Horace Heffner wrote:
Suspending the program, in fact, would have a highly negative effect on U.S. jobs, AWEA said. "At a time when the construction unemployment rate is nearly 25% and the manufacturing unemployment rate is 13%, this proposal could cost 85,000 American workers their jobs," . . .
This is a measure of how big the wind industry has become, which in turn is a measure of how much political clout it now has. Compare this to the coal industry which presently employs 82,595 people:
<http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Coal_and_jobs_in_the_United_States>http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Coal_and_jobs_in_the_United_States
As I have pointed out previously, the coal industry periodically tries to shut down the wind industry, by pushing through new regulations that will make wind turbines in the US illegal. I estimate that wind has taken 2% or 3% of the coal business, but it is pretty clear that at the present rate of expansion within a few years it will be more like 10 or 20%. The coal people are fighting for their livelihood. They cannot win now that wind employs more people than they do. More voters, that is.
In a sense, this means we reward whatever industry comes up with the least labor efficient methods. That is not a good thing. In the 1960s it was obvious to any technically knowledgeable person watching an automobile assembly line that employed far more workers than were needed, and that many of those people could easily be replaced with robot machinery. They were not, because having many workers gave the automobile industry enormous political clout, and also a base of loyal customers -- the employees, suppliers and people they knew. One auto executives famously said, when shown an assembly machine that could do "anything": "Anything? Can it buy cars?"
This make-work scheme, of people taking in one-another's washing, worked for a long time. Until Japanese cars began to arrive.
By the way, General Motors did not go out of business because it had too many workers today, or because it paid them too much. It went out of business mainly because it had too many retired workers from the 1950s and 60s, and widows of retired workers. There is not a lot they can do about that. If they could have competed head-to-head with newly started Kia factories, their productivity per dollar paid to workers would have been good enough to stay afloat.
- Jed
