Plunder and Deceit: Big Government's Exploitation of Young People and the Future Page 10
Lest we forget, before the Industrial Revolution, for many centuries mankind’s condition experienced little improvement. As University of California historian and economics professor Dr. Gregory Clark explains, “Life expectancy was no higher in 1800 than for hunter-gathers; thirty to thirty-five years. Stature, a measure of both the quality of diet and children’s exposure to disease, was higher in the Stone Age than in 1800.”34 Even for the relatively wealthy, as recently as the eighteenth century life was very difficult. Moreover, the “modest comforts” of society in 1800 “were purchased only through a life of unrelenting drudgery.”35
In America today, even poor families are much better off than is widely believed. This is not to say that they do not struggle or to downplay cases of significant hardship, but it is worth knowing the statistical facts, most of which are generated by the federal government. For example, a recent Heritage Foundation study found that despite media and other portrayals, including those of the degrowthers, acute and widespread hunger mostly does not exist in the United States. “The U.S. Department of Agriculture collects data on these topics in its household food security survey. For 2009, the survey showed: 96 percent of poor parents stated that their children were never hungry at any time during the year because they could not afford food; 83 percent of poor families reported having enough food to eat; 82 percent of poor adults reported never being hungry at any time in the prior year due to lack of money for food. Other government surveys show that the average consumption of protein, vitamins, and minerals is virtually the same for poor and middle-class children and is well above recommended norms in most cases.”36
In addition, “[o]ver the course of a year, 4 percent of poor persons become temporarily homeless. Only 9.5 percent of the poor live in mobile homes or trailers, 49.5 percent live in separate single-family houses or townhouses, and 40 percent live in apartments. Forty-two percent of poor households actually own their own homes. Only 6 percent of poor households are overcrowded. More than two-thirds have more than two rooms per person. The vast majority of the homes or apartments of the poor are in good repair.” It concluded that “[b]y their own reports, the average poor person had sufficient funds to meet all essential needs and to obtain medical care for family members throughout the year whenever needed.”37
Infectious diseases and other illnesses have been rampant throughout human history. While many diseases still plague mankind, enormous advances have been made in treating or eliminating untold numbers of them. This progress did not magically occur from feel-good intentions and redistributionist policies. Although public health actions have contributed to this remarkable development, modern medicine owes its evolution, in significant part, to science made possible by abundant energy derived from carbon sources.
University of Chicago history professor Dr. Kenneth Pomeranz explains that the European technological breakthroughs of the Industrial Revolution are based appreciably on the abundance of coal as a viable natural resource. He states: “Thus it seems sensible, after all, to look at the mining and uses of coal as the most likely European technological advantage that was purely home-grown, crucial to its nineteenth-century breakthrough, and (unlike textiles) not dependent for its full flowering on European access to overseas resources.”38 By the year 1800, economists believe, humanity had reached the limits of development without the technological marvels of the Industrial Revolution. “All societies before 1800 had to produce resources—food, energy, raw materials—on a renewable basis from a fixed land area. The ‘advanced organic technology’ of Europe and Asia was at its natural limits by 1800.”39 The technological developments of the Industrial Revolution were not attainable without “plentiful coal and the easing of other resource constraints made possible by the New World.”40 For example, “Britain’s coal output would increase fourteen times from 1815 to 1900, but its sugar imports increased roughly eleven-fold over the same period, and its cotton imports increased a stunning twenty-fold.”41 Therefore, economists conclude, “Europe made [the] leap because it had coal reserves readily accessible to its population centers.”42 Furthermore, it had “the massive largely empty land area of the Americas relatively close at hand, to lift for a time the ecological constraint with a continent-sized flood of food and raw materials.”43
Coal, an abundant and efficient resource, in combination with the modern market-based capitalist system, clearly benefited poorer people more than other groups. Dr. Pomeranz continues: “[U]nskilled labor has reaped more gains than any other group. Marx and Engels, trumpeting their gloomy prognostications in The Communist Manifesto . . . could not have been more wrong about the fate of unskilled workers.”44 Beginning in 1815, “real wages in England for both farm laborers and the urban unskilled had begun the inexorable rise that has created affluence for all.”45
Dr. Clark also points out that women in particular benefited from the Industrial Revolution. “Rising incomes switched the emphasis of production away from sectors such as agriculture (which demanded strength) toward such sectors as manufacturing and service (in which dexterity was more important).”46
The examples of capitalism generating human and societal improvement are infinite. As I explained in Liberty and Tyranny: “[S]cientific and technological advances, especially since the Industrial Revolution, have hugely benefited mankind. Running water and indoor plumbing enable fresh water to be brought into the home and dirty water to be removed through a system of aqueducts, wells, dams, and sewage treatment facilities; irrigating and fertilizing land creates more stable and plentiful food supplies; harnessing natural resources such as coal, oil, and gas make possible the delivery of power to homes, hospitals, schools, and businesses and fuel for automobiles, trucks, and airplanes; networks of paved roads promote mobility, commerce, and assimilation; and the invention of medical devices and discovery of chemical substances extend and improve the quality of life.”47
Carbon dioxide is a naturally occurring by-product of photosynthesis. It is not and never has been a pollutant. Furthermore, it is not covered under the Clean Air Act. Indeed, carbon dioxide makes up a minuscule fraction of greenhouse gases (water vapor is the most significant element), and greenhouse gases make up no more than about 2 percent of the entire atmosphere.48 Yet, without greenhouse gases, including carbon dioxide, temperatures would drop so low that the planet would freeze, oceans would turn into ice, and life would cease to exist. Dr. Patrick Moore, a top ecologist and cofounder of Greenpeace, is among many experts who have insisted that “There is no scientific proof that human emissions of carbon dioxide are the dominant cause of the minor warming of the Earth’s atmosphere over the past 100 years. If there were such proof it would be written down for all to see. No actual proof, as it is understood in science, exists.”49 Dr. Moore is not alone. Some thirty thousand other experts agree with him.50
No matter, the EPA zealously and relentlessly abuses and exceeds its regulatory authority, delegated by Congress under the Clean Air Act (enacted by Congress in the 1970s and amended in the 1990s), which was originally intended to limit the emissions of actual pollutants. It repeatedly usurps the law, having been provided cover by the U.S. Supreme Court for unleashing numerous and onerous rules intended to wipe out entire industries that provide safe and reliable energy to millions of homes and businesses.51
Consequently, in 2013, 2014, and 2015, the EPA released (or is planning to release) a series of regulations designed to destroy the coal industry and diminish the oil and gas industries. The first of these rules, the “New Source Performance Rule” (NSPS), mandates that every newly constructed coal-burning power plant in the United States use a costly and unproven technology to reduce its carbon emissions.52 The cost of implementing this technology is so exorbitant it makes building most new, coal-burning power plants impracticable. There is currently only one coal-burning power plant under construction in the United States. Its erection has been stymied by exorbitant cost overruns and delays.53
The second of these regulations, t
he “Existing Source Performance Rule” (ESPR), sets preposterously high emission standards for power plants, including those that burn coal.54 The goal of this rule is to force current power plants that use carbon sources such as coal and natural gas to charge increasingly higher rates to consumers for power, eventually driving these energy companies out of business.
The harsh consequences of these sorts of regulations are evident in Canada, where the residents of Ontario have experienced huge increases in power costs. The Financial Post reports that “The cost of electricity for the average Ontario consumer went from $780 [to] more than $1,800, with more increases to come.” This increase occurred because the controlling political party replaced “fossil-fuel generated electricity with renewable energy from wind, solar and biomass.”55 Reliance on renewable energy, however, raised a new set of problems. “Billions more were needed for transmission lines to hook up the new wind and solar generators. At the same time, wind and solar generation—being unstable—needed back-up generation, which forced the construction of new gas plants.” The construction of new plants led to a government boondoggle. “The gas plants themselves became the target of further government intervention, leading to the $1 billion gas plant scandal.”56
And the third of these regulations, “the Green Power Plan,” targets oil and gas production, including hydraulic fracturing or “fracking,” which uses technological advances to extract natural gas from shale rock layers by imposing severe limits on methane emissions.57 Methane is an even smaller greenhouse gas element than carbon dioxide. At a time when the United States is on the verge of realizing the half-century-old goal of energy independence, the EPA is actively suffocating the industries, innovations, and technologies responsible for the progress. And it is doing so despite the fact that its own recent study found “no evidence that these mechanisms have led to widespread, systemic impacts on drinking water resources in the United States.”58
The EPA’s rules are only the latest steps in an endless staircase of planned governmental actions intended to phase out carbon as an energy source, institute by coercion major parts of the degrowth agenda through deindustrialization, drive up the cost of energy production and use, and ultimately drive down the quality of life and living standards of Americans—who are supposedly fouling the earth with their capitalist extravagances. In fact, the degrowthers refer to this effort as “Energy Descent Action Plans.” These plans are part of a broader social-engineering project known as “Transition.”59 And Transition is only one of many action plans for degrowth involving “pricing carbon out of the economy,” “shifting from an energy-obese to an energy-healthy society,” “establishing a ‘New Green Deal,’ ” and “rapidly relocalising the economy.”60
Of course, if the plan is to unravel and remake the existing society and economy, the degrowthers must not limit their demands, plans, and interventions merely to energy production and use. And they are not. For example, through the EPA, the degrowthers are abusing and expanding its authority under another federal law, this time the Clean Water Act of 1972.61 Under the Constitution, Congress has the power to regulate only interstate commerce and only waterways that could be used as commercial channels of navigation across state boundaries. The act’s language specifically acknowledges that the states regulate bodies of water within their boundaries, insisting that Congress will continue to “recognize, preserve and protect the primary responsibilities of the states.”62 But the EPA brazenly issued a rule seizing the authority to regulate virtually any body of water that—no matter how intermittently—flows into a stream or tributary, and in so doing inflated the definition of “navigable waterways.”63 This regulation obligates any property owner, including farmers, ranchers, and homeowners, to expend untold sums of money obtaining permits from the federal government before taking any action that might conceivably—no matter how unlikely such a result is—affect ponds, lakes, or streams on their own property.
Clearly the degrowth movement is not about reasonable conservation efforts, minimizing pollution through practicable policies, or averting the gratuitous destruction of natural habitats and ecosystems. As Rand wrote, the truth is that the first targets and victims of the enviro-statists and their degrowth crusade are the “young, ambitious and poor.” “The young people who work their way through college; the young couples who plan their future, budgeting their money and their time; the young men and women who aim at a career; the struggling artists, writers, composers who have to earn a living, while developing their creative talents; any purposeful human-being—i.e., the best of mankind. To them, time is the one priceless commodity, most passionately needed. They are the main beneficiaries of electric percolators, frozen food, washing machines, and labor-saving devices. And if the production and, above all, the invention of such devices is retarded or diminished by the ecological crusade, it will be one of the darkest crimes against humanity—particularly because the victims’ agony will be private, their voices will not be heard, and their absence will not be noticed publicly until a generation or two later (by which time, the survivors will not be able to notice anything).”64
EIGHT
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ON THE MINIMUM WAGE
THE MINIMUM WAGE, AND constant demands for its increase, is said to be compassionate. But the concrete evidence shows it is a job killer, especially for low- or unskilled workers in general, and younger people in particular.
The number of long-term unemployed (those jobless for twenty-seven weeks or more) stood at 2.6 million as of March 2015.1 The number of individuals employed in part-time work for “economic reasons” (those individuals who are not part-time workers by choice, or “involuntary part-time workers”) was 6.7 million in March 2015.2 From a historical perspective, the number of involuntary part-time workers is particularly high. In 1990, for example, there were approximately 4.8 million individuals who were considered “involuntary part-time workers.”3 A recent poll of the unemployed, completed in May 2014, revealed that 47 percent have “completely given up” looking for a job.4
The labor force participation rate—the percentage of the population age sixteen and over employed for March 2015—stood at 62.7 percent.5 For comparison, the labor force participation rate in 1990 was 66.8 percent.6 The labor force participation rate reflects the percentage of individuals who are actually working and paying taxes. The unemployment rate, by contrast, reflects the percentage of individuals who are actively searching for jobs—not those individuals who have given up searching for employment. The federal government defines unemployment as “people who are jobless, looking for jobs, and available for work.”7
According to an analysis conducted by the Senate Budget Committee, as of September 26, 2014, nearly one in four Americans between the ages of twenty-five and fifty-four was not working. In absolute numbers, this translates to 28.9 million Americans between these ages who are not working versus 95.6 million who are working.8
There are a number of explanations for why the labor force in the United States is shrinking. First, the American population is aging. As the largest population cohort, the ruling generation is getting older and retiring. And a larger percentage of the population is physically incapable of work. Second, as indicated in the recent poll of long-term unemployed, many of those who do not have jobs have stopped looking for work. Discouraged by employment prospects, these individuals have simply dropped out of the labor force despite having a desire and the capacity to hold a job. A shrinking labor force is particularly problematic for the rising generation. Instead of the older generation retiring and subsequent generations filling jobs behind them, jobs are disappearing. Businesses are making the decision not to hire new workers. Fewer available jobs equates to less actual employment. Moreover, as described in chapter 6, unprecedented waves of immigration, legal and illegal, drive down employment opportunities for American citizens, particularly younger people, as does the government’s degrowth agenda, as described in chapter 7.
For teenagers, th
e March 2015 unemployment rate stood at 17.5 percent.9 For the general population, the unemployment rate for whites was 4.7 percent; for African Americans, 10.1 percent; and for Hispanics, 6.8 percent.10 Furthermore, younger people are in a much worse position than their parents and grandparents. A survey completed by CareerBuilder indicated that “[w]hile the number of jobs held by [individuals aged 55–64] grew by 9 percent from 2007 to 2013, jobs held by [individuals aged 25–34] have increased a mere .3 percent.”11 In actual terms, those numbers “translate to a gain of 1.9 million jobs versus 110,000 jobs, respectively.”12
In March 2015, there were approximately 2.1 million individuals who “were marginally attached to the labor force.”13 This means an individual is not employed, wants to find employment, and searched for a job in the past twelve months. These individuals are considered “marginally attached” because they have not searched for a job “in the 4 weeks preceding the [employment] survey.”14