Friday, December 10, 2010

Left Coast Common Sense

While I've never been a fan of Hedgecock, he makes some very useful observations in this essay.

...[In the Midwestern industrial belt] The businesses and the jobs are gone, the dream dead. The Left says it's because of "globalization"; greedy companies have shipped the jobs overseas in a never ending quest for cheaper labor and increased profits. The Right agrees—the Left has made it impossible for manufacturing to make a profit in the U.S. with high taxes, a myriad of government regulation of every aspect of the business, and impossible environmental restrictions.

"Green jobs"??? Good luck with that.

...Obama's "stimulus" bill last year included subsidies for "alternative energy". Unfortunately, it turned out that the successful bidders for these energy projects were too often companies in Spain, China, and Japan. The borrowed stimulus money more often than not stimulated foreign economies. Nearly all the turbines made for "Big Wind" projects are made in China. (We mentioned one of those projects yesterday.)

Along the way, Hedgecock ticks off the numbers corresponding to the death of manufacturing in the US, and he mentions some potential solutions.

No comments: