Talk Elections

Hello & welcome. I'm having a town hall type q&a for you folks to see I'm not just sitting on my fat ass. I'll try & answer your questions...

As Governor of the Mideast, I'd like to first thank you for doing this. Hopefully questions will be answered in this meeting that will lead to economical improvements in our nation. That being said, my question for you is this: What would recommend the Mideast Assembly do to create a stronger economy for our region and lower our high unemployment numbers?

What about MW and PA? >:(

As is typical with the east coast mindset, the nation ends at I-95.

Check my office.
If you had checked my office you would see the schedule.

I would think instead of focusing on abortion reductions or doing very little at all recently, you might want to press on to create green jobs. Or really any jobs. You're not writing much legislation right now, so maybe redouble your efforts to spur them to focus on regional employment measures until the stimulus can pass.

Ok, MW & Pac... The floor's yours

I was being facetious, Mr. SOIA.  :)

I wanted to ask you:  While many areas of the Midwest have low unemployment thanks to high commodity prices... would you have any recommendations for the Althing in order to help insulate the region from future commodity price falls? 

I personally think they could ride the relatively good economic growth to expand their diversity and create high tech and green energy jobs that will last beyond a fall in commodity prices.

Do you have any suggestions?

I wasn't quite sure if you were lol :P

I couldn't have said it better, Senator. I point them to my old hometown of Pittsburgh on how to get that accomplished. (of course a smaller scale)

I hope you guys realize that, the more "Green jobs" you create, the more you run the risk of expanding production to unsustainable levels and thus causing a correction/contraction in the green energy sector leading to falling wages and high sector wise unemployment. Maybe you can buy 1 million solar panels and dump them in the ocean when that happens. :P 


Another thing that you need to remember is that whenever you "rock the boat" in production of products (like a switch in production), companies inevitably choose the latest generation of productive capacity because the machinery has to be replaced to make the green products. The change in product alone will necessitate a change in labor force, and at the same time you have movement to the latest generation of productive machinery (think jobs lost to automation) :P This is why Green jobs are a net manufacturing job loser. The 2007 ban on incandescent bulbs for instance is a big net loser (tens of thousands fewer jobs making Compact Flourescents then incandescents) and a big creator of jobs in China as the production of incandescents moved there. And the end result of that is said to be a 0.001% reduction in carbon emissions.

But automation historically creates more jobs than it loses, Yank. Look at the steam engine drill. With it one man could mine more coal in a day than 20 human miners with picks and shovels. But even in the near-term (forget long term; it didn't even take that long) the greater access of coal stimulated far more economic growth and employment than lost by this technological development.

Also, I really don't think we're in quite so much danger of glutting the photovoltaic panel market though over reliance on solar energy. :P

I think that we might want to consider training the workforce to adapt to new realities. In Pittsburgh, manufacturing died. No more steel. So the city reinvested before it lost its whole workforce & now, it's growing. Manufacturing is simply not enough of a reason to avoid retraining & reinvestment.

Where did I say it didn't? In fact you just conceeded that 1) Protectionism doesn't work and that 2) attempting to prevent technology in a Luddite fashion is counterproductive, and I will celebrate that as a victory. :P You also got to keep in mind that in the short term the job losses far outweigh the job gains. And on top of that, atleast in the RL, the only way to make these things economically viable is to in the words of obama "cause energy prices to necessarily skyrocket". The steam drill provided "cheap" coal. Just as price deflation in farming while bad for farmers created cheap food. Cheaper food and fuel frees up discretionary income to spend on other things. However that isn't what is occuring here. You aren't undercutting existing traditional fuels, and instead trying to raise the price of traditional fuels to make the cleaner stuff compete. The result is for the forseeable future vastly higher energy prices and thus the crimpage of discretionary incomes. I am all four clean energy and for energy diversification/independence, but there has to be a better way then this because as you said, technology should add to economy be freeing up money for other things and thus creating jobs in other sectors, not raising prices and causing a contraction in discretionary spending which will reduce jobs acrossed the other productive sectors and thus not mitigated more or less exceeded the automation/technology loss with job creation in other sectors.

Maybe not now, but be carefull. All I hear is Green jobs. "We need to make the NE a center for green jobs, we need to make the Pacific a green jobs mecca". And now the plan to respond a glut in agribusiness. Yep, you guessed it Green Jobs. :P High tech, period, is far larger and diverse.

We're working on a union bill and waiting for our regional budget to pass really before writing any more number based bills.

Is the Secretary still with us?

Yea, whatever happened to him?

He hasn't logged into the forum for over 2 weeks. :( Actually, it's 3 weeks today.

Well, so typical for him...

He said he was under the weather in some of his last posts. Nothing related I hope.