Debunking Sunday Part II: Regulations kill Jobs
According to Republicans, any and all regulations passed by the Obama Administration have obliterated the economy and so suffocated businesses that they were forced to lay off millions of workers. By contrast, according to the Republican Party, the simple repeal of these and all government regulations will lead to the creation of billions and billions of jobs. Yes, John McCain actually said that, but he is getting senile in his old age for he doesn’t realize that there are only 330 million Americans alive today. But I digress.
A CNN report has proven that this Republican myth is also a lie:
[I]s government regulation really holding back the labor market?
Not so much, according to government data and surveys of business owners and economists.
Only a small percentage of employers report regulation as a reason for laying off workers. In the first two quarters of this year, only 2,085 new unemployment claims were attributed to government regulation, while 55,759 were tied to insufficient demand, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data on mass layoffs.
The New York Times, the AP, the Economic Policy Institute, and McClatchy newspapers all did their own research and reporting on this in recent weeks, and all came to the exact same conclusion: government regulations are not responsible for holding back the economy.
John Kowalko could put a finer point on this, but I think when Bush 40 enacted cap and trade it became mandatory for Texaco to put scrubbers on the stacks. The scrubbers didn’t just grow there, many jobs were created for the installation process. I don’t remember fuel prices soaring due to the cost being passed down to the consumer, either.
Sadly, cancer continues to take the lives of citizens in that area. Shamefully that fact won’t stop me from going back to earn a paycheck.
It wasn’t just jobs for the installation process — there were jobs in the design of the retrofit and jobs in the O&M of those scrubbers. And all of these were genuinely good jobs, sustaining middle class or better lives.
I noticed in what I heard on the news today what sounded like the Rs were on the Sunday Yack Shows trying to reset the conversation from the need for jobs to the need to reduce regulation. So far, that isn’t working and I am hoping that (after two years) that the media has gotten the clue that the fix to the economy is more demand by consumers. Period.