It’s sad how lame our political discourse has become. Complex issues like jobs and regulations become sound bites between both extremes. Instead of debating sensible regulations and the cost and benefits of specific rules like environmental rules, we get shouting matches between the parties on these issues.
The Washington Post has a good article on the complex issues surrounding regulations and the impact on jobs.
The Muskingum River coal-fired power plant in Ohio is nearing the end of its life. AEP, one of the country’s biggest coal-based utilities, says it will cut 159 jobs when it shuts the decades-old plant in three years — sooner than it would like — because of new rules from the Environmental Protection Agency.
About an hour’s drive north, the life of another power plant is just beginning. In Dresden, Ohio, AEP has hired hundreds to build a natural-gas-fueled plant that will employ 25 people when it starts running early next year — and that will emit far fewer pollutants.
The two plants tell a complex story of what happens when regulations written in Washington ripple through the real economy. Some jobs are lost. Others are created. In the end, say economists who have studied this question, the overall impact on employment is minimal.
“If you’re a coal miner in West Virginia, it’s not a great comfort that a bunch of guys in Texas are employed doing natural gas,” said Roger Noll, an economics professor at Stanford and co-director of the university’s program on regulatory policy. “Some people identify with the beneficiaries, others identify with those who bear the cost, and no amount of argument is ever going to change their minds.”
Read the whole article for a good perspective on this issue. The bottom line is that regulations can also help create jobs and add certainty, though of course some regulations do hurt jobs. We have to measure that impact versus the environmental and safety benefits we get from rules. Things like a carbon tax should also be evaluated, as here we just put a cost on pollution as opposed to specific regulations.
