Robert Samuelson has jumped on board the regulatory reform bandwagon I’ve been drumming around here for a while:
If rising debt frightens domestic and foreign lenders into fearing high inflation or default, interest rates could soar. A first stimulus was warranted, but now “it makes no sense to use stimulus just to postpone the reality of lower economic growth over the coming decade,” Rogoff says. He favors a gradual reduction of huge deficits. The trouble, of course, is the capriciousness of psychology. No one can know when or whether a future crisis might occur.
Economists Mishel and Rogoff frame the debate, the first impatient, the second prudent. A middle way would be to scour government for policies that discourage job creation.
Consider the Environmental Protection Agency’s recent proposal requiring permits for large industrial facilities emitting 25,000 tons of greenhouse gases annually. New plants or expansions would need permits demonstrating they’re using “the best practices and technologies” (whatever they might be) to minimize six greenhouse gases. Permits would be granted on a case-by-case basis; the proposed rule is 416 pages of dense legalese.
How could this promote investment and job creation, except for lawyers and consultants? Government erects many employment obstacles: restrictions on oil and natural gas drilling; unapproved trade agreements; some regulations. But reducing these barriers would require the Obama administration to choose between its professed interest in more jobs and its many other goals — a choice it has so far avoided.
Here’s my proposal. President Obama has celebrated the idea of international negotiation; why not some domestic negotiations, too? Negotiate with the states to eliminate multiplicative paperwork and to simplify the maze of regulations. There could be regional co-ops of states with common forms and compatible state regulations. Aiding in the creation of such things is a perfectly legitimate action for the federal government and could make it easier to start, maintain, and further businesses, the engines of job creation.
It already takes three years to permit a new facility in Illinois, so what’s another year or two until a shovel can be turned? Most will do what they did in response to the Clean Air of 1990, nothing. No expansions, no new construction, just plants held together by duct tape and super glue. That can buy ten years and then Obama will be gone.
teh stupid it hurts.
Seriously, we are going to expect our elected leaders to comb through the one part of the economy that is actually producing jobs and tell them to cut back. Is that the brilliant plan?
The jackass, doesn’t he realize that all these green regulations will actually create jobs? What a tool.
Actually, here is a question for those who believe in this “green jobs” idiocy. The argument is that we’ll create all these jobs with subsidies for clean/GW reducing technologies. Okay, how about this, instead of subsidizing those technologies/energy sources we change the relative price ratio via taxes on dirty/GW increasing technologies/energy sources? A $5 dollar tax for a gallon of gasoline. Now hybrids look great! So do electric cars. And mass transit looks far more appealing. We can create loads of jobs making hubrids, electric cars, and building up mass transit systems. Not to mention all the research into coming up with more energy efficient appliances. After all, we’ll need to tax polluting sources of electricity generation too. Lets double or even triple the rates for electricity from coal and other GHG spewing means of generation. Then we’ll have all these great new jobs. Right?
There, killed this comment thread.