The Jobs Myth

Recently Donald Trump met with Robert Murray, founder and chief executive of Murray Energy, the largest privately held coalmine in the US. Murray is confident Trump will follow through with campaign plans to reinvigorate the coal industry and will start by scrapping Barack Obama’s clean power plan (CPP), Obama’s signature climate change plan. Murray also expects Trump to declassify carbon dioxide as a pollutant.

But Murray has asked Trump to tone down his rhetoric about bringing back mining jobs. “I suggested that he temper his expectations. Those are my exact words,” said Murray. “He can’t bring them back.”

This is the heart of trickle down/supply-side economics the Right has been pushing since their god of capitalism, Ronald Reagan, was king: reducing regulations and cutting corporate taxes will create more jobs. The Economics 101 reality is that unless demand increases there is no incentive to increase supply. The coal industry is a perfect example. There is no market for more coal so what is the point of hiring more people? But the industry sees a chance to be more profitable even at the expense of the environment and the health of the citizenry.

Since the Reagan years there has been no evidence that trickle down economics works for anyone other than the wealthy. Yet the working class clings to the elusive hope that their old jobs are coming back.

Greed is an ugly virtue but the deceit cruelly inflicted on the working class by the wealthy and powerful is truly degenerate.

“Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell.” 
― Edward Abbey