Hah… what the greens and rentseekers know about economics couldn’t fill a thimble.
The Chesapeake Bay Foundations claims in a new report that Bay restoration activities could create more than 230,000 jobs. And putting aside who would pay for these workers, there is no doubt that, in fact, more than 230,000 could be employed to “restore” (whatever that means) the Bay.
But of course, the key questions are who will pay — the answer is taxpayers — and what will they get for their money — and the answer is marginal improvements in Bay that are of dubious value.
Sounds like a lot of squandered money to create no meaningful value. And in an economic downturn, who can afford to waste resources? Certainly not taxpayers.
What America needs instead are jobs that add to GDP and create tangible wealth — some of which could then be spent/risked/wasted on undefined and dubious efforts lie Chesapeake Bay “restoration.”
Environmental protection is a luxury, not a necessity. In contrast, wealth creation is a necessity, not a luxury.
We have been so wealthy over the past 50 or so years that we’ve been able to afford to indulge the environmental aesthetic to an extreme.
But for the moment at least, that is no longer the case.
We need first to create the wealth that can then be frittered away by Gaia’s zombies.
If environmental protection is a luxury, then water that you can drink and air you can breath must be one too.
The environmentalist did not kill the economy. The budget of the different governmental organization with a goal of protecting our natural resources is a drop in the bucket compared to the amount spent on medicare, medicaid, and SSA (http://www.nytimes.com/packages/html/newsgraphics/2011/0119-budget/).
The question is, when everyone has a government job who pays them?