Continuing to Outsource American Jobs

I am so sick of the political elite thinking that it is a good thing… a good thing to outsource jobs to foreign countries.

At least, they act like it is a good thing.

Clinton signed on to NAFTA. This basically dropped the rules and regulations that kept American jobs in America, by making it more expensive and onerous to buy products from other North American countries. Once that was done, one was forced to wonder what any corporation was thinking if they kept their manufacturing base here in the states. Why pay an American $20 per hour when you can pay a Mexican to do the same job for $5 a day?

Bush sat on his ass and watched it all happen, because his cronies in big business were making gobs of money laying off Americans and hiring someone else to do the job across the border. He had no reason to change the flow of the tides.

And now, we have Obama, passing a carbon cap and trade bill, which will cap carbon emissions at 1990 levels, and tax corporations for emitting carbon dioxide.

This will make electricity and power more expensive. It will likely drive the coal industry out of business. Their profit margins are simply too low to pick up the huge tab for the carbon emissions that coal generation creates. Natural gas is also going to get hammered.

What does that leave us?

Hydoelectric? What about the proposals on the table to remove the 5 dams on the lower snake river, and possibly begin to remove Columbia River Dams, also? Hydroelectric is pollution free, but is harder than hell on river ecosystems. Besides, hydro is maxed out. It isn’t enough to power the USA, and can not be.

Nuclear? Did you all see that Obama just canceled the Yucca Mountain deal? That effectively killed nuclear energy in the US for the next 15 years, until a new plan can be had.

Solar? You would have to cover the State of Arizona with solar panels to get enough electricity to power the west. The cost of the land and upkeep on the panels alone would be astronomical.

Wind? And when the wind is not blowing, say, in the middle of a huge heat wave (when the wind doesn’t blow) and electricity demand is the highest it will ever be?

There is no way around it. Alternatives will not save us from very large increases in our energy costs. We have to have coal and NG. Very large increases in our energy costs mean that American manufacturing becomes even more non-competitive, and even more jobs are shipped out to China, who has not, and has no plans to, pass any rules on carbon emissions, ever. Just the transfer of these jobs to China will create enough carbon emissions to make up for any reduction in carbon by Americans in a few short years. We are signing our own death warrant, amidst cheers and jubilation, and achieving nothing in return.

Even if you think that carbon dioxide is causing dangerous climate change, this plan will do virtually nothing to stop that. Our emissions are so greatly overshadowed by China and India that the increased production over there to make up for our decreased production will cancel out any good we do.

This plan is economic suicide, at the very moment when the economy is already a shambles. When will the politicians realize that they cannot have it both ways?