[quote=EconProf]I have seen that study of the damaging economic effects of Prop 32 cited elsewhere and as far as I know it hasn’t been refuted by the anti-23 crowd. Part of it predicts the loss of 1.1 million CA jobs, I believe over 10 years. Even if their conclusions are off by a factor of three, its a disaster to our already high unemployment rate.
Proposition 32 is commiting economic suicide by a single state. The jobs and businesses will flee to neighboring states (and countries), a process that has already begun.
You may remember the Law of Diminishing Returns. It holds that additional efforts (or inputs) yield smaller and smaller benefits. This has relevance to fighting pollution. The cost of cuting in half a gross polluting vehicle (or factory, or coal-fired generating plant) is quite small, compared to the cost of cutting pollution by 75%, or to get really expensive, 90%. Initial measures are cheap and easy, making that plant 99% clean would be exhorbitant and wasteful. This suggests we shouldn’t aim for perfection but have to accept an optimal level of pollution. What the posters on this site disagree about is where that optimum is.
I don’t like pollution, but I think Prop 32 went too far. Since China is building a new coal-fired electric generating plant every week, totally uncontrolled as to emissions, CA’s heroic efforts with Prop 32 are wasteful and insignificant to the world’s pollution. China (and Mexico, etc.) should be persuaded, or paid, to control their pollution first. It would be cheaper for us, since a small dollar cost would result in much more pollution abatement as they are way back oin the diminishing returns curve. More bang for the buck. The tricky thing, of course, is to persuade or bribe them.[/quote]
