Monday, August 20, 2012

Dan Morain: Will jobs be lost with cap and trade?

Sacramento Bee

  • California is scheduled to begin auctioning carbon credits, or allowances, in November under its cap and trade program, which was set up to help achieve the state's landmark legislation to combat climate change.
  • Homer Perez, head boiler mechanic at Pacific Coast Producers' tomato cannery off East Main Street in Woodland, might use a word that is more familiar to the rest of us: "layoff."
  • In the world's richest tomato-growing region, at the height of harvest, Perez's job is secure for now. But that's subject to change. Or leakage. In air board parlance, leakage refers to the possibility that a job or business might leave the state.
  • Sen. Roderick Wright, a Los Angeles-area Democrat, held a hearing last week on leakage, and left no doubt that he thinks California will leak jobs as the air board leads us on the bold new adventure. Cap and trade will add costs and complications, and business will close or cut production. He has seen it before. In his youth, Southern California factories produced tires, cars, jets and steel. Little remains.[emphasis added]
  • Growers use far less diesel fuel to truck tomatoes from a Yolo County field to the Woodland cannery than if the packing plant were across a state line in, say, Nevada. And imagine the amount of fuel used to ship tomatoes across the Pacific Ocean from China, a growing presence in the processed tomato business.[ emphasis added]
  • He sees the need to reduce air pollution. What parent doesn't? But he's also concerned about jobs. Having been without one, he understands the hard meaning of "layoff." Or, as an economist with a theory might say, leakage.[emphasis added]
Is there any doubt where our real problems are?  If Obama wins, the USA will become like California.  Leaking jobs.  Unable to pay for all the promises made to various constituencies.  In other words, totally bankrupt.

California is a one party state.  Nothing can be done about it, other than to leave.  But if the USA becomes like California, where will anybody be able to go?

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