|
|
Posted by David Sherman on Saturday, June 14, 2008 at 13:38:23 :
In Reply to: Re: gas and then theres gas posted by Doc Dave on Saturday, June 14, 2008 at 12:18:09 :
Unions are also one of the Democratic party's biggest voting blocks. Once high fuel prices start putting lots of people out of work (I'm talking 10% unemployment, not 5%), the unions will start reminding the Democrats that they're supposed to be the part of the working man.
For the last 30 years, we've been able to have it all -- plenty of jobs, cheap products, and every environmental protection we could wish for. Most of that was thanks to global over-investment in mines and wells during the last inflationary period (1975-1985, roughly), and then of course cheap Chinese labor. The environmental damage moved overseas along with the mining, pumping, and heavy manufacturing, but we still had plenty of jobs here building houses for each other and pushing paper.
Back when NASA was promoting their "faster, better, cheaper" program, the engineers added "choose two" to that list. We're going to be running up against something similar with "jobs, low prices, the environment". We only thought we could have all three because we exported the mess overseas. I'm not saying it's a simple "jobs versus the environment" choice, and I don't want to see 10 men dying every day in coal mining accidents like in China, but you can't have environmental laws that satisfy every imaginable wish of every environmental group and still have an economy based on something more than people typing at computers all day.
So far, most Americans have been pretty well insulated from that choice, but things are starting to change. The Democrats had to work hard to lose the farm vote and the working man's vote, both of which they had pretty well locked up in FDR's day. They lost it by betting everything on the urban vote, which means environmentalists and social activists. Whether that will carry them through the next depression is hard to say, especially if they can no longer borrow the money from overseas to subsidize and unproductive economy. When they win this fall's election, it will be a testament to the failures of the Republicans over the past 8 years, not a testament to anything people like about Democrats.