With a map like this, is it any wonder that AB32 doesn’t make any sense right now?
From the Grass Valley Union
A plan to block a law cutting state greenhouse gas emissions until the economy rebounds looks likely to make the Nov. 2 ballot.
Monday, members of the California Jobs Initiative Coalition turned in more than 800,000 signatures of registered voters to qualify — nearly twice the number needed.
The initiative was started by Assemblyman Dan Logue, R-Linda, who represents Nevada County in the Third Assembly District.
“We only needed 440,000” signatures Logue said. “People realize we need to protect and bring jobs to California. We’re going to give working families of California a break until we recover economically.”
If the California Jobs Initiative does qualify the ballot as expected, voters will be asked to consider putting the brakes on the nation’s most far-reaching global warming law. Oil companies have paid about $700,000 to fund the campaign.
The initiative would suspend stringent greenhouse gas emission standards set by legislators in AB32, a bill passed in 2006. The suspension would last until California unemployment levels dip to 5.5 percent and stay there for one full year.
The state jobless rate was at 12.6 percent in March; it hasn’t been at 5.5 percent since September 2007, according to U.S. Department of Labor statistics.
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger immediately blasted “greedy oil companies” for trying to set back his sweeping environmental policy through funding Logue’s initiative.
A number of business groups warned that regulations enacting the law would cost jobs and prompt billions of dollars in higher energy prices. John Kabateck, executive director of the National Federation of Business California, said that’s a cost businesses cannot shoulder as they struggle in a weak economy.
“While the goals of AB32 are admirable, clearly the implementation of this at this time … would be a death knell for many small businesses,” Kabateck said at a news conference.
Schwarzenegger vowed to fight the initiative if it qualifies for the ballot.
More at the Grass Valley Union
==============================
In other news: George Shultz to co-chair campaign opposing AB32
The Sac Bee has the story:
Former U.S. Secretary of State George P. Shultz has signed on as honorary co-chair of Californians for Clean Energy and Jobs, a coalition opposing a proposed ballot measure to suspend the implementation of AB32, California’s landmark law to lower greenhouse gas emissions.
Shultz, a prominent Republican, said in a statement that the proposed initiative would derail “California’s innovative effort to stimulate movement toward a cleaner and more secure energy future.”
Full story here. h/t to Russ Steele
===============================
Yahoo News has a AP story about the most and least economically stressed counties in the United States. California has 12 of the 20 most economically stressed and none in the least stressed category. Most of the Counties are in California’s Agricultural Bread Basket. Where are all those green jobs?
Here are the 20 most economically stressed counties with populations of at least 25,000 and their March 2010 Stress scores, according to The Associated Press Economic Stress Index:
1. Imperial County, Calif., 31.27
2. Merced County, Calif., 28.29
3. Lyon County, Nev., 27.96
4. San Benito County, Calif., 27.2
5. Sutter County, Calif., 26.41
6. Yuba County, Calif., 25.8
7. Stanislaus County, Calif., 25.46
8. Iosco County, Mich., 24.89
9. San Joaquin County, Calif., 24.78
10. Nye County, Nevada., 24.19
11. Lapeer County, Mich., 24.03
12. Cheboygan County, Mich., 23.89
13. Luna County, N.M., 23.82
14. Lake County, Calif., 23.78
15. Kern County, Calif., 23.62
16. Tulare County, Calif., 23.17
17. Madera County, Calif., 23.04
18. Fresno County, Calif., 22.72
19. Clark County, Nevada, 22.65
20. Boone County, Ill., 22.59
Complete list is here. Again a h/t to Russ Steele
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With all the “California this, that, and the other thing” stuff above, I remembered this and can’t resist sharing it: “Americans are considered crazy anywhere in the world. They will usually concede a basis for the accusation but point to California as the focus of the infection. Californians stoutly maintain that their bad reputation is derived solely from the acts of the inhabitants of Los Angeles County. Angelenos will, when pressed, admit the charge but explain hastily, ‘It’s Hollywood. It’s not our fault – we didn’t ask for it; Hollywood just grew.’ The people in Hollywood don’t care; they glory in it….”
Robert A. Heinlein: “-And He Built a Crooked House-“
Layne Blanchard says:
May 4, 2010 at 12:11 pm
“That the greens/left have selected hydrocarbon fuels for their hatred is (particularly today) irrational.”
Look, I am a green leftist and I love hydrocarbon fuels, even the raw
smell of them. But mostly because they are excellent concentrated fuels,
which have accelerated us into modernity.
But, being rational and responsible, I find that the negative externalities
are becoming too much:
– they cause warming, which might become catastrophic in the 21st
– they are dirty (SO2, NOx, heavy metals, particulates, soot)
– they are being depleted
– they cause political problems due to uneven distribution
I wonder if the people in this state realize that the measure to stop the Greenhouse Law should really be titled:
No to the Son of Enron, once was enough.
There’s been all this talk about how the big bad oil companies are coming in from out of state to fund this initiative, but I’m surprised more folks are digging into the funding of the campaign in support of AB32…
ClimateWire had an interesting article a while ago on this:
http://greenconomist.com/2010/05/04/news-analysis/californias-climate-bill-battle-money-trail.htm
No conflict of interest there… right…
Add on top of that, now we have Blue Cross coming out in support of AB32… Good grief.
This is an article about California’s man-made drought and political involvement. I thought it was interesting in context with the states unemployment issue. Cheap almonds anyone?….. http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article.aspx?id=531662
OT – Der Spiegel has released a secret recording of the showdown at the Copenhagen Climate Summit
The Video (in german) can be watched here.
I prepared a subtitled version (Youtube):
Since I had quite some trouble catching all the words, especially from the chinese representative, please feel free editing the subtitles on the original Dotsub page.
George E. Smith says:
May 4, 2010 at 11:26 am
What nonsense. The Salmon aren’t engangered. The Delta Smelt isn’t a federally endangered species (though the state defines it that way), just threatened. Besides that, the Delta Smelt can cross breed with several other variants of the Smelt family, including the Longfin Smelt which isn’t threatened. What’s the big difference between the Longfin Smelt and the Delta Smelt? The Delta Smelt like hanging out in the Delta.
“which they steal from Northern California”… San Francisco has no right to water from the Sierras. The people of the Sierras should have the right to determine who gets their water. Cut off San Francisco now. Let them shower using Evian.
” Don’t worry; they are watering in areas where they want to grow crops; and not very far back from that same hiway; along which they advertise their woes; which they blame on the Government. ”
Folks who say this care nothing for farmers & high food prices hurt the poor and starving throughout the world. Why do they thing there’s high unemployment in those farming counties since the water was banned? What a pack of lies.
And of course the Coastal Commission prevents desal plants. We in CA are at the mercy of Green Stalinists.
His wikipedia article doesn’t seem to have been updated to show that he switched side to the democrats.
“”” Polar Ice Cap says:
May 4, 2010 at 8:47 am
Who knew that going green really meant going red?
Don’t know how true this is but it’s from the comments in the link and it doesn’t sound too far-fetched:
The California Central Valley accounts for quite a few of the top 20. It is severely stressed due to the cutoff of water Sacramento River “required” due to a lawsuit by the environmental lobby to help a fish — the Delta smelt — of no particular significance. In order to fluff the smelt’s habitat, valuable Sacramento River water flows out into the ocean instead of being used where it is severely needed — and has previously been used for decades — in the San Joaquin Valley. “””
Well Ice Cap, that water from the Sacramento, San Joachin, Mokelume river delta systems has for eons provided for the entire ecology of the Monterey Bay Area of those oceans; and the entire California Fishing Industry relies on that river water that is being “wasted” by letting it flow to the oceans.
The San Joachin Valley has its own rivers that supply water to it; and used to feed Tulare Lake; the largest lake West of the Mississippi.
But then those San Joachin “farmers”; actually out of State mega conglomerates that “farm” the valley between hiway 99 and highway 5; even over to 101; the So-called “West Side” deliberately drained the entirety of Tulare lake, and sent ALL of its water up the San Joachin River (one of the rare north flowing rivers); and the greedy SOBs did it just to get a few more acres of land to farm in the San Joachn Valley.
And the loss of Tulare Lake affected the entire climate of tulare and Fresno Counties and probably Kings County as well; and removed the main feed source for the underground aquifer that used to support all of those farmers.
And back when those farmers were getting Northern California delta water for pennies on the dollar; it wasn’t being used to grow golf courses, and desert towns out in the boondocks of Southern California.
There’s a reason for the Arctic ice; it gets cold up there; and there’s a reason for the Mojave Desert; California has historically been a desert; and Gaia never intended for anything besides cactus to grow there; and nothing to live there besides Gila Monsters, and Rattle snakes.. So she didn’t provide water for wall to wall hovels for people to live where there is no work to do.
California does have a water problem; but it isn’t caused by any minnows. Just try getting approval to build any more reservoirs in California, to store water, when we do get a surplus; not a chance unless that reservoir is in Southern California; like the East Side Reservoir that wash finished not so long ago, and filled mostly with Delta water from the north (also Colorado river water).
The greenies won’t allow water storage; they won’t allow energy sources; even green ones that kill birds; their aim is to return California to its geological historic desert state.
It doesn’t have anything to do with farmers not being able to grow food; if they wanted to grow food; why are they planting cotton, that can be grown in other States that have an over abundance of water every year.
wws says:
And thankfully Schwarzeneggers political career is within a few months of being over for good.
Not to go too far OT, but I am tired of people bashing Arnold as a governor. Arnold came into office with the right ideas. He knew that the previous state bankruptcy/downturn was partially a result of national economics and partially the fault of a Sacramento that was wholly in the pocket of public labor unions. For some reason California has allowed public labor unions to bankroll elections and ignore the inherent conflict of interest when civil servants end up with more influence over their bosses than the public at large. Arnold knew when he came in that this self-serving circle had to end. He tried to break them, he failed. When California rejected his ballot initiatives (a special election in which his side was horrifically outspent by the labor unions), he gave up. He’s been lame duck ever since, but it’s not his fault. California rejected sanity, not Arnold.
Jeremy
Interesting points. I have long held the belief that public employees should not be allowed to vote.
“”” mikael pihlström says:
May 4, 2010 at 1:17 pm
Layne Blanchard says:
May 4, 2010 at 12:11 pm
“That the greens/left have selected hydrocarbon fuels for their hatred is (particularly today) irrational.”
Look, I am a green leftist and I love hydrocarbon fuels, even the raw
smell of them. But mostly because they are excellent concentrated fuels,
which have accelerated us into modernity.
But, being rational and responsible, I find that the negative externalities
are becoming too much:
– they cause warming, which might become catastrophic in the 21st
– they are dirty (SO2, NOx, heavy metals, particulates, soot)
– they are being depleted
– they cause political problems due to uneven distribution “””
Well mikael; if you are so against fossil fuels for their pollution problems and depletion; why would you support the use of fossil fuel energy sources to pay the cost of installing what are supposedly clean green free renewable abundant alternative energies.
Silicon solar cells for one thing are not clean green; you wouldn’t believe the toxic wastes produced by that industry; try Nitrogen TriFluoride, that is suposedly 17,000 times as potent as CO2 as a GHG; and is almost entirely an effluent of the Electronics Industry.
But PV Solar is an energy source isn’t it; so why don’t they use their own energy to run their silicon foundries; that produce that stuff; why the need for fossil fuelled subsidies.
And you better hope that that oil and gas and coal never run out; because when they do; so will the subsidies for green clean free renewable alternative energies; most of which will be found to be energy wasting schemes; not energy providing schemes.
And even if they luck out and provide some positive energy availability gain; the total energy consumption circulating in the system; will simply amplify the waste heat and CO2 and water effluent load on the climate.
If it takes all the energy from 10 barrels of oil to create 11 barrels of oil equivalent in renewable energy, then you are basically consuming 10 barrels of oil, to do what you could have donw in the first place with just once barrel of oil.
Even if 10 gets you 20 , you are generating much more waste and pollution than if oyu simply used the available (fossil) energy for what it is best suited for.
I plan to live till the fossil fuels run out just so I can watch the collapse of the free clean green abundant renewable energy industry; once it’s real motive force is removed by its very absence. Try doing solar renewable then; I’ll then happily laugh all the way to my funeral pyre.
Kinda echoes the John Carpenter 1996 Documentary ‘Escape from LA’, starring Kurt Russell.
To quote the Internet Movie Database (IMDB) that Al Gore invented – ‘Escape from LA follows almost exactly the same plotline as Escape from New York; A city has become a colony for criminals,…’ er,…just saying is all.
In the film its encircled by the sea, thanks to an earth quake, which has made it an Island,…(oh please god, please).
Perhaps today it could be humanely ring fenced with Prius’s, Tofu vendors, Yoga schools and Screenwriter guild union offices, in order to prevent the rich aroma of unreality (HO2), watermellon politics and general insanity permeating into the rest of the state.
The current level of HO2 (Heightened Offensiveness – squared) is rated at 1:1, One part per millimetre, and its been steadily increasing since Bob Crane got his first video camera. We can’t account for why the earth hasn’t rebuked LA and swallowed it whole, and its a travesty we can’t.
“”” Dennis Nikols says:
May 4, 2010 at 9:39 am
I normally refrain from commenting on what happens in places that I don’t live. California society probably displays the greatest range of social and political hypocrisy and contrasts imaginable. Probably because it is a highly diverse and dynamic society. California is also the home of fantasy land and from Calgary, looking at news reports, it appears most of its citizens live in it. All winter long I get my strawberries from California and I like strawberries but I do have a price margin resistance point. As long as they can keep those illegals employed picking them, so us smug Canadians can afford to keep eating them, they should be polity ignored by the rest of us. Hum, Scrips in is California, isn’t it. “””
Dennis,
Go ahead and enjoy those California Strawberries; I’m sure they will keep coming to you. And don’t worry too much about them
being picked or grown by illegals; that is actually not too likely. I have my home in tulare County; which is one of the poorest, if not the poorest Couties in all of California; and they grow Strawberries all around my house; and boy are they ever good; and pretty cheap too.
But in don’t know of any Strawberry farmers anywhere near me, who are illegals. Almost all of the strawberry growers are Vietnamese Hmong Farmers; whose ancestors were refugees from the Vietnam war; all legally immigrated to the USA under Government resettling programs for their support of the US foces during that war. We also have Phillipino ancestry farmers in the area; but they typically aren’t growing strawberries. The Armenian Farmers in the County whose roots go back to the 1915 Turkish massacre; are a major influence in the Citrus and Grape, and stone Fruit industries; and all of them that I know employ ONLY legal non-union migrant family farmers who have been employed by the same farmers for decades; and at wages and working conditions much ahead of the Cesar Chavez United Farm Workers Union rates that apply in much of the state agriculture. The “illegals” mostly get their work from someone from their own culture in the “coyote” business, who works with growers who aren’t too fussy who they employ. My next door neighbor happens to be of Mexican ancestry who lived in Santa Ana CA since he got out of the US Army after Korea; and did city work until he decided to try his hand at farming; so he started from scratch in our neighborhood; with help and land that he bought from one of the long time “white” farmers in the area. I have watched him grow his businees from a small start to a successful small family farm operation that he and his wife work themsleves; along with two or three perfectly legal long term employees of Mexican Ancestry. The Illegals only came by his place once; to tell him to take down his Stars and Stripes Flag from his flagstaff. He told them where to get off; and they haven’t bothered him since.
Oh those exploitative Coyotes who get work for illegals (of any nationality); we have one of those in the family; my wife’s cousin; so yes I do know how that system works.
For most family farmers; the costs of dealing with government paperwork make it very uneconomical to employ illegal farm workers; so in fact, most of them we do not need.
mikael pihlström says:(May 4, 2010 at 1:17 pm)
“Look, I am a green leftist …… ”
Yes you are.
“But, being rational and responsible…”
In whose eyes? Ah yes, your own.
Now that is robust verification of your green leftness.
“”” David Corcoran says:
May 4, 2010 at 2:30 pm
George E. Smith says:
May 4, 2010 at 11:26 am
What nonsense. The Salmon aren’t engangered. The Delta Smelt isn’t a federally endangered species (though the state defines it that way), just threatened. Besides that, the Delta Smelt can cross breed with several other variants of the Smelt family, including the Longfin Smelt which isn’t threatened. What’s the big difference between the Longfin Smelt and the Delta Smelt? The Delta Smelt like hanging out in the Delta.
“which they steal from Northern California”… San Francisco has no right to water from the Sierras. The people of the Sierras should have the right to determine who gets their water. Cut off San Francisco now. Let them shower using Evian.
” Don’t worry; they are watering in areas where they want to grow crops; and not very far back from that same hiway; along which they advertise their woes; which they blame on the Government. ”
Folks who say this care nothing for farmers & high food prices hurt the poor and starving throughout the world. Why do they thing there’s high unemployment in those farming counties since the water was banned? What a pack of lies. “””
Well you obviously know what you are talking about. I happen to have my home to the East of hiway 99 right in Tulare county; so those farmers are my neighbors so I can see what they are doing; which happens to be farming right now. And when I drive down there from the Bay area I drive right through those fallow areas on the West side; and wouldn’t you know it; I get a mile of so east of Hiway 5; and stuff starts growing again. And vast areas of that West side are growing cotton; not food; and much of the land taken out of service was growing cotton and not food.
And I pay an annual fee to the local water district for the privilege of having them cut through my property with their irrigation canalso I have to have a bridge on my own property, simply to get to my house; over their canal. And no the amount of water I get from them and their canal is precisely zero. Adn they won’t let me upgrade my bridge (which I own) unless I want to construct some monstrosity that can carry a huge truck that you cannot legally put on any public road anywhere in the USA. They broke the bridge I had with one of their nincompoop drivers, and won’t let me replace it with what I want; so I simply repaired what had been standing there for 75 years.
I get all of my water out of my own well; and in addition I have a much bigger well that supplies water from my land to a surrounding farmer to irrigate about 100 acres of citrus and row crops; and I don’t get a cent for my water from him.
So if you want to separate reality from “a pack of lies” why don’t you actually go and visit some of these places to see for yourself.
And as for the salmon not being endangered; that of course is why you can’t keep silver salmon caught in California waters any more, or whay the commercial salmon fishery has bee shut down for a couple of years; by some miracle there will be a short salmon season this year; no thanks to the water thieves.
As for the delta smelt; and also the salmon smolt and other species; there would be a lot less problem if the water thieves had bothered to put in proper fish separators in the first place, instead of just sucking everything into their pumps, in a rush to get it to Socal.
Whay do you suppose all the southern california lakes are infested with Striped bass, and other alien species from the delta; they get sucked into those pumps and those that aren’t ground up into chum, make it to so cal lakes; that are kept full with nocal water. Try adding a thimble full of water to Pyramid lake by hiway 5 in socal; which is surrounded by an arid desert; not exactly anyone’s idea of a watershed.
“”” Enneagram says:
May 4, 2010 at 11:14 am
George E. Smith says
May 4, 2010 at 10:57 am
Hey!, What a good idea!, then your folks could be paid $20 a month and you’ll be competitive with chinese products. “””
I don’t have a problem with anybody citing anything that I ever say here.
Please don’t ever report that I said something that I absolutely never ever have said.
Anybody can go back to my 10:57 AM post and see that your statement is completely absent from my post.
Did your mother never tell you that nobody has a good enough memory to succeed as a liar.
Most amusing is the most frequent solution to unemployment….construction.
Here in Nevada we’re getting major construction projects crammed down our throats, and the most highly touted? Road work. “It will create jobs!”, “It will get the economy started!”…..
And what is the backbone of road construction?? Trucks, trucks, trucks. And some more trucks. Diesel trucks. And concrete. And asphalt.
All the stuff of a cleaner environment…. LOL!!
Brian D says:
May 4, 2010 at 9:54 am
Environmental rules can really cause problems. Does anyone remember the uproar last year about farmers in CA being cutoff from there water supply because of a minnow? I don’t know if that was ever resolved, but talk about a major hit to the livelihoods of people who feed us. I mean a MINNOW! Come on!
I’m sure there are many horror stories out there like this one with more to come.
______________________________________________________________________
Yes California Farmers took a second hit with the Food Safety’s Scorched Earth Policy
The watermelon should be the new symbol for the enviro-nazis…
Green on the outside…Red in the middle
I support the Suspend AB 32 ballot initiative because AB 32, if implemented, will increase prices on almost everything, decrease jobs as businesses close or move out of state, and most importantly, do absolutely nothing to change the earth’s climate. I have written many articles on my blog on why AB 32 is wrong, one in particular I would like to share is here:
http://sowellslawblog.blogspot.com/2010/03/problem-with-ab-32.html
“…until the economy rebounds”….? Then what, pass the thing and kill the economy again?
Too many people will say “this is not the time to institute (fill in whatever green initiative)…” as though some time in the future will be better. None of these initiatives should be enacted, ever, because they are all premised on a false assertion that increasing levels of “man-made” CO2 is somehow likely to cause catastrophic increases in global temperature. This assertion is unobserved, and unproven.
Bad policy based on bad science is still bad policy.
And now California like New York will not allow marine water for cooling power plants.
http://online.wsj.com/article/BT-CO-20100504-722438.html?mod=WSJ_latestheadlines
Polar Ice Cap says: Don’t know how true this is but it’s from the comments in the link and it doesn’t sound too far-fetched:
“The California Central Valley accounts for quite a few of the top 20. It is severely stressed due to the cutoff of water Sacramento River “required” due to a lawsuit by the environmental lobby to help a fish — the Delta smelt — of no particular significance. ” […]” — in the San Joaquin Valley.”
While generally true, look north of Sacramento, that northern part is the Sacramento Valley (it’s San Joaquin to the south). That area does not depend nearly so much on Fed water (lots of wells… water table between 14 and 30 feet in most places)
That’s my old “home turf” from decades ago… Lots of peaches, rice, nuts, kiwi fruit and some cattle.
Those folks have gone “big time” into automation of farming (largely due to minimum wage laws). So you tell them that all that farm machinery is not going to be runnable without “carbon credits” or that they have to get a giant harvester ‘smog tested’ somehow and, well, it’s easy to put the land fallow for a year, or just run some cattle on pasture instead…
BTW, that’s not a hypothetical… There was at one time a proposal to have ALL California farm equipment smog checked under CARB. Don’t know whatever happened to it, but it will be real interesting finding out what the “smog spec” is for an old John Deer 60 or a Farmall from before 1950…
And I lived through the automation push after the UFW decided to strong arm some farmers for “union wages”. One guy took out a great grape orchard and put in mechanized harvest crops. For some reason, he didn’t like being the target of blackmail via a targeted strike… So he “caved” one year and got the crop harvested. Then started pulling out established grapes due to “labor cost”. About 4 years later, no more grapes, and no more UFW contract to deal with.
So what The State has forgotten is that a farmer has choices. LOTS of choices.
They’ve driven a lot of the “truck crops” or “row crops” to Mexico from labor costs.
They’ve driven a lot of “table grapes” out of business via union costs.
They’ve driven a lot of the REST of the crops to extreme automation ( I watched ‘tree shakers’ take over from hand picking and knew a guy working on designing an automated pumpkin picker. Watched the automated sugar beet harvester take over.)
So you lean on them Real Hard with extra costs for running equipment? Well, it’s like this, they don’t NEED to run high equipment operations.
It doesn’t take much labor and it doesn’t take much equipment to put a bunch of cows or sheep on a pasture. Then hire someone from out of state to round them up and ship them away to market…
Then all the folks who sell and fix all that machinery are out of work.
And all the folks who run that equipment or provide farm labor are out of work.
And then all the folks who sold THEM stuff are out of work.
And then all the restaurants and gas stations they used to visit are out of work.
And then …
(My family ran the restaurant. We watched this stuff really closely… Where I first started learning about Economics at about age 7 from my Dad.)
BTW, the meat packing plants were largely run out of state some time ago. Yeah, there are some hanger ons, but it’s not that hard to ship live cattle somewhere out of state for processing. See this story for an example of a Bay Area ranch that sends it’s cattle to Utah… Oh, and consider that those trucks and truck drivers can be “home based” in Nevada or Utah too. California need not apply…
http://www.sautewednesday.com/archives/2006/06/slaughterhouse.html
So the meat packer will be out of work in California too… But the cattle will get a ’round trip’ to Utah via Diesel truck…
I really really wish political critters would learn some economics. At least just enough to realize that you can not legislate away the laws of economics…
If the farmer has too much burden put on them, they can not function in that product, so they will simply shift to a product without that burden. They do not have a choice of staying in a failing product…
I grew up in that farm country and lived through several shifts of main crop. I have fond memories of the local “fruit and vegetable stands” ( that evaporated as minimum wage laws drove the row crops under). I watched “nut crops” go to “mechanized tree shakers” for harvest and I watched “table grapes” leave when the UFW tried to unionize them [ and force prices higher ]. I watched tomatoes go from hand picked to those funny trolly things. Now wine grapes are going to mechanized picking. And harvesters have grown to the size of giants, cutting the drivers needed per acre way down. Expect robotic harvesters “soon”.
One of the “iron laws” is that any wage above market equilibrium will increase unemployment… Another is “tax it and you get less of it”…
So: Yes, the land can’t leave. But it doesn’t need to employ people either…
(Note: I’m not saying what is GOOD. I’m saying what DOES HAPPEN.)
One trivial example: Put a ‘volatile organic compound’ limit on bug sprays, I can just not spray. Less yield, but the goal is max PROFIT not max CROP.
So if it costs out to spray, you do. If it doesn’t, you don’t. Make it cost more, folks spray less. That means unemployed folks at the spray company, the labor who spray it, and less demand for trucks to haul product and processors to process it… The farmer maximizes profit, but the cost to everyone down the line is not his concern.
This is NOT a theoretical. I remember studying linear programming models of income optimization from picking the ideal PROFIT level of spraying… The things you learn in farm country… It’s a standard thing for bigger farmers to do. Exact optimization of “inputs”. Raise the cost, you WILL lower the inputs. And all the labor going in and coming out. This is Adam Smith’s “Invisible Hand” and something the political critters don’t seem to understand (even though they are driving this bus…)
One other point: Someone will, no doubt, think “Folks won’t cut down an orchard just because of THAT.” Think on this: Every orchard has a lifetime. In any one year, a few percent of the total orchards have “passed optimum productivity” and are pulled out. Then you replant and wait about 5 years to start getting more harvest…
So, you get to put about $5000 / acre into the ground, and wait 5 years, while dealing with a load of regulatory crap and ‘cap and tax’ or… You could spread some grass and clover seeds and run some cattle… get “instant” profit.
Every time an orchard reaches “end of life” the farmer makes a decision about what to do next. It isn’t always ‘replant the orchard’. IMHO, it would take about 20 years, max, to have converted the bulk of orchards to something else. And the labor impact would be immediate as the planting of new orchards is labor intensive.
So why are all those places having that high unemployment? Because the laws “managing” the economy are putting them out of work. Get rid of the laws, you would have employment. ( The “invisible hand” is always there, waiting to put folks to work…)
Sorry for the rant, but I watched this build up over my lifetime in that area. From hundreds and hundreds of migrant workers every year following the harvest; to a boat load of folks “on the dole” as it paid better with more free time. (They even put in a ‘subsidized housing’ section to house the folks getting the free money to not work… For a while “welfare housing” was a growth industry in my home town…)
And I watched farmers convert to crops that were not their dream due to labor costs. As people sat unemployed on the dole watching TV… Farmers can be remarkably passionate about things like peaches or tomatoes. Being pushed into alfalfa against their will can be a real bummer. One good friends dad did that. Wanted a small peach orchard, grew alfalfa… It was a cost issue.
So California went into the “Welfare and Welfare Housing” business. And now they are running out of the money to pay for it as the productive parts left the state “for greener pastures”. We now import people to join the welfare queue (great package, including medical, dental, housing, food,…) and export industries and wealth production.
I probably would not be as worked up about this if it were not for the fact that the politicians seem surprised at the result…
E.M.Smith tells it like it is. I’ve been a farmer in California for most of my 64 years and every thing he says is A FACT.
Dennis Nikols says: California society probably displays the greatest range of social and political hypocrisy and contrasts imaginable. Probably because it is a highly diverse and dynamic society. California is also the home of fantasy land and from Calgary, looking at news reports, it appears most of its citizens live in it.
To understand California, it is best to mentally divide it into 3 sections.
1) The LaLaLand L.A. Basin. All that “SoCal” stuff in an arc from Santa Barbara to San Diego with the center about L.A. Lots of “light industry” and loads of Media / Movies. Largely culturally dominated by the Hollywood ethic, but with pockets of “blue collar” conservatives (just not enough to outvote the Hollywood Limousine Liberal cult.
2) The San Francisco Bay Area (including SillyCon Valley). Mostly hard core Looney Lefties with some (a few) centrists and Radical Right who mostly keep their heads down so they won’t get it chopped off for political incorrectness. Culturally dominated by the SF Gay Scene with the “Cool Wanabees” in SillyCon Valley trying to look cool by accepting whatever SF says is cool. A modest number (dwindling fast) of tech companies and some financial centers in SF (LA has some financial centers too). Oh, and all the rich liberals living in Marin. This BTW, is why the rest of you have been afflicted with Nancy Pelosi. It is her “Home Turf” and the folks in SF just LOVE her… I think that kind of says it all.
3) Everything else. All that broad swath of mountains, valleys, farming, deserts. Throughout most of that, it is fairly conservative. Yeah, you get the ‘acceptance’ of the left agenda since they are dominated by the two major population centers, but it’s the moral equivalent of the “Flyover Country” states in the center of the USA. Modestly conservative farm country mostly. There are some “bedroom communities” in, for example, Stockton, that feed … well, “fed”, now that things have collapsed; fed workers to the SillyCon Valley tech market. Mostly the blue collar and poorer folks who could not afford a home in the Bay Area, so leaning more conservative. (That’s “California Conservative”, so slightly more liberal than a Texas Democrat 😉
Most of the people in #3 would love to be free of areas #1 and #2, but are out voted on attempts to break up the state. (That, and they keep wanting to leave the SF area in with the rest of N. California and the idea of being completely dominated by SF is just appalling… better to have LA in the mix to keep SF in second place…)
Oh, and there is an “honorable mention” of a semi-area #4. All along the coastal band there are pockets of semi-rural left leaning folks. An odd mix of “Just want to be left alone” with “looney left” politics. In the north end you get the California Humbolt Mary Jane farmers; so that band spreads a bit more inland than to the south. They would love to have a political leaning, but they are mostly just trying to remember where they left the pickup truck… and could you go away now? To the south of SF, inland a couple of miles, you get a band of conservative farm country until you run into about Cal Poly SLO. From there on down it starts to be rich liberals with an ocean view… and their servants and hangers on. North of that, it’s a fairly thin band right along the coast. An ideal example of this is Santa Cruz / Monterey / Carmel as the epitome of Looney Lefty, but about 15 miles inland is a valley of conservative farmers. Salinas on down.
And throughout the whole area you get raisins in the dough. In the conservative farm areas you get a fair amount of Mexican influence with their mix of liberal attitudes toward drugs and conservative attitudes other areas. And Clint Eastwood was mayor of Carmel because the left there wanted to prevent him from having a bar and restaurant (or some such) and he got motivated to run for office. While in Sacramento, we have Ahhnold (Mr. Shriver-Kennedy…) and frankly, you get an odd sort of political “type” here. Loads of folks are strongly conservative fiscally, but think the government has no business in your bedroom or your drug stash. Sort of a “Libertarian Conservative”. There are also “Liberals” who think drugs are evil and abortion ought to be banned… So some times it’s hard to pigeon hole folks here…
From the How Maps Lie department:
That big green splotch on the Nevada boarder has very few people living in it. It’s a farm country valley, but in parts of it the water rights were bought up by L.A. and folks just have dry land. Around Bishop there are some nice mountains, though. Other parts still have water and farming. I think the major employment is the Mammoth Mountain ski area and some Dept. of Forestry & Interior workers. It’s more akin to Nevada than California, really, but with lots of transfer payments coming in. That green splotch from Santa Barbara to one block north will be dominated by employment at UC Santa Barbara and Cal Poly SLO along with Vandenberg Air Force Base and Lompoc Prison IIRC. Basically, a lot of government money forms their economic base… Finally, that green splotch set in a bit from SF is a kind of semi-rural area (around Fairfield/ Vacaville from the looks of it). If I’ve picked it out right, that’s mostly going to be shopping stops for folks on I-80 East and I-5 going North and Travis Air Force Base… Along with a bit of near Napa Wineries.
So as I look at the employment map, I see a major military base between LA and San Diego, and some other military bases, with employment. I see a recreation / farm area with most of the farmers already not farming (and government money coming in), I see a very very rich part of SF and Marin with employment (if you are a rich self employed person or management, you usually don’t lay yourself off…) and I see a “government rich” zone near Santa Barbara.
My take on it, frankly, is that the only thing keeping it from being 20% or more state wide is all the government money being slopped in the trough…
BTW, I’m quite certain that the official rate is too low. I know a fair number of folks who are not “unemployed” in that they don’t report to the unemployment office asking for benefits (that’s how it’s measured) but have no job. I’m one of them, as is a neighbors kid. There are several others I know too. And that doesn’t count the “under employed”. The teachers are being given unpaid “furlough days” to cut costs and I know of one Ph.D. Aeronautics who is teaching math in high school… Another friend is “early retired” and living on ‘the package’. The neighbor 2 houses down is getting a military check (was working for the city too, now just on the military payment…) So personally, I’d guess those numbers are way low.
The metric I use is the traffic jams. 10 years ago, I had to hit the on-ramp at 6:30 AM or earlier to make it across the south bay. Any later, it was a hard jam with about a 5 – 10 mph average speed. Now at peak time ( 8am) it’s 60 mph+ the whole way. There is no way that’s from a 10% reduction in employment. We had more than 10% of folks doing 4 day work weeks and still the Monday / Friday commutes were horrid. Not any more.
My best guess would be about 25% presently unemployed and with employment about 35% under peak of what it was a decade ago (i.e. 10% of workers have simply left town). But there is a lot of slop in that. It could be higher.
So please, don’t think of it as “social and political hypocrisy”. Think of it instead as the result of a large “strain” between opposing poles, with the Uber Left dominating much of the time, but sometimes the other side peeking out a little. A good example would be all those folks from Marin and SF. They don’t SEE the unemployment problem, so to them, it does not exist. Since they never visit the Central Valley farm areas, they have no clue that 1/3 of some of the town is unemployed (and another 1/3 is on welfare…). They have no idea what their votes do to the “outback” of California. Their experience is different from reality. So any wonder their thinking would diverge from it too?