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- Doctor Fate
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05 Jun 2011, 12:10 pm
danivon wrote:Steve - the moratorium on drilling in the Gulf came after a major disaster in the Gulf. The Boeing thing was really a response to the WTO (and a similar case that was raised against Airbus and the EU). Neither can be shown to be simply down to the President being 'anti-business', as they are in a wider context.
Dan, he continued (effectively) the moratorium even in the face of a court order to cease and desist, and long after the reasons and effects of the Gulf incident were known. He (and his Administration) have fought expanding traditional energy across the board.
As for Boeing, I don't believe it had anything to do with anything other than yet another sop to unions at the expense of a corporation. It's unprecedented for the US government to forbid a company from moving like this.
As for raising taxes, who would you raise them on? The rich? That has to be defined. If it's $250K, I wonder how "rich" that makes someone who lives in NYC with two kids? LA? DC?
If it's on business, we already have a high corporate rate. Furthermore, this would do nothing to encourage the capital that is sitting on the sidelines to get in the game. In fact, it is the increasing government chokehold on the economy that is discouraging investment.
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- rickyp
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05 Jun 2011, 1:06 pm
steve
Dan, he continued (effectively) the moratorium even in the face of a court order to cease and desist, and long after the reasons and effects of the Gulf incident were known
The causes were known. But the remedies to ensure another disaster hadn't been acted upon.
A parallel. A plane crash occurs and all the planes of that type are grounded until the cause is discovered. Say its a part that is wearing too quickly. As soon as the cause is discovered they let all the planes fly again before the part is replaced on all the planes OR until an inspection of all parts has been done, and made part of a regular inspection.
Or it might have been if 9/11 ocurred but the nation decidd to keep on operating with the same immigration and border security that existed before the event ...just to get the economy moving quickly again. That was a risk no one thought should be assumed again without major revisions. Why should the deaths of the oil workers and the ecological disaster in the Gulf be taken more lightly?
Risk, and risk mitigation are important. The cost of the gulf oil disaster on the economy was too much to assume at the same level of risk. reform was required before a lower risk level could be assumed.
The impact of the cessastion of deepwater drilling in the gulf was actually quire limited. First, all shallow water drilling continued unabated. Second, many of the workers were actually employed in clean up efforts. Third the contribution to the oil supply by the few deep water rigs actually producing was small. Fourth, there was an equipment shortage world wide that was creating delays in deep water exploration anyway.
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- danivon
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05 Jun 2011, 1:43 pm
GMTom wrote:fyi, the flooding and tornadoes have had a minor impact if any on global manufacturing supplies. They were mostly limited to rural areas, farms and farm employment were struck hard, food costs may go up, but manufacturing supply chain effects were affected in a minor way if at all. Sure a small plant here and there, but small.
Sorry, to be clear, Japan's problems are affecting the supply chain. The natural disasters in the US may be having other effects, not necessarily the supply chain.
If food costs go up (and as soon as the market anticipate that), it will feed through to expectations of demand for other goods declining. Similarly if farming employment is hit, while that won't directly affect the employment data in the US (which is usually based on 'non-farm' measures), but if an unusually high number of farm jobs are out, that's fewer people earning money and spending it.
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- Doctor Fate
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06 Jun 2011, 8:48 am
rickyp wrote:The impact of the cessastion of deepwater drilling in the gulf was actually quire limited. First, all shallow water drilling continued unabated. Second, many of the workers were actually employed in clean up efforts. Third the contribution to the oil supply by the few deep water rigs actually producing was small. Fourth, there was an equipment shortage world wide that was creating delays in deep water exploration anyway.
Just not true. Sorry, if I don't accept your opinion. What part of
the impact actually was: Senior Obama administration officials concluded the federal moratorium on deepwater oil drilling would cost roughly 23,000 jobs, but went ahead with the ban because they didn’t trust the industry’s safety equipment and the government’s own inspection process, according to previously undisclosed documents.
Critics of the moratorium, including Gulf Coast political figures and oil-industry leaders, have said it is crippling the region’s economy, and some have called on the administration to make public its economic analysis. A federal judge who in June threw out an earlier six-month moratorium faulted the administration for playing down the economic effects.
After his action, administration officials considered alternatives and weighed the economic costs, the newly released documents show. The Justice Department filed them in a New Orleans court this week, in response to the latest round of litigation over the moratorium.
Spanning more than 27,000 pages, they provide an unusually detailed look at the debate about how to respond to legal and political opposition to the moratorium.
They show the new top regulator or offshore oil exploration, Michael Bromwich, told Interior Secretary Ken Salazar that a six-month deepwater-drilling halt would result in “lost direct employment” affecting approximately 9,450 workers and “lost jobs from indirect and induced effects” affecting about 13,797 more. The July 10 memo cited an analysis by Mr. Bromwich’s agency that assumed direct employment on affected rigs would “resume normally once the rigs resume operations.”
It's striking that you claim not to be a sycophant of Obama's, but your reasoning rarely varies from the Administration's.
Read this pdf and tell me the effect was negligible, then go have another drink of Kool-Aid.
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- rickyp
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06 Jun 2011, 4:17 pm
Steve, only recently you described the jobs created this month in the US as "nothing
". But they created more jobs then were suppossedly lost when the moratorium was put in place.
I suppose you would also keep flying planes after a plane crash from an unknown mechanical problem, risking more crashes, just because a few thousand airline workers were temporarily laid off?
I suppose you wouldn't have reacted to 9/11 in any way if it caused a few people to be laid off either....
By the way, some 15,000 people were employed locally in the clean up efforts in the Gulf.
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- Doctor Fate
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07 Jun 2011, 7:32 am
rickyp wrote:Steve, only recently you described the jobs created this month in the US as "nothing
". But they created more jobs then were suppossedly lost when the moratorium was put in place.
Hmm, you may be conflating a few disparate ideas, so I will clarify:
1. 54,000 jobs is not "nothing." However, it is nothing like what is needed to maintain a recovery. Politically, it's a "disaster." Why? Because it will take about 250,000 a month to get the unemployment rate down to respectable numbers by the election.
2. The moratorium cost jobs. It cut oil production. It zapped confidence. It should have lasted a week or two. We knew in relatively short order what the problems were and how to prevent them. All these plane, train and automobile analogies really are off the mark. Show me a grounding of planes that lasted for months because of a mechanical failure. The cause is discovered, corrected, and it's over. In this case, the cause and the failures were known but the moratorium went on.
By the way, some 15,000 people were employed locally in the clean up efforts in the Gulf.
Great. Those are certainly not jobs that we can count on going forward, are they? They don't contribute to productive means, do they? The spill needed to be cleaned up--no doubt. To somehow count those jobs as off-setting genuinely productive and ongoing jobs is a farce.
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- Ray Jay
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07 Jun 2011, 9:14 am
One difference between the US and Europe is that the US's working age population is expected to increase by about 1/2 % per year over the next 20 years. So, to keep our unemployment rate steady we need to add something like 50,000 jobs per month. It is our strength and weakness. It is a challenge but it is the reason why the US is economically healthier than Europe and Japan, in spite of the impression one may get from the media.
Europe's employment is expected to decrease by 1/4% per year over this same period. For them, steady employment levels are just fine. I don't know where Canada and UK fit in this spectrum.
RJ
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- danivon
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07 Jun 2011, 11:15 am
RJ - depends what you mean by 'Europe'. The EU? I think the UK population is gradually ageing, but of course some of the people of working age in 20 years' time are not yet born, so such projections need to be taken with a pinch of salt. And the top-end of 'working age' may be increasing too (if only so people can afford to retire).
Steve - there is a productive side to the clear-up. Until it's done, there will be economic activity that can't be carried out, meaning work that can't be done, meaning jobs that are lost in the meantime. I imagine that the Gulf fisheries (especially shellfish) are hit and won't recover until the coast and sea are seen to be clean.
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- Doctor Fate
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07 Jun 2011, 11:38 am
danivon wrote:Steve - there is a productive side to the clear-up. Until it's done, there will be economic activity that can't be carried out, meaning work that can't be done, meaning jobs that are lost in the meantime. I imagine that the Gulf fisheries (especially shellfish) are hit and won't recover until the coast and sea are seen to be clean.
True, but those jobs won't be there in a year or two. Oil production jobs would have been.
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- danivon
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07 Jun 2011, 11:45 am
Doh! But the jobs that can't be done due to the pollution (fishing, tourism) will be there in a year or two, whereas now they are not.
You missed my point spectacularly.
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- Doctor Fate
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07 Jun 2011, 12:23 pm
danivon wrote:Doh! But the jobs that can't be done due to the pollution (fishing, tourism) will be there in a year or two, whereas now they are not.
You missed my point spectacularly.
No, you just really don't have one.
Obama could have kept the oil jobs, but did not. The fishing and tourism industries will be back. These temp jobs do not negate the damage the President has done by imposing his ideology.
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- GMTom
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07 Jun 2011, 12:29 pm
another point
oil clean up jobs are menial labor while mechanics and oil rig workers get paid significant wages.
Throw several hundred offshore oil workers into a small somewhat rural coastal area and the money they spend on bars, haircuts, movies, etc, the trickle down into the communities is tremendous. Employment from these other places soars as well. These cleanup workers, yeah, they stay in motels, they might go to some diners, but they have limited income to blow. The temporary offset might help in a minor way but the two are in no way equal.
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- danivon
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07 Jun 2011, 1:02 pm
On the other hand, oil workers tend to be transitory (and sometimes foreign) and so their money won't necessarily help the local economy. The fishery and tourism jobs tend to be held by locals, and so all of the money stays there. The amount to 'trickle down' may differ.
Oh, and their employers will be paying full taxes, not getting nice tax breaks
But there is more to it than 'ideology' (funny how Steve's dogmatism is ok, but anyone else's is awful). It's not like the events of last year weren't pretty damaging. Once is bad. Twice would be far worse. It seems like risk-avoidance more than ideology. The issue was not the direct cause (which took a while to properly ascertain), but the knowledge of risk. In Risk Assessment, there are two factors - probability and impact. The probability will go down if we identify a cause (but only of that cause). The known impact may go up having seen an event.
It's like Fukushima. The probability of a tsunami is unchanged. But the known impact is higher (and, like in the Gulf, it seems that management has been a contributory factor, not just the initial event). It's not ideology that is prompting countries all over the world to review nuclear energy policy, it's risk-aversion.
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- Doctor Fate
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07 Jun 2011, 1:19 pm
danivon wrote:But there is more to it than 'ideology' (funny how Steve's dogmatism is ok, but anyone else's is awful). It's not like the events of last year weren't pretty damaging.
The President's ideology, that of economic and ecological justice, is what is killing the recovery. My ideology is having zero impact.
It seems like risk-avoidance more than ideology.
Really? So, loaning money to Brazil to do what he won't allow here is not ideology, it's risk-avoidance? Promising to buy their oil? Brazil can do safely what we can't? Really?
More here.The President has gone out of his way to hurt the American economy. Why? It's either because he doesn't know better or because his ideology dictates he take the actions he took. Either way, it's not going to help him or the economy.
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- danivon
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07 Jun 2011, 1:40 pm
Doctor Fate wrote:danivon wrote:But there is more to it than 'ideology' (funny how Steve's dogmatism is ok, but anyone else's is awful). It's not like the events of last year weren't pretty damaging.
The President's ideology, that of economic and ecological justice, is what is killing the recovery. My ideology is having zero impact.
Actually, I think that there's a global issue to do with commodity prices and availability that is causing a general hiccup in recoveries. But hey, you keep right on blaming one man.
Really? So, loaning money to Brazil to do what he won't allow here is not ideology, it's risk-avoidance? Promising to buy their oil? Brazil can do safely what we can't? Really?
More here.
That link doesn't mention Brazil (and it reads like a rant rather than a report, but hey). Are Brazil's wells in as deep water as the USA's?
The President has gone out of his way to hurt the American economy. Why? It's either because he doesn't know better or because his ideology dictates he take the actions he took. Either way, it's not going to help him or the economy.
So your white knights will win in 2012 and save the USA. What's your problem? You think that the USA will be a smoking crater by then? Puhleeze. Hyperbole like that should be confined to the pulpit.
