ATTENTION WHITE HOUSE: Regulations CREATE jobs. Stop believing the RW lie.
September 8, 2011

 
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GOP strategy to help Obama fix the economyMYTH BUSTING

This week, the Obama Administration angered a LOT of Progressive Democrats by announcing that they would delay pending new EPA clean-air regulations until 2013 in the name of “jobs”. Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA) even encouraged environmentalists to sue the White House over it. Conservatives hailed this as a victory for business, declaring that “finally, President Obama is starting to get it” that “burdensome regulations cost jobs.” Their reasoning? Not having to comply with burdensome new regulations will leave companies with more money to hire more people, rather than freeze current hiring (or worse, fire people) in order to afford the cost of complying. Really? Not having to comply with new regulations that don’t even exist yet means those companies will suddenly start hiring? You mean they won’t just put that savings in their pocket? They are going to start hiring people to meet a nonexistent demand? Sorry, I call bullsh!t.

For over four decades, Republicans have been on an anti-regulatory Jihad. They have been telling Americans that “Regulations cost jobs” for so long that it has almost become conventional wisdom. Answer honestly: When was the last time you seriously questioned the claim?

So let’s think this thing through. If a company must comply with new regulations, what is the first thing they’re going to do? MAKE CHANGES necessary to comply. That means ACTIVITY. And if there’s one thing a stagnate economy needs is “activity”. Whether that means buying new equipment or hiring specialists to tweak the equipment they already have to get into compliance, THAT MEANS JOBS.

Republicans would respond that companies will then not hire anyone new because they need that money to “comply with the new regulations”. Baloney. It is nonsense to believe that companies sitting on mountains of cash right now will “freeze hiring” (or worse “fire” employees) for the extra money just to “comply” with new regulations. Companies employ as many people as needed to meet demand. NEVER less. If they cut their workforce so low they can’t meet demand for their own products/services, they are only slitting their own throats. But even if they do stupidly fire people to meet their immediate expenses, those near-term job losses are quickly offset by the increase in employment needed to comply with the new regulations. And as the economy recovers and demand increases, companies will have no choice but to start hiring again. And if you are one of the companies SUPPLYING that equipment to meet those new regulations, you’re going to HIRE more people, not “fire” them.

Add to that, creating new Small Business opportunities for developers of cheaper/better products or methods to help companies comply with the new regulations.

In the 1970’s, American auto-makers suddenly found themselves in big trouble as Americans started buying cheaper smaller Japanese cars that got better gas mileage in the midst of “The Energy Crisis”. The EPA raised CAFE (MPG) standards for American car makers, who started producing automobiles that could compete with the Japanese, saving the industry (until tax credits and lax pollution/mpg standards in the 1990’s/2000’s encouraged mass-production of high-profit gas-guzzling SUV’s that no one wanted once gas hit $4/gallon under George W. Bush in 2008, nearly crushing the industry once again).

President Obama, PLEASE, I implore you, stop buying into the “conventional wisdom” of fiscal Conservatism. It’s total nonsense, looking out only for the interests of Billionaires and corporate coffers. And they way Republicans do it is by convincing people with no critical-thinking skills to just accept what they say as fact because it “sounds right”; convincing the poor & middle class to vote against their own best interests.

Regulations can be used to CREATE jobs if employed correctly.

(UPDATE 9/8: Just finished listening to President Obama’s speech on Job Creation, which included a call to “eliminate some 500 burdensome regulations.” I’m wondering just what “burdensome regulations” he thinks we can do away with? Clean air? Clean water? Workplace safety standards? And when corporations that are already recording record profits no longer have to spend money complying with these regulations, will THAT finally provide them with enough incentive to SPEND that savings on hiring new employees to meet a demand that just isn’t there? I don’t think so.)

 


Sign my GREEN JOBS TOMORROW petition. Use those $4 Billion in oil subsidies to put Solar Panels on the roofs of 40,000 government buildings, or order 100,000 hybrid mail-trucks. Not only would this INSTANTLY CREATE JOBS, it would spark ENTIRE INDUSTRIES with a future, reduce our dependency on oil, reduce greenhouse emissions, and quickly pay for itself (and cut future expenses) with the energy savings. We need 5,000 signatures by December 20th.

 

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September 8, 2011 · Admin Mugsy · 4 Comments - Add
Posted in: Economy, Jobs, myth busting, Politics

4 Responses

  1. Grant in Texas - September 8, 2011

    Growing up in Chicagoland, I worked in a steel mill along Lake Michigan.  The skies over Gary to South Chicago were often a rusty pink caused by iron-laden smoke.  Everything became stained….sidewalks, roofs, house siding (including a white Corvair I owned that became permanently pink).  The mill where I worked had four dozen giant stacks at their open hearth furnaces spewing out plumes of this pink smoke.  Enter the EPA.  Scrubbers were installed on each stack forcing smoke to rise through a mist.  The water droplets trapped the iron particles and they fell to the bottom of the stack where a retention basin was built and constantly drained.  The red mud removed from each stack (actually iron ore), formerly the polluting smoke particles, was then sent back into the open hearth furnaces where it was recycled.  So the expense of these scrubbers was offset by using the waste, recycling it.  And the Calumet region (plus Pittsburgh) once again saw clean blue skies.  However, the skies are really blue now as the mills were shut down, torn down due to outsourcing our nation’s steel production to foreign lands.

  2. Mugsy - September 8, 2011

    Listening to Michele Bachmann in the GOP debates right now, blasting “Regulations” and claiming ad hoc deregulation “would create 1.2 million jobs tomorrow”.

    Earlier, Ron Paul recommended “privatizing” the Regulation industry, and letting consumers decide whether they buy a particular product (after it kills a few hundred people, Ron?)

  3. Grant in Texas - September 8, 2011

    Today’s papers report a solar project to equip hundreds of  thousands of military housing units with solar panels creating JOBS at the Solar City plant in San Mateo, CA and local installers all over.  “The scale of this is absolutely massive,” said Lyndon Rive, SolarCity’s
    chief executive officer. “It’s equal to all the solar the country’s
    installed in the last 30 years.”  USRG Renewable Finance, working with Bank of America Merrill Lynch, will
    provide the project’s first $344 million loan. The U.S.
    Department of Energy will guarantee $275 million of that loan.Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/09/07/BUF31L1DTQ.DTLRemember REPUBLICAN President Eisenhower gave us the Interstate Highway System selling the huge project to Congress by making it a “military” objective, to ensure rapid troop movement across the states in case those pesky Russkies invaded.  Before that, those my age remember driving on often dangerous two-lane highways all over the states, slowed down everywhere by speed zones and stop signs/lights in every village and major city.  Plus after all of these years, Interstate 69 from Indianapolis to Laredo, TX still hasn’t been built even though the Waltons have succeeded in having WalMart world headquarters in Bentonville, AR connected by spurs to I-40 to the south and I-44 to the north.  Infrastructure projects like highways are HUGE job creators. 

  4. Mugsy - September 8, 2011

    Since the GOP hates to question the military budget for fear of being accused of being “anti-military” (or worse, “helping the terrorists”), maybe the trick is to bury all these economic development projects in the Defense Budget? 🙂

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