The answer to why New York City has
increasingly inadequate blue collar employment can be found at the Department
of City Planning, which regulates zoning issues.
That may sound odd, but the fact is, blue collar employment in the
manufacturing sector is literally being zoned out of existence. (“Zoning,” as
defined by the Harper Collins Dictionary of American Government &
Politics, is “The process by which local government can designate the types
of structures and activities for a given area.”)
Land use planning policies that have chased factories out have devastated the
job supply and created an urban economy that is increasingly
fragile.
The
Pratt Center for Community Development reports that “Even as the
demand for goods in New York City remains strong, city government’s own
policies are threatening manufacturer’s ability to do business here. When Mayor
Bloomberg came into office in 2002, New York City had 12,542 acres of land
where manufacturing businesses could legally operate. Today, thanks to zoning
changes, it has fewer than 10,746, and another 1,800 acres would be converted
to other uses under additional rezoning proposed by the Bloomberg
administration. If the planned rezoning goes through, New York City will
have lost 20 percent of all its manufacturing space in the span of just a few
years. Of the 95 New York City re-zonings from 2003 to 2008, one-quarter
converted manufacturing districts into some other category of land use…not one
added a single acre of new space for manufacturers.”
Unfortunately, New York City is not
alone in its assault on manufacturing and the above-average wages that it
produces. An examination indicates that American manufacturing is
being devastated by a number of factors, including the highest corporate taxes
among industrialized nations; an increasingly burdensome regulatory regime; a
weak national and global economy; a downturn in federal support for
cutting-edge R&D; a slowdown in military procurement of major weapons
systems; the rise of China, with its cheaply paid labor force, and that
nation’s unfair competitive practices, as well as intellectual property theft;
an increasingly poorly schooled workforce; and high energy costs.
Regulatory burdens are the key factor depressing manufacturing in the United
States. Kevin Williamson recently wrote in National Review that
the cost of regulatory compliance—which may be between one and two trillion
dollars annually—is a bigger burden than taxes. He noted that, in addition to
the cost, the regulatory burden is more infuriating because “you can boot out
your representative if he votes for a tax hike, but you can’t vote out executive-branch
bureaucrats.” In many cases, the regulatory system is geared against the
very type of ingenious, highly productive new firms the nation needs to
rejuvenate its industrial base in favor of politically connected older
companies with the capital to hire powerful lobbyists to influence
politicians.
The
increasing problem of complying with politically-oriented regulations that
produce no benefit, particularly those relating to the environment, has
accelerated manufacturing’s decline. The Competitive Enterprise Institute
worries that “The pace at which the Obama administration has issued new Clean
Air Act regulations unrelated to carbon dioxide is without precedent in the
statute’s 40 year history…” Compliance costs are in the trillion dollar
range—if compliance can be done at all. Some of the demands call for the
purchase and implementation of technology that is not yet available.
In an
attempt to save the U.S. economy, The House of Representatives has passed H.R.
10: Regulations From the Executive in need of Scrutiny Act, better
known as REINS. The bill is not expected to pass the Senate and would certainly
be vetoed by President Obama if it ever did. With only minor exceptions,
the vote on the bill followed straight party lines, with Republicans favoring
it and almost all but four Democrats voting against it. The purpose of
the bill is to limit the ability of the White House and its Environmental
Protection Agency to implement economically harmful regulations without
appropriate oversight, and a clear rationale of why the measures are actually
needed.
No comments:
Post a Comment