Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
I see that Ms. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Mr. Bernie Sanders are pushing something called a “Green New Deal”, so I thought I’d take a look. The Hill has a piece entitled “Progressives say dire climate reports point to need for ‘Green New Deal’“, and the Atlantic magazine has an article on it headlined “The Democratic Party Wants to Make Climate Policy Exciting“. Make climate policy exciting? Well, I guess so, but only if you consider economic suicide exciting …
Here are the details of the wonderful green climate deal, right from the horse’s mouth … oh, wait, vegans say we can’t use animal metaphors. So here are the details of the deal, right from the orange’s navel … it has “Four Pillars”, and the first Pillar is their “Economic Bill of Rights”.
Be clear that all opinions expressed below are my own, not those of Watts Up With That, of Charles The Moderator, or of anyone involved with the blog. So please don’t burn up their email with complaints—instead, put them in the comment section below. Ready? Hold your noses, put on your hip boots, we’re ready to wade in …
THE FOUR PILLARS OF THE GREEN NEW DEAL
I – THE ECONOMIC BILL OF RIGHTSThe Green New Deal begins with an Economic Bill of Rights that ensures all citizens:
1. The right to employment through a Full Employment Program that will create 25 million jobs by implementing a nationally funded, but locally controlled direct employment initiative replacing unemployment offices with local employment offices offering public sector jobs which are “stored” in job banks in order to take up any slack in private sector employment.
• Local communities will use a process of broad stakeholder input and democratic decisionmaking to fairly implement these programs.
• Pay-to-play prohibitions will ensure that campaign contributions or lobbying favors do not impact decision-making.
• We will end unemployment in America once and for all by guaranteeing a job at a living wage for every American willing and able to work.
End unemployment in America? Create 25 million taxpayer-funded positions?
Let’s look at that. In 2017, about 125 million people were employed in the US on a full-time basis. Ms. O-C and Mr. Sanders propose in their Green New Deal that those 125 million people pay the salaries of some 25 million workers … implying that if they are to get the average wage, all working Americans will have to pay an additions 20% tax on their income to fund the program. Oh, yeah, people are gonna totally be up for that … median household income is $62,000, so on average, each household will have to pony up $12,000 to employ those 25 million people.
Next, why are these people unemployed? We have more jobs in the US right now than people looking for jobs. The people left without jobs are folks with some kind of reason, valid or not, that they are not working—disabled, don’t need a job, untrustworthy, criminal, live with their parents, unreliable, trust-fund babies, lazy … not your ideal workforce.
Remember, the last time we had a New Deal we had thousands and thousands of hard-working people wanting jobs who couldn’t find a job. But now, to the contrary, we have thousands and thousands of jobs wanting people that can’t find people … hardly the same.
Next, what will these 25 million people do? Remember, we can’t have them doing what other people are already doing, because that will put existing workers out of a job. So we will have to invent new tasks for them … which they’ve done. Per Ms. Occasional-Cortex’s Green Nude Eel, as reported in the Atlantic:
It promises to give every American a job in that new economy: installing solar panels, retrofitting coastal infrastructure, manufacturing electric vehicles.
Look. If solar panels and windmills were economically viable, we wouldn’t have to subsidize them. There’s a reason that solar and wind, even with huge subsidies, haven’t made a dent in our electricity generation. They are hideously expensive, and you still need to build regular power plants for the times when the wind and sun don’t show up … putting people to work building them is just another kind of subsidy.
And “build electric vehicles”??? The US Government, which can’t make a profit from the Post Office, is going to go into the electric vehicle business by hiring a bunch of people who can’t find a real job and going head to head with Toyota? Oh, yeah, you gotta know that’s totally legit …
The madness continues:
2. Worker’s rights including the right to a living wage, to a safe workplace, to fair trade, and to organize a union at work without fear of firing or reprisal.
Now, Ms. O-C has tweeted the following:
It is unjust for Congress to budget a living wage for ourselves, yet rely on unpaid interns & underpaid overworked staff just bc Republicans want to make a statement about “fiscal responsibility.”
I see. Her House of Representatives salary is what she thinks of as a living wage … and how much will she be making?
ONE HUNDRED SEVENTY-FOUR THOUSAND DOLLARS PER YEAR PLUS BENEFITS AND A PENSION AFTER ONLY 5 YEARS.
That’s a “living wage” on her planet … and she thinks every worker deserves that.
Here’s the ugly truth. Some workers are not worth $5 per hour. Some are not worth $10 per hour. And no, I am NOT interested in pretending that those folks have a RIGHT to make a big salary or a living wage. You have to EARN your salary, you don’t have a “right” to anything like that. If you think that mandating a minimum wage helps people, please read Ending Poverty In America.
Finally, we already have laws about safe workplaces and union organization … and I have no clue what she means by “fair trade”.
Onwards …
3. The right to quality health care which will be achieved through a single-payer Medicare-for-All program.
This is the program which is estimated to cost 32 trillion for ten years, or 3.2 trillion per year. And if every other government program is any guide, it will cost much more than that. Now, we have 126 million people employed in the US. So on average, each employed person will have to pay about $25,000 per year in order to pay for Medicare For All. This is in addition to the $12,000 they’re already paying for the Full Employment Madness …. we’re up to $37,000 per worker already …
4. The right to a tuition-free, quality, federally funded, local controlled public education system from pre-school through college. We will also forgive student loan debt from the current era of unaffordable college education.
Could we start by not lying about “tuition-free” and call it by its real name, “taxpayer-paid”? Honesty is a good thing in politics, however rare it might be.
Next, there are currently some 17 million students in college. Tuition averages on the order of $20,000 per year. Of course, the poor suffering 126 million employed people have to pay for that as well. That works out to a mere $2,700 per year … plus the $37,000 per year they’re already paying, so we’re up to about $40,000 per worker already to pay for their green fantasies …
5. The right to decent affordable housing, including an immediate halt to all foreclosures and evictions. We will:
• create a federal bank with local branches to take over homes with distressed mortgages and either restructure the mortgages to affordable levels, or if the occupants cannot afford a mortgage, rent homes to the occupants;
• expand rental and home ownership assistance;
• create ample public housing; and,
• offer capital grants to non-profit developers of affordable housing until all people can obtain decent housing at no more than 25% of their income.
Can I tell you how tired I am of people inventing new “rights”? We’re just getting started, and already we’ve been told that people have the right to a taxpayer-paid job, a living wage, a safe workplace, a union, fair trade, taxpayer-paid healthcare, taxpayer-paid college tuition, and affordable housing … and they’re not done yet.
Here’s the truth. We have the rights given by the Constitution. We have the “inalienable rights” of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. We have the rights of freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, freedom from unreasonable search, and the other rights given in the Bill Of Rights.
And at this point, that is it. That’s all of our rights. And please note—NONE of those rights require the taxpayers to give us money. Not one of them.
We do NOT have a “right” to have the taxpayers put us through college, or pay our medical bills, or provide us with a job. We may indeed decide to do those things, or not do them … but they are absolutely not “rights”. That’s pompous posturing at the taxpayer’s expense.
With that out of the way, affordable housing is a tough nut to crack. To start with, as a builder myself and the son of an architect, I can assure you that here in California it is incredibly difficult to build a house. There is a dizzying array of zoning, building, environmental, septic, lot-size, and other city, county, and state restrictions on building. Each one of these restrictions pushes up the cost of building and contributes to the lack of affordable housing. And none of their high-sounding proposals, not one of them, even touches on any of those problems.
Next, “halt all foreclosures and evictions”? Have they lost their everlovin’ minds? If you make evictions impossible, PEOPLE WILL STOP PAYING RENT, duh. And the same is true if you make foreclosure impossible—people will stop paying their mortgages, and banks will stop loaning money.
The ignorance, it burns …
Next, “create ample public housing”? Please point out where that has worked. The public housing projects in New York and other major cities have been horrible crime-ridden failures.
Finally, “capital grants” for developers? … why do these good folks assume that to solve any problem all you have to do is throw money at it? Under their plan so far each employed person has to put up $40,000, and they now want to give grants of taxpayer money to developers … what could go wrong?
6. The right to accessible and affordable utilities – heat, electricity, phone, internet, and public transportation – through democratically run, publicly owned utilities that operate at cost, not for profit.
What is a “democratically run” business? Do all the employees vote on every business decision? And why would we assume that a government monopoly will deliver cheaper services than businesses in competition? The mind reels …
7. The right to fair taxation that’s distributed in proportion to ability to pay. In addition, corporate tax subsidies will be made transparent by detailing them in public budgets where they can be scrutinized, not hidden as tax breaks.
“Distributed in proportion to ability to pay”??? How on earth can we determine someone’s “ability to pay”? Someone could make a lot of money but be supporting both parents and children; another person makes money but spends most of it on women and boats and wastes the rest … while a third person scrimps so their living costs are very small. Which one has the greater “ability to pay”? I don’t even understand what they mean by that.
Next, what are “corporate tax subsidies”? If they mean the tax laws, how are they not transparent? They are written down so they can be enforced, they are totally transparent. Anyone can go online and look them up …
So that’s the First Pillar. The Second Pillar is “A Green Transition” …
II – A GREEN TRANSITION
The second priority of the Green New Deal is a Green Transition Program that will convert the old, gray economy into a new, sustainable economy that is environmentally sound, economically viable and socially responsible. We will:
1. Invest in green business by providing grants and low-interest loans to grow green businesses and cooperatives, with an emphasis on small, locally-based companies that keep the wealth created by local labor circulating in the community rather than being drained off to enrich absentee investors.
Oh, man, these folks learned absolutely nothing from the Obama green boondoggle. Remember Solyndra? Obama provided them with half a billion dollars worth of taxpayer money, and they went belly-up. And Solyndra was far from the only such waste of taxpayer money. The US Government has a horrible record of choosing which businesses to support. In Solyndra’s case, guess what? The owners were pals of Obama and his friends … surprising, I know. Go green!
This brings up another issue. The Founding Fathers were smart in that they didn’t trust anyone. That’s why we have three branches of government—so they can watch each other and keep each other straight.
Modern lawmakers, on the other hand, seem to think that everyone is a noble, upstanding citizen. So they propose things like “ending evictions” when a moment’s thought reveals that people will just scam that all day long. And the same is true with this kind of government largesse—it invites and encourages corruption.
And guess what?
If you invite corruption … it will come …
2. Prioritize green research by redirecting research funds from fossil fuels and other dead-end industries toward research in wind, solar and geothermal. We will invest in research in sustainable, nontoxic materials, closed-loop cycles that eliminate waste and pollution, as well as organic agriculture, permaculture, and sustainable forestry.
Fossil fuels are a “dead-end industry”? I want some of what these people are smoking … fossil fuels have lifted billions of people out of poverty. Fossil fuels protect us from the ravages of nature and enable our modern lifestyles. Far from being a “dead-end industry”, they are the basis and foundation of our modern world.
Anyone making that claim about a “dead-end industry” should be permanently banned from giving any kind of economic advice or making any economic decisions forever. These folks are happy to enjoy all that fossil fuels bring us, and then they work to kill what makes them wealthy. That kind of stupidity should not be rewarded.
Next, we have already subsidized wind and solar to the tune of billions and billions of dollars, and they are STILL not economically competitive. The idea that a few more billions spent on research will make it all come right is a sick joke.
3. Provide green jobs by enacting the Full Employment Program which will directly provide 16 million jobs in sustainable energy and energy efficiency retrofitting, mass transit and “complete streets” that promote safe bike and pedestrian traffic, regional food systems based on sustainable organic agriculture, and clean manufacturing.
My local town, Sebastopol, just did their best to “promote safe bike traffic” by closing half of the only through-town north-south street to automobiles, and reserving it for bicycles. Me, I love my mountain bike, I’m a dedicated rider … but in all the times I’ve gone through the semi-permanent new traffic jam caused by closing off half of the street, I have yet to see one single bike rider using the bike half of the street … not one.
And sadly, this is typical of these kinds of pie-in-the-sky green dreams. They are so concerned with green and renewable and good feelz that they don’t notice that they have jammed up all the traffic, 24/7/365, for absolutely no gain. Go green!
Then we have the Third Pillar of the Green New Deal, viz:
III – REAL FINANCIAL REFORM
The takeover of our economy by big banks and well-connected financiers has destabilized both our democracy and our economy. It’s time to take Wall Street out of the driver’s seat and to free the truly productive segments of working America to make this economy work for all of us. Real Financial Reform will:
1. Relieve the debt overhang holding back the economy by reducing homeowner and student debt burdens.
Huh? How do they propose to “reduce homeowner and student debt burdens”? Are they going to pay off the debt using taxpayer money? And if so, won’t that “hold back the economy” by impoverishing the workers?
People sometimes make stupid decisions, like taking a student loan to study Underwater Basket Weaving or getting a degree in anything with the word “Studies” in the title. Of course, when they graduate they can’t find a job, so they can’t pay off the loan for a long time.
It’s not clear to me how to fix that historical problem. They borrowed the money and they spent it. Unless they pay it back, somebody’s gonna lose …
What I would do going forward, on the other hand, is to restrict the use of student loans to people going into STEM studies (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Medicine), or going to technical schools to learn skills like welding. Those folks will get jobs and will be able to pay the loan back.
As to homeowners, if you can’t afford to pay the mortgage, sell the dang house! How complex can it be?
2. Democratize monetary policy to bring about public control of the money supply and credit creation. This means we’ll nationalize the private bank-dominated Federal Reserve Banks and place them under a Monetary Authority within the Treasury Department.
I don’t understand this one. “Democratize monetary policy”?? It simply makes no sense. Someone else will have to explain it, I can’t.
3. Break up the oversized banks that are “too big to fail.”
That one actually might be worth discussing.
4. End taxpayer-funded bailouts for banks, insurers, and other financial companies. We’ll use the FDIC resolution process for failed banks to reopen them as public banks where possible after failed loans and underlying assets are auctioned off.
They keep talking about “public banks” and “democratic banking” and such. Again, I don’t understand that.
Also, I’m glad the US bailed out the banks because it kept the global financial crisis from getting far worse. What I didn’t like was that after we bailed them out, we didn’t require them to pay back every penny … but bailing them out was the right move.
5. Regulate all financial derivatives and require them to be traded on open exchanges.
I thought that all financial derivatives were already regulated, but I could be wrong.
6. Restore the Glass-Steagall separation of depository commercial banks from speculative investment banks.
This is the first reasonable proposal that they’ve made. I notice that they didn’t mention that the Glass-Steagall Act was repealed under President Clinton … likely an oversight …
7. Establish a 90% tax on bonuses for bailed out bankers.
Second reasonable proposal. I didn’t like the CEOs of bailed-out banks getting bonuses.
8. Support the formation of federal, state, and municipal public-owned banks that function as non-profit utilities. Under the Green New Deal, we will start building a financial system that is open, honest, stable, and serves the real economy rather than the phony economy of high finance.
The “real economy” rather than the “phony economy of high finance”? What on earth does that mean? What is “high finance”? How is it not “real”?
And public-owned banks? I’m not seeing any advantage in that. People involved in private banks have skin in the game. If they fail, the owners lose money. But people involved in publicly owned businesses of any type have no skin in the game—if they fail, nobody gets fired, nobody gets demoted, nobody loses money.
And that is a recipe for failure.
Finally, we get to the Fourth Pillar of the Green Bad Deal …
IV – A FUNCTIONING DEMOCRACY
We won’t get these vital reforms without a fourth and final set of reforms to give us a real, functioning democracy. Just as we are replacing the old economy with a new one, we need a new politics to restore the promise of American democracy. The New Green Deal will:
1. Revoke corporate personhood by amending our Constitution to make clear that corporations are not persons and money is not speech. Those rights belong to living, breathing human beings – not to business entities controlled by the wealthy.
People are always shouting that the Citizen’s United decision allowing corporations to have and promote political opinions was a mistake. But consider—if that is repealed, the following groups will NOT be able to be involved in the political process in any manner whatsoever, because they are all corporations:
Unions
Newspapers
Charities
Political Action Groups
Radio and TV stations
Non-Governmental Organizations like Greenpeace or Save The Children
You sure that’s what you want?
Also, corporations are not persons—they can’t get engaged, get married, go to the bathroom, vote in elections, or do a host of things that people can do. They do have certain limited powers, to do things like sign contracts, to own property, to have employees, etc. This points out the one tiny problem with their proposal—getting rid of these person-like powers would destroy our entire economic system.
You sure that’s what you want?
Whoever put forward point number one above hasn’t thought this through.
2. Protect our right to vote by supporting Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr.’s proposed “Right to Vote Amendment,” to clarify to the Supreme Court that yes, we do have a constitutional right to vote.
Mmmm … I’d never heard of it, so I went to take a look. Not impressed. Constitutional amendments need to be restricted to critically important things and should be crystal clear. To my eye, that one is neither.
3. Enact the Voter Bill of Rights that will:
guarantee us a voter-marked paper ballot for all voting;
require that all votes are counted before election results are released;
replace partisan oversight of elections with non-partisan election commissions;
celebrate our democratic aspirations by making Election Day a national holiday;
bring simplified, safe same-day voter registration to the nation so that no qualified voter is barred from the polls;
do away with so-called “winner take all” elections in which the “winner” does not have the support of most of the voters, and replace that system with instant runoff voting and proportional representation, systems most advanced countries now use to good effect;
replace big money control of election campaigns with full public financing and free and equal access to the airwaves;
guarantee equal access to the ballot and to the debates to all qualified candidates;
abolish the Electoral College and implement direct election of the President;
restore the vote to ex-offenders who’ve paid their debt to society; and,
enact Statehood for the District of Columbia so that those Americans have representation in Congress and full rights to self rule like the rest of us.
This is a mixed bag of mostly vague thinking. Some things are good. Paper ballots are good. Non-partisan election commissions are good. Making Election Day a national holiday is good as long as it is an unpaid holiday.
Other things are far too vague. “Full public financing” of elections sounds good, but the devil is in the details—who gets the money, and how much? And “free and equal access to the airwaves” … same problem. Does some American Nazi Party candidate with 735 followers get public funding and free access? If not … why not? Do we only fund politicians we approve of? Lots of thorny questions in there.
And some ideas are just horrible. Abolishing the Electoral College is one of them. It’s there for a very good reason. The Founding Fathers knew that if they had direct election of the President, the voters of the most populous state (Virginia at the time) would elect every single President, and the voters in the smaller states would never make any difference at all.
And the same considerations have stayed true through the years right up until today. Without the Electoral College, Abraham Lincoln would never have been President … very, very bad idea.
4. Protect local democracy and democratic rights by commissioning a thorough review of federal preemption law and its impact on the practice of local democracy in the United States. This review will put at its center the “democracy question” – that is, what level of government is most open to democratic participation and most suited to protecting democratic rights.
The “Federal preemption law” says that when Federal and State law conflict, the Federal law prevails. I’m not sure why these folks think that is a problem … always more to learn.
5. Create a Corporation for Economic Democracy, a new federal corporation (like the Corporation for Public Broadcasting) to provide publicity, training, education, and direct financing for cooperative development and for democratic reforms to make government agencies, private associations, and business enterprises more participatory.
“More participatory”? We’re going to spend billions of dollars to make businesses “more participatory”? What does that even mean? What is a “participatory” business? These folks are too much for me. They also want more cooperatives. I’ve been involved with a bunch of co-ops in my time, and my rule of thumb about co-ops is “For cooperatives to work, people have to … you know … cooperate …” Once they solve that, get back in touch, and we’ll discuss co-ops …
6. Strengthen media democracy by expanding federal support for locally-owned broadcast media and local print media.
The Public Broadcasting System in our area acts like a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Democratic Party. But the party’s not the point. It would be just as bad if it were a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Republican Party. Government media have been forces for propaganda as long as they’ve existed, and the PBS is no exception. Sorry, but I do NOT want more taxpayer support of the media. And once again, it’s not “federal support”, it is TAXPAYER SUPPORT! … you remember the taxpayer, the poor schlub that this green dream has already burdened with $40,000 per year in new costs? …
7. Protect our personal liberty and freedoms by:
repealing the Patriot Act and those parts of the National Defense Authorization Act that violate our civil liberties;
I’m OK with that.
prohibiting the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI from conspiring with local police forces to suppress our freedoms of assembly and of speech; and,
Huh? I have no clue what this is talking about. The people suppressing our freedom of assembly and speech these days are the fascists of Antifa …
ending the war on immigrants – including the cruel, so-called “secure communities” program.
There is no “war on immigrants”. This is the usual liberal technique of conflating “immigrants” and “illegal immigrants”.
Nor is there a war on illegal immigrants. They are here illegally, and people are enforcing the laws against that. That’s called “following the law”, not “war”.
8. Rein in the military-industrial complex by
reducing military spending by 50% and closing U.S. military bases around the world;
Mmmm … international diplomacy is never simple. I’m with Teddy—speak softly and carry a big stick.
restoring the National Guard as the centerpiece of our system of national defense; and,
Wait, what? When was the National Guard the “centerpiece” of our national defense?
creating a new round of nuclear disarmament initiatives.
I guess so, although I don’t see this as a huge priority.
Let us not rest until we have pulled our nation back from the brink, and until we have secured the peaceful, just, green future we all deserve.
A “just, green future”? Man, I have had it up to my back teeth with the word “green” being used as the ultimate in virtue signaling. This proposal has nothing to do with “green”. It is a liberal pipe-dream which would bankrupt the country and would do nothing for either the climate, the economy, or the environment.
Man, hacking my way through this colossal pile of bovine waste-material has angrified my blood mightily. Midnight. I gotta go outside and walk around some, see the stars, let the wind blow in my hair. Catch up with y’all later …
Best wishes all around,
w.
The vast majority of the so called fixes for the election system are designed to make sure that the party of government will have permanent control of government.
Non-partisan councils? No such thing. Everybody is partisan, sometimes you know about it, sometimes it’s hidden. Non-partisan is a great way to make sure partisanship is hidden from the voters.
Government funding of candidates. Great way to make sure that only those candidates that are approved of by the government is able to run.
Direct election of president. Great way to make sure that the party that cheats the most always wins.
It is quite a few decades since I read “Atlas Shrugged” but this concoction brought to mind the dysfunctional system envisaged by Ayn Rand.
Wow, theres an opportunity for one of AOC’s gov jobs. Cross checking voter rolls with death registrations. Jon’s happy voter fraud is down, AOC’s happy someone’s got job. Sounds like a win win to me!
Thank you, Willis.
Your sensible responses to various green themes are of perfect utility without alteration even after crossing the Pacific to New Zealand.
Not if they were given say $15 per vote they received in the previous election. Clinton got 66mil votes, next time dems get $990mil to spend on 2020 presidential election. Sounds alot but it was 2.4bill combined in 2016. Same thing could be done for all the diffrent races. Might encourage candidates/polices to inspire people to turn up and vote.
It would encourage candidates/policies to offer people even more “free stuff” in order to get them to vote for them. Wouldn’t do anyone any good (as that “free stuff” gets paid for out of the taxpayers pockets).
Besides which, it’s based on a flawed premise. This is not a democracy, it’s a republic. And the reason it’s a republic is the founders didn’t trust the rule of the mob and put in place a system to constrain such mob rule (the Electoral College, the Senate, Judges appointed to Supreme Court not elected by the people, etc).
These two low-IQ socialist Democrats are the “Gift that Keeps on Giving” to Trump and GOP.
I should be clear: Bernie is not a member of the Democratic Party, he just caucuses with them in the Senate. He is a full-on closet-Communist. As such, most of asylum-ready, lunatic Senate socialist Democrats (like DiFi and Schumer) are too conservative for Bernie.
You’ll like this: Obviously Clueless has announced that she wants to impeach Trump, because – well, EVERYTHING!!!
https://ijr.com/ocasio-cortez-impeach-trump/
Pfffft finding 25 million jobs is an easy thing to do , just get 25 million exercise bikes and 25 million alternators .
I agree that the green party policies are totally unrealistic, but to be fair I think we can give them some points:
Firstly, you cannot just multiply the number of new jobs with an average salary to get the cost. Those 25 million must live of something today and many of them live on some form of welfare already. You must subtract that.
Secondly, it is said that there are more jobs in the US right now than people looking for jobs, but that only counts the official unemployment rate. If we add discouraged workers who want a job, but have stopped looking or one, and those working part-time because they could not find full-time employment, we get a much higher number. Some think it is above 20%, such as this site: http://www.shadowstats.com/
/Jan
The only jobs that are created by government decree, are government jobs. Government jobs require tax dollars to fund salary and benefits. Those tax dollars come out of a tax payers gross pay, giving them less net pay. The only reason to increase government payrolls, is to process more government work. As we saw with the Obamacare Web Server, government workers are hopelessly inefficient compared to private sector workers. They don’t have to compete in a competitive environment, which has created a bureaucratic system that produces very little for the money spent on it.
Most of the people that can’t find work are unskilled labor. And many of the unskilled labor jobs are done in China, India, Mexico, etc…
No government program is going to increase unskilled labor jobs, without raising substantial import tariffs on goods that are using unskilled labor as a large component of production costs.
These plans are political propaganda designed for people that don’t understand economics. It has no “real-world” examples of it working. It is as if Hugo Chavez wrote this manifesto. And we all know how well that worked out.
From Forbes:
Whilst the proposals are obviousy the usual SJW agitprop, I caution too much ridicule.
The USA does have serious problems that the proposals purport to solve:
* Ludicrously expensive healthcare (more than the NHS in the UK, and that’s going some)
* A huge mismatch bertween vacant positions and available people. Caused by a certain extent by:
* A broken education system that treats good education as a luxury good, not a national asset.
* A broken free-market system that allows corporations more power in the administration of the State than people (the FCC being a prime example – how’s your choices for internet service going on there?)
* A broken “free trade” system (corporations again) that simply imports poverty from other countries by allowing local labour to be supplanted by cheap overseas labour. Not just H1B’s but the importation of subsidised manufactured goods, pricing the local workers out of a job
Not surprisingly, this blatant finger on the scales of life is wont to cause resentment, and a fertile environment for the strident “smash the rich” crowd.
The Austrailans have a term. Everybody should get “a fair go”. I don’t think many Americans in poor States in the USA get one.
Tort reform.
Or, as our founding fathers would have put it, tar-feathers-rope. They disliked crooked lawyers just as much as everyone else does.
Well said, Right-Pondian.
The power of corporations is the biggest issue.
It is they who peddle the concept that everything can be done better and cheaper by big corporations.
The cheaper only lasts as long as it takes to strangle the competition.
The cheaper only lasts as long as it takes to strangle the competition
and will return once they start misusing their “competition free” power to the point that new competition sees the opportunity to provide a comparable product/service cheaper. You can strangle the competition in the short run, but not forever unless you are perpetually undercutting the price of any potential competition (in which case cheaper will perpetually last) or using the power of government to block the competition (which is a whole other debate topic) otherwise, once you raise your prices too high, new competition will seize on the opportunity to make a buck.
It is they who peddle the concept that everything can be done better and cheaper by big corporations.
And they have a point. Economies of scale do tend to favor big corporations in making things cheaper (better on the other hand is a bit more subjective). On the flip side, the bigger the corporation, the bigger the corporate bureaucracy. Big bureaucracies (whether they be governmental or corporate) tend to make things less efficient and less efficiency adds expense. Which is why no matter how big a company gets (or precisely because they get too big), eventually a smaller upstart comes along to do something better, quicker, differently and/or cheaper and the big company find itself too slow in reacting to the change in the business landscape.
Two issues. It is the power of government, to twist regulations and tax code to favor businesses, that is the issue. Were they not capable of determining that run from on Caribbean island has a tariff, but rum from a neighboring island does not, there would be nothing for businesses to lobby for.
Business cannot lobby for or purchase favors that lawmakers cannot give.
Second, the business about “low prices only last until they have a monopoly” is not how history has worked out. The “robber barons” (a media-instilled-envy term) actually did bring prices down dramatically, for gasoline and steel and other commodities. And corporations who were competition to government-created monopolies, from railroads to steamship tickets, did very well without taxpayer funding.
Corporations are not evil. Cronyism is, and that is people buying favors that lawmakers have empowered themselves to sell.
===|==============/ Keith DeHavelle (@DeHavelle)
This bit does not work in the current situation, John:
Why does that bit not work as theorized?
Well, big corporations have a few advantages:
1. Cheaper finance
2. Unlimited finance … they can sell a product at a loss for years, waiting for you to go broke.
3. Ability to make suppliers fund them by hugely extended terms of payment.
4. Ability to lock suppliers in as the only large outlet, the only game in town. (Contracts! see point 5 and 6)
5. Unlimited access to the law. (If they are wrong, you still lose due to their ability to continually return to the courts.
6. Unlimited access to the politicians. Through political donations, and brown paper bags, they pay to play.
7. The ability to soak up competitive ideas and to incorporate them into their own model (see all the above).
How do you control this? Anti-trust laws are there for a reason, this is a real problem. But, they need to be far more widely implemented, and to far more basic levels.
. Unlimited finance … they can sell a product at a loss for years, waiting for you to go broke.
Which bring us back to the goods being cheap. You can’t claim on the one hand big businesses don’t make goods cheap and then claim on the other that they’ll sell at a loss (ie make them cheap). The one position contradicts the other.
Whilst the proposals are obviousy the usual SJW agitprop,
as is your post.
* Ludicrously expensive healthcare (more than the NHS in the UK, and that’s going some)
Which Obamacare only made worse. You can keep your Doctor & policy my @ur momisugly$$
Also, as Gunga Din pointed, out tort reform would go a long way to fixing some of the problems.
* A huge mismatch bertween vacant positions and available people.
yes, we currently have more positions than workers to fill them, and that’s a problem but a better problem than too many workers and not enough positions which is what would happen should the SJW agitprop solutions ever get implemented.
* A broken education system that treats good education as a luxury good, not a national asset.
the education system has problems, but that’s the least of them. The biggest problem is that traps poor kids in terrible schools. School choice can help with that, but even that can only do so much.
* A broken free-market system that allows corporations more power in the administration of the State than people (the FCC being a prime example – how’s your choices for internet service going on there?)
My choice of internet service is the same it’s always been since long before the Obama admin forced Net neutrality rules on the public and Trump’s admin revoked it. thanks for asking.
The FCC is not a corporation, nor should it have taken it upon itself the power to regulate an industry without express congressional approval to do so.
* A broken “free trade” system (corporations again) that simply imports poverty from other countries by allowing local labour to be supplanted by cheap overseas labour.
That’s not “broken” that’s how free markets work, companies seek to minimize costs. Making use of the cheapest labor possible is one way to do that. Think about how you spend your money. If you have a choice between two items and the major difference between the two is price, are you going to buy the much more expensive item or will you go with the cheaper item that provides you the same utility as the more expensive model? well, that’s exactly what business do when deciding on the costs of doing business, they choose the cheaper options where possible.
Government can discourage such actions by artificially inflating the cost of over seas production (via tariffs and taxes).
Error here: “….that’s how free markets work…”
Perhaps you meant: “…that’s how free markets DON’T work..”
Look, markets are wonderful things. But they are never actually free.
There are always a myriad of rules and laws involved which actually make them function. And they do function to a certain extent.
But, it needs adjustment as we go, and it is glaringly obvious now is a pretty good time for some adjustment.
Nope, that’s how they *DO* work. It the “adjustments” that cause problems with the working of the markets. Learn some economics because your economic ignorance is showing.
FDR’s New Deal was based on firstly the Glass-Steagall banking Act (which Clinton repealed in 1999). Then the nearest thing to a National Bank – the RFC, Reconstruction Finance Corp (later the idea for the Marshall Plan). Since the repeal it has been one crash and bailout after another.
Today the latest technologies of fission, fusion must be the New Deal, not a green travesty.
Ironically China has grasped FDR’s New Deal, called it their new BRI Belt and Road Initiative on a massive scale for today. The Dem’s “new deal” has become parochial, a sideshow.
The USA can add to the BRI on the international stage, and get an infrastructure bill as collateral. This is Trump’ stated intention – the parochial neocons propose a pathetic “alternative”. These neo’s are really making the USA look like a has-been. Not good.
Really? China is using BRI to f**k everyone they can con into accepting it, and trying to use International Court to force people to pay them for f**king them. And you think this is a great idea. Wow. Just, wow.
TL;DR version
1. Enact communism.
2. Destroy any remnants of capitalism.
3. Double check #2.
4. ???
Also, ‘democratization’ seems to be code word for ‘socialize’.
Indeed. They have to use codewords because if they came out and admitted what they really mean, most people are sane enough to want to have nothing to do with their idiotic ideas. It’s only through obfustication and lying that they have any shot at getting the power to enact their socialist nightmares on the rest of us.
The DEMS are coming in January – yes they are – to take over the House – God save America. Blessed be those who are prepared to block any more febrile legislative initiatives emanating out of the White House. And then there is Big Bob M’s final report that will really rescue the country from any further destruction to the country by the NY real estate salesman.
They will get nothing done, just more gridlock, which will save America from the mentally ill crap pouring out of leftists like you.
Americans NEED TO EAT LESS MEAT: http://mankindsdegradationofplanetearth.com/2018/12/10/beef-and-climate-change-how-are-they-related-cnn-video/
I don’t know which is worse, vegans or people who suck up to vegans.
Eating too much meat in your diet – particularly red meat – causes many health disorders. The meat portion you eat should be no bigger than your hand. And I said LESS not NO meat.
Again, just get yourself euthanized so all of us can move on from your idiotic moronicy Yes, I had to create a word to describe you, all others simply don’t convey the total picture.
Eating too much meat in your diet
eating too much of *anything* in your diet is bad for you. There’s this thing called “moderation”, just because you don’t know how to eat in moderation doesn’t mean everyone else should be deprived to prevent you from over indulging.
I don’t know which is worse, vegans or people who suck up to vegans.
I vote they’re both equally as bad.
Why should Americans eat less meat?
Less meat = less cattle = less methane emissions = less warming of the earth’s atmosphere = less climate change = less healthcare costs owing to less meat-eating related diseases.
Nonsense and drivel.
and even if it’s was somehow true that less meat = less warming of the earth’s atmosphere that would a reason that we should eat *MORE* meat as it’s the cold that kills. warm is good.
God I am fed up with this absurd sceptic argument that “it is cold that kills.”
You live on the continents of Africa, Latin America, Asia and Australia and it is heat that kills. Not everyone lives in the northern hemisphere – THINK!
Take Africa – climate change is drying out increasing areas of land through exacerbated droughts, forcing increasing numbers of people off land which can no longer support their crops and livestock.
THINK. Something you continuously refuse to do.
God I am fed up with this absurd sceptic argument that “it is cold that kills.”
I can’t help that you are fed up with the truth. that’s your problem.
You live on the continents of Africa, Latin America, Asia and Australia and it is heat that kills.
The world over, cold kills more than heat. Both cold and heat would kill a lot less with the availability of cheap, reliable energy. Yet your obsession with the little CO2 molecule would see those people prevented from having that cheap reliable energy – THINK. and that is just down right evil – their deaths are on the hands of people like you.
I’m not sure this adds up.
If the ruminants don’t eat the grass/grains, what happens to it?
It gets eaten by something else, it rots or it burns.
With much the the same resultant output of CO2 and methane.
Because ivanski is a very sick individual filled with self-loathing and self-hatred who takes those issues out on all around it. Needs to be heavily medicated and kept in a secure location.
It’s quite simple really – measures have to be taken to reduce CO2 emissions.
Now let’s compare Poland – where I live – with the US. Poland is heavily reliant on coal for energy YET its government has acknowledged that the country needs to transition its energy mix towards more renewable energy sources. It does not have to do this because of the EU – it goes against the EU on its migration policies and it could easily do so on energy if it wanted to, but it doesn’t. Why? Because it realizes that AGW is a reality and action needs to be taken (COP24 in Katowice, Poland) to mitigate its effects..
Compare this to the USA. Under Trump – who is a first class certified moron – the country is moving in the opposite direction by renewing its dependency on coal at the cost of new investment into clean, green energies. Moral of the story? Well, I mentioned moron earlier…
It’s quite simple really – measures have to be taken to reduce CO2 emissions.
no they don’t. You’re premise if flawed at the outset, all else that follows from it is meaningless.
Co2 is plant food, more Co2 means more plants means more oxygen means healthier planet. Once again, since your reading comprehension has clearly not improved over the last 6 months, climate changes, constantly, humans are not causing it and can not stop it.
Compare this to the USA. Under Trump
the US has been reducing it’s greenhouse emissions while other countries (that remain in the Paris accords), have been increasing theirs.
And DJT is going to cut the chain Obama locked around coal producers and users necks! God Bless America and God Bless Donald Trump! (there, that will really set ivanski off, get some popcorn and enjoy!)
[Snip. Unacceptable. Refrain from comments such as this in the future or you’ll be placed in the permanent moderation queue. -mod]
Uncalled for. Ivanski is an idiot but that’s no reason for wishing him to harm himself.
Ah, no, he has stated in the past he supports euthanasia, so entirely called for.
Still no reason to wish him or anyone else dead. It makes you no better than him.
Thanks John. At least we agree on something. There may be hope yet in these torrid days.
There is hope! His name is Donald J Trump, and he is driving you right over the edge and I am loving watching it. Well, kids, its been a slice, my document printouts are finished and I got places to be, people to seeing and leftist bubbles to burst. Laterz!
Not wishing him dead, telling him to seek out the medical treatment he so desperately needs. He refuses to get the corrective treatment he needs so he has only one option open. Since he supports it he should avail himself of it. What I wish is he would stop espousing all this insane leftist drivel.
[Ideas are fair game for commenting on…individuals are not. Keep your comments restricted to the topics and ideas, and leave your personal invectives off this site. -mod]
“Also, I’m glad the US bailed out the banks because it kept the global financial crisis from getting far worse. What I didn’t like was that after we bailed them out, we didn’t require them to pay back every penny … but bailing them out was the right move.”
I think there is ample reason to have opposed the big bank bailout. You likely have succumbed to the socialist economics of the Keynesians. In Free Markets, you get rid of the crap by letting those businesses fail. It makes no sense to make the taxpayer pay rather than the banks owners and creditors. You didn’t prevent any pain – you just made the pain fall on the taxpayer and on everyone whose existing dollars became worth less by the massive money printing.