Unintended consequences - Energy in California
Talk about landslide -- from
Joel Kotkin:
Energy Running Out of California
The recent decision by Occidental Petroleum to move its headquarters to Houston from Los Angeles, where it was founded over a half-century ago, confirms the futility and delusion embodied in California's ultragreen energy policies. By embracing solar and wind as preferred sources of generating power, the state promotes an ever-widening gap between its declining middle- and working-class populations and a smaller, self-satisfied group of environmental campaigners and their corporate backers.
Talk to people who work in the fossil-fuel industry, and they tell you they feel ostracized and even hated; to be an oil firm in California is like being a pork producer in an ultra-Orthodox section of Jerusalem. One top industry executive told me that many of his colleagues in California cringe at the prospect of being attacked by politicians and activists as something akin to war criminals. �I wouldn't subject my kids to that environment,� the Gulf Coast-based oilman suggested.
What matters here is not the hurt feelings of energy executives, but a massive lost opportunity to create loads of desperately needed jobs, particularly for blue-collar workers. The nation may be undergoing a massive �energy revolution,� based largely on new supplies of oil and, particularly, cleaner natural gas, but California so far has decided not to play.
In all but forcing out fossil-fuel firms, California is shedding one of its historic core industries. Not long ago, California was home to a host of top 10 energy firms � ARCO, Getty Oil, Union Oil, Oxy and Chevron; in 1970, oil firms constituted the five largest industrial companies in the state. Now, only Chevron, which has been reducing its headcount in Northern California and is clearly shifting its emphasis to Texas, will remain.
I can not understand what the state is doing. Their policies have put them into a position of needing money. They raise taxes. The more successful a business is, the more taxes it pays. Tax a business enough and it will pull up stakes and move to a more business-friendly state. Lather, rinse, repeat and all of a sudden, the state still needs money and it's tax-base has shrunk so it needs to raise taxes even more.
They need to look at the
Laffer Curve and ditch their Keynesian practices.
Keynes was a fool -- the
Austrians rule!
Posted by DaveH at March 6, 2014 1:35 PM