moment:

... now we have the worst of both worlds. The world is now highly dependent upon a complex global supply chain and the erstwhile leader of the free world is erratic. Does anyone know what our Iran policy will be a week from now, or even tomorrow? Moreover, the Iran debacle has revealed us to be far weaker than most people realized – so weak that we are afraid to stop Iran from exporting oil even as we threaten to destroy its civilian infrastructure. The truth is, even our allies no longer trust or respect us.

So what we are facing now isn’t simply a matter of consumers losing the ability to purchase imports. Instead we are facing a scenario in which producers lose access to crucial inputs they need to keep producing. The crisis in the Strait of Hormuz is raising prices at the pump, which is bad. But it is also threatening to deprive American farmers of fertilizer during planting season, to cut off essential helium supplies to semiconductor producers in Asia, to deprive pharmaceutical producers of crucial materials, and more.

In short, terrifying as the Hormuz crisis is, I worry that it may be only the beginning. For a world economy that is riddled with multiple potential choke points can no longer rely on a strong, reliable and trustworthy America to act as a guarantor of the system. While things are bad now, they may very well get a lot worse.