> A labor shortage means wages go up. If wages aren't going up then there's no labor shortage.

This is correct in theoretical economics. This is incorrect in actual economic practice only because theoretical economics has no game theory model for political advantages. In fact, the entire concept of these advantages are hand-waved away as "corruption". Labor shortage only justifies wage advantage among specialist workers. (Programmers, lawyers, accounts, and other symbol artisans) Labor shortage among common workers justifies cost crisis for the producer, forcing them to engage in political games via lobbyists to discover advantage for the cheapest worker and alter the laws to make that worker accessible. (The Ford model)

> An alternate theory for why resources aren't being exploited is an aggregate demand shortfall. This would result in low capital utilization, low labor utilization and slow growth.

The current aggregate demand shortfall happened after 2008, in which the Fed absorbed all toxic mortgages and cut off the productive forces of the world to supply the American housing boon. The entire global economy was geared for that type of collective oil consumption, and when it became obvious Americans couldn't pay their mortgages, the jig was up. Yes, this resulted in slow growth for the PREVIOUS configuration of human interaction. (The Miltonian model) Every housing opportunity short was taken off of the books AND off of the market, depriving housing service labor wealth opportunities and consolidating them all into the Fed. Thus, the housing market was forced into an artificial labor shortage because of artificial inventory contraction. In exchange, the banks were given an asset swap, flooding them with liquidity, and they all sought profit opportunities overseas to pay themselves out of outright nationalization in exchange for their hard assets. Thus. the post-war American consumer role of first and last resort for world productivity was intentionally stifled by Federal Reserve intervention, resulting in time-specialized capital utilization, which cause low mass capital and mass labor utilization, finalizing in slow growth.

> Which model better fits the facts in the world today: the one which supposes there's a labor shortage or the one that supposes a demand shortfall?

Current demand shortfall is a byproduct of the factors I have mentioned above, and hardly a model worth extrapolating from unless you can eliminate the Federal Reserve's role in the matter. In a world in which there is no consumer of first and last resort, what is the alternative? China absorbs its own productive capacity? African consumption absorbs… what? Facebook's benevolence? You're left with an intentionally fractured world in which nations are forced to realign their entire political and social arrangements to maximize oil consumption from a dynamic list of competitors to stave off politically destabilizing labor shortages. This means that, if oil is deprived from your nation, you will absolutely experience a politically destabilizing labor shortage! You will not be able to mobilize your masses to chase global opportunity because you will be priced out of the game before you even start… unless you engage in socialistic configuration to absolutely control prices, and then you're just managing peak production limitations.

If my reasoning holds, then the question is thus: Is America experiencing an oil shortage?