The Kerry-Lieberman Bill Will Cause American Layoffs
Eighteen months after the stimulus package that was supposed to prevent a deep recession, here we are. Unemployment is still close to 10%, government budgets are at their worst state in decades, and the stock market one bad day away from another meltdown.
Naturally, that means its time for the Senate to introduce a bill that will kill even more American jobs, and for the liberals in the media to do everything they can to hide its impact.
Cue the New York Times. According to them, the Kerry-Lieberman climate change bill will “prompt a decade of job growth.” That story comes from their affiliate, Greenwire, and references a supposedly nonpartisan Peterson Institute for International Economics study.
If you’re wondering how a tax creates jobs, here’s how it works. The cost to emit a ton of CO2 will be set through auction, but they forecast $16.47 in 2013 with lots of exceptions for favored industries.
Then the legislation is a runaway train. By 2020, few permits are given away — most are auctioned off for higher and higher prices. One CNBC report puts the annual global market for carbon credits at $2 trillion a year. American companies would be paying tens or more likely hundreds of billions of dollars a year to the federal government for the right to emit carbon.
If companies don’t want to pay those fees, they can instead spend money on energy efficient technologies, which creates jobs in those sectors. These are real jobs — but like those in Spain, they’re not economically productive ones. In the absence of taxes and regulation, they wouldn’t exist.
But will companies pay the fees or create the jobs? The study makes assumptions, but as is the case with most economic policies that try to profit by punishing certain behavior, nobody really knows. Maybe everyone just pays the tax and no new alternative energy jobs are created. That’s good for tax revenue but bad for those expecting to get back to work.
Or maybe the entire economy goes green. That’s good for the planet maybe, but not for the budget. Kerry-Lieberman has already promised billions in subsidies to favored industries and is counting on the carbon auction revenues to pay for them.
But what if American industry decides it doesn’t want to go green or pay the tax? Maybe it just decides to go elsewhere.
Where could it go? The well-known consulting firm McKinsey has one suggestion. In 2006 and 2007, as energy prices were skyrocketing, the firm published a report on the economic potential of Gulf Cooperation Council countries as energy hubs.
Their view was that countries like Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Kuwait, Oman, and Qatar could, by promoting their cheap energy (both oil and natural gas), become the leading destinations for energy-intensive industries. These include aluminum, steel, paper, chemicals, and refining.
More subsidies to low income consumers? So now we middle class taxpayers not only have to fund the EITC, a straight up transfer of wealth from one group fo Americans to another, we now have to pay higher prices for energy a portion of which will go to lower income Americans to make up for the price of “skyrocketing” energy prices thanks to the government. What is the end goal of the eco-Marxist Left? Do they want to completely destroy our economy and our ability to produce for ourselves? Not being able to manufacture is a real threat to our national security unlike the make believe threat of global warming. The rest of the world will be laughing at us as we destroy ourselves. We must not only defeat the Left this November but we must drive them from the field for generations. They are going to destroy this nation if we don’t.
So has the case been proved for the global warming lies?
Or has the hoax’s cause now changed to the ever popular social justice?
I assume everyone now has the Spanish government’s leaked report that shows just what a travesty of lies the whole of the green jobs scam really is.
Not only will it cause job losses, the legislation will have almost zero impact on temperatures, see here -
http://www.c3headlines.com/2010/05/kerrylieberman-global-warming-impact-spend-billions-trillions-to-accomplish-nothing.html
This simple fact is not contested by any scientists, yet try to find a MSM article discusses this very salient point. That’s why Pajama’s Media and other non-MSM alternatives are so critical. Old media is stuck in their agenda rut, and as a result, inconvenient facts and science are not reported.
If the cards are played right, it would also bring the Democrat Party to absolute ruin.
Tristan Yates, thank you for this article. It’s about time that people hammer home that this idiocy will, like offshore drilling, simply outsource manufacturing to countries that do not have pollution regulations and do not have safety regulations that exist in the United States.
Here in Louisiana, we have a pig iron manufacturer that is ready and willing to begin building in an area that desperately needs the jobs. They are waiting, however, until they see what congress does with this legislation. If it goes through, they won’t build in Louisiana. They won’t build in the United States. I cannot believe that this is not being replicated elsewhere.
Feel good liberalism and it’s progressive doppelganger are going to destroy our country.
Unfortunately liberals believe that it is better to feel good, than it is to do good.
Especially when it’s other people who have to bear the cost of your actions.
Thank you for this article, it is nice to see someone point out that all this type of legislation will do is, like offshore drilling, outsource our manufacturing to countries without onerous pollution regulations and minimal employee safety regulations. It will do nothing to reduce carbon emissions.
Here is Louisiana, we have a pig iron manufacturer that is willing to build in an area that needs the jobs. It is waiting only to see what congress does with “climate change” regulations. If this bill passes, this manufacturer is not going to build its plant in Louisiana. It’s not going to build its plant in the United States. It will head overseas and give those jobs to a nation whose legislators have not gone insane.
Feel good liberalism, along with its doppelganger progressivism/statism, is going to kill this country.
Apologies for the (nearly) two identical posts.
S T
An article linked to by Drudge this morning blasts the Census dept for double and triple counting workers hired.
I always liked the name Tristan.
WHEN IS IT GOING TO STOP????? Politicians are so STUPID.. STOP SPENDING OUR MONEY!!
The political elites don’t care that American jobs will be lost. They will get their hugely rewarding payoffs, and the impoverished American people will be under their control. In their eyes, win-win. Are we going to let them get away with it, is the important question.
Let’s stop just blaming our elected politicians, and also look in the mirror:
Americans get who they vote for.
Americans get who they let their fellow Americans be duped into voting for.
Americans get who other people allowed to live in this country vote for.
This is a straight-ahead wealth transfer scheme. A product–a carbon credit–is created by legislative fiat, and that same force of law is used to force private business to buy them. Investors who did not actually create ANYTHING will pocket cool billions of OUR money.
Like the IMF, this is socialist scheme to bankrupt America. How any real patriot could keep their lunch down while supporting this is beyond me.