The Root Of Economic Malaise

Well...we can't continue to pollute without consequences. I thought coal fired energy emissions could be scrubbed to satisfactory levels? Yes this will cost money to implement so the question is can coal energy prices remain competitive? If they are not competitive then they must close the doors. The USA represents about 5% of the world's population yet contributes about 22% of the world's pollution...much of this because of coal.

 

To hell with them then. Move.

It doesn't change my statement. If you want to run a business in the United States, you must comply with our regulations.

 

Or automate what you can, cut your labor hours/people, find cheaper suppliers if possible, or if all else fails you close up shop and go out of business. One of the major failings of some on the left is the assumption they make that you can raise the costs of production without consequences. Yeah sure, if the business is profitable enough maybe some employers will live with earning less money, depends on the individual circumstances. But some others will determine that the lower profit (if any) just ain't worth it.

 

Taxcutter says:
A lot of unemployed people would like to strangle you.

They're hurting big time and you and your arrogant attitude write them off.

 

Without question I agree. The problem is the government fails to set standards the industry can meet and live with. It enacts legislation that tightens regulations, then the industry meets regulations. Soon to follow, the government changes regulations again to make them even more strict. Without an adequate road map of goals, the industry can't just keep changing its infrastructure at every whim of the government. The costs are prohibitive and we're living with rate increases due to continued struggles to meet regulations year after year. They're now at the point of shutting them down because of regulations without a strong roadmap to new energy sources in the short term, and it takes many years to bring a nuclear plant online.

This piecemeal implementation is costly to the point of wasteful. And now we will pay because we'll be generating fewer Gigawatts with increasing national demand for energy, all at a time when people are struggling within a weak economy and energy and food prices are skyrocketing. It's a combination destined for economic failure if we can't get our hands around the regulatory needs, the economic needs, and the ability of consumers to continue to spend to generate demand in order to sustain businesses and jobs.

 

Taxcutter says:
Like I said: More regulations = less jobs.

 

Yes, and not only fewer existing jobs but also fewer new jobs created cuz prospective entrepeneurs look at the business climate and decide not to startup a business here. Part of that decision is the regulatory burden and taxes; the left refuses to see it, but if you're going to risk your money in a new venture then it's gotta have enough reward to outweigh the risks. It's not like they are no new businesses at all here, but there are fewer than there should be.

 

I'm in the farming business and the recent issues with illegals and government policy towards them, etc. creates a huge unknown regarding availability and cost of labor going into the future. Consequently, we are seeing more and more automation trying to remove the stigma of labor issues. Of course most farming cannot be 100% automated so some percentage of human labor will always be involved. When that labor becomes too costly, or unavailable, and automation is not available, then farmers will sell out to housing developers and go on a nice vacation. Regarding this illegal and/or green card immigrant issue, and no matter what politicians and idiots say, these workers are all that we have...period...done deal! Without them we are out of business! There are no white boys willing to do this work. And contrary to many politicians and other idiots, we cannot increase our prices to offset higher labor and other costs. Having no labor is like having no water! Already the produce in our stores travels on average 1500 miles...this represents the constant threat of cheaper imports and consumers would rather be cheap so more and more local farming is turning to housing and golf courses.

100-150 years ago most people were involved in farming. IMO if we could get back to this ratio it would solve many of our economic problems...

 

According to a study from the Boston Consulting Group released today the US has the second most competitive manufacturing sector in the world, which puts it ahead of every nation but China, whose manufacturing cost advantage over the US has shrunk to just 5%. They project that the US will be the most competitive manufacturer in the world in five years.

This means all the arguments against US regulations on businesses are irrelevant to international market competition because US manufacturing is already the most competitive in the world among the developed and developing nations.

 

(1) above doesn't even come close to evidencing (2). Nor does it come close to addressing the immense impact hyperregulation has on job and wage growth domestically. Nor does it come close to explaining why we have such a negative balance of trade. If the US produces so many goods so cheaply, why are we such a net importer? how on earth do we have a trade imbalance of nearly half a trillion dollars?

So because the US can beat a country that is still governed by the Communist party... well... maybe in five years, and all the other countries that are mostly socialist and have been for decades, we don't have too many regulations generally on business in the US? Love that lefty logic.

Oh, btw, such "studies" are typically puff pieces trying to get foreign companies to locate here despite the drawbacks of putting plants in the US. No idea what this one is because you don't cite it and I'm not wasting my time looking at it, but if it looks like a duck...

 

Ask yourself how much further ahead the US would be if we weren't strangling ourselves in red tape.

 

Or how much more like China the US would look if regulations were removed.

 

According to this webpage; http://www.arabiangazette.com/china-ranked-competitive-manufacturing-nation-world/ the USA is in a downward spiral...want to reassess your comment about 'US regulations'?

 

Actually, China is developing a lot better than we have in the USA. They have made mistakes but they also are faced with the same issues we saw in the USA during the past 100 years and have more information today to better deal with these issues...

 

No,not at all.

In the 1960s the US was much like China is now. I am old enough to remember when the rivers were all polluted and the air was always foul. There was few places safe for swimming and the air was always brown.
There is a cost for pollution and it will be paid eventually by one generation or another. My generation paid to clean up the pollution of the past and we are OK with that because much of it was the result of ignorance. There is no excuse for that sort of behaviour now and no economic argument either because the long term cost of cleaning up after the fact is far greater than the expense to avoid it in the first place.

China will soon begin spending a good portion of its GDP to clean up its massive pollution problems and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. The US has already spent over 5% of GDP for the last 40 years to clean up much of its pollution, this is generating an increasing economic advantage for the US as nations like China begin to divert resources from economic development into the dire necessity of cleaning up the environmental mess left by rapid indiscriminate development.

In order for the US to maintain an economic advantage over the long term it must continue to reduce pollution at its source so it to can avoid the long term economic drag of cleaning up after the fact.

 

Taxcutter says:
Not much. The US was not that polluted in 1970. Not anything like China.

Why did you post a lie?

 

The data clearly showed the US dropping further down the list...it's kind of difficult to argue this fact.

The US has not spent 5% of GDP over the past 40 years? Just over the last 10 years your 5% would have represented about $7.5 trillion! Add in the other 30 years and you're talking about 'someone in the USA' spending $15-$20 trillion?

There is no way to clean the pollution after the fact? Once polluted the stuff is somewhere in Earth's atmosphere...period. Only the process of Mother Nature can clean 'some' of the pollution.

But I agree that a majority of the nastiest pollution should be scrubbed at the source and done today...

 

Why do you try to reinvent such a recent past?
Do you think that everyone who was there has already died so there is no one to dispute your outright lying?
It is far too soon for that.

I am old enough to remember 1970 and there were places in the US that were more polluted than the wost places in China are now. The Cuyahoga River, caught fire in downtown Cleveland while the Senate was debating the Clean Water Act. I have never seen a report of a river in China catching fire and burning for hours. Near Pittsburgh over 100 people died and over 1,000 were hospitalized by the toxic emissions of the local steel mill. Pittsburgh was famous for its polluted air, so dank that the sun was not visible through it on a cloudless day.

During the 1960s and 70s, many cities in the US warned old people and children and the sick to stay indoors and everyone else was advised to avoid strenuous activity outdoors because the levels of pollutants in the air had exceeded safe limits. There were many few cities where this warning was issued over 100 times a year and some where it was issued over 200 times a year. These warnings and advisories were issued for levels of pollutants 100-1,000 times higher than today's safe limits.

Millions of dead fish would wash up on the shores of lakes and rivers and ocean beaches all over the US all the time. Almost all large lakes and every river was closed to swimming and people were regularly advised to not drink the water or eat fish from those rivers because the lakes and rivers were all poisoned.

You have no idea how bad the pollution in the US was in 1970, before the Clean Water Act and the Clean Air Act and the EPA.
I do because I was there and I remember.

 

Taxcutter says:
I was certainly there prior to 1970.

The Cuyahoga and the Houston Ship Channel had short instances of something burning on their surface. In each case these were the result of accidental spills of volatile hydrocarbon liquids, not chronic and deliberate dumping. In both Ohio and Texas there were state regualaions that applied. All the same accidents happen. Ask any highway cop. A rational government does not cripple iots economy based on isolated accidents.

By "Near Pittsburgh over 100 people died and over 1,000 were hospitalized..." I presume you are referring to the Donora Incident. Donora is just a few miles from Pittsburgh. Yes they did have an incident involving a number of fatalities and hospitalizations. It happened in 1948. Investigation found that the stack gasses from nonferrous alloy operations there were trapped in the box canyon occupied by Donora by a temperature inversion. After the 1948 incident the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania instituted regulations requiring stacks that extended above the rim of such valleys. After that there were no such incidents again in the US. Not one. All regulations that came after 1970 merely drove off the manufacturing operations but did nothing to prevent further Donora incidents. In fact, now the brain-dead EPA is requiring plants with above-the-valley rim stacks to demolish them down to below the valley rim thus throwing away the hard-won experience from the Donora incident.

Ever bother to think that you haven't heard of a river on fire or people dying of air pollution in China because the communists there suppress such news? Just because it wasn't in the MSM doesn't mean it didn't happen.


"...100-1,000 times higher than today's safe limits."

Taxcutter asks:
And who do you suppose adjudicates "safe limits." What the EPA does is ratchet down"safe limits" to a point what was once safe air or water is now "unsafe" but only because the EPA says so. Now we have remote rural areas being designated as "nonattainment" for criterai pollutants. When rural Jay County, Indiana becomes "nonattainment" for tropospheric ozone, you know somebody has set the "attainment" limits too stringently. It is brain-dead policy to wreck your economy setting standards that even rural areas cannot attain.

Massive fish kills have been reported all over the world dating far back into pre-industrial antiquity. Fish die for reasons usually having nothing to do with industrial pollution. It is foolish to set regualtions on the basis of isolated fish kills.

"You have no idea how bad the pollution in the US was in 1970, before the Clean Water Act and the Clean Air Act and the EPA."

Taxcutter says:
That is a bold-faced lie. I was there and aI jolly well remember what it was like. Yeah there were places. We used to drive up the Kanawha Valley and try to hold our breath because of the stink of 22 chemical plants between Poca and Gauley Bridge. But the stink didn't kill anybody. today it doesn't stink but there are only three chemical plants left and one only operates seasonally.

Yeah, I was there and I remember, too. It was not perfect, but it was nowhere near bad enough to justify the mountain of regulations that has crippled the US economy.

Not only do you post lies, but you apparently don't seem to know the difference between cost and value.

Think about this: The air in US cities today is cleaner than the air in US cities in Washington's or Lincoln's day.

 

A lot of this is without context. There is an associated cost and benefit with all these regulations. #s of pages of legislation is not a good barometer to measure their value, or even to know what the benefit is. For instance, I'd gladly pay an extra nickel for a can of green beans if it meant I knew what ingredients were in them by way of an FDA mandated label on the back, whether that legislation took 3 pages to write or 3,000 pages to write. The more ways businesses find to shirk legislation, the longer the legislation becomes. The # of pages becomes a function of necessity, not incompetence. How many pages of this legislation had nothing to due with low-benefit high-cost regulations to business, and instead is business funded legislation designed to limit competition, and raise profits?

It seems these random statistics are much too vague to draw any real conclusions. It seems we only have 2 options when we have three. Currently business interests are in a win-win. They own the representatives. They then pay representatives to make poor decisions overall, but that benefit them financially through tax breaks, subsidies, barriers to competition, etc. If we like this function of government they win. If we don't like it and abolish government, they win. Maybe we should try to make the government more independent, with a narrower scope on things that it can do effectively such as defense, infrastructure, and oversight, rather than just abolishing it.

 

Taxcutter says:
Narrower - much narrower - scope is what I advocate. "Abolishing" government is somebodies lying strawman.

 

What do you do when the electable representative's campaigns are financed by private interests that in no way want to narrow the scope of government to in ways that make it more efficient or independent, but rather to narrow it in ways that do not benefit them personally?

 

One way is to eliminate all tax credits, loopholes, deductions, subsidies, etc., and go to a flat corp tax. Won't happen anytime soon, but that would be a good start. No bailouts either.

 

I'm more asking, given our current setup, how do we initiate such changes? Who do we vote for? Is there a way to accomplish this without voting at all?

 

Taxcutter says:
Thatis why the power of government must be attenuated. If there were no power to mess with people's lives, nobody would ever contribute to political campaigns. Money follows power.