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gainesvilletimes.com
Friday, November 30, 2018
Shannon Casas Editor in Chief | 770-718-3417 | scasas@gainesvilletimes.com
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Memo to G-20
leaders: ‘Future
of work’ is now
Time for Trump and friends
to wake up to climate change
BY AARON M. RENN
Tribune News Service
The “future of work” will top the agenda when
G-20 leaders gather in Buenos Aires on Friday.
That’s a popular topic these days, but one that too
often devolves into wild speculation about future
technologies and the radical changes in society
they might produce.
A better place to start would be the state of work
today, as events lead many workers to wonder
whether there is any future for them at all.
Yes, Amazon recently announced it will hire
25,000 highly paid knowledge workers in both
New York and the D.C. area. But at the same time
General Motors has announced it is closing several
manufacturing plants, including one in Detroit and
one near Youngstown, Ohio. Both are examples of
the economic divergence already hitting the U.S.
and driving international trade tensions that will
surely come into focus in Buenos Aires.
The idea of a bifurcated economy where the
rich get richer and the poor get poorer is an over
simplification, but it’s one that gets at something
real. There’s a growing divide in our country
between winners and losers, the New Yorks and
the Youngstowns. Places in the middle like Kansas
City or Milwaukee struggle to remain on the right
side of that divide.
It’s a fissure that runs not just between regions
like the coasts and the heartland, or between cit
ies like Columbus and Flint, but often through
the heart of our communities. In Los Angeles,
Hollywood glitters and Silicon Beach startups
flourish as homelessness spirals out of control and
generational poverty traps too many people. Elon
Musk sends rockets into space as the local Federal
Reserve finds that the median value of the liquid
assets of people of Mexican origin — 35 percent of
the population — is zero.
In a globalized, technology powered, innovation
driven, increasingly post-industrial U.S. economy,
elite sectors boom while traditional blue-collar
industries suffer. Many jobs have disappeared and
what remains are too often low-paying and unsta
ble, or mere piece work in the “gig economy. ”
While disruptive innovation at the high end of
the economy is celebrated, the reality is that only
a third of adult Americans earn a four-year degree
and less than half earn a community-college
degree. The genius of the Industrial Age was that
it gave people who weren’t part of the cognitive
elite an ability to hold a job with dignity, one that
allowed them to support a family, own a home,
take vacations, and give their children a better life.
Any policies that do not give those in the bottom
half of the skills distribution a productive and val
ued place in our society are inadequate.
Whatever the merits of our current economy,
which are considerable, it is not meeting that chal
lenge. Economists can explain to people all day
long that they aren’t putting a proper value on their
iPhones and other consumer goods, but the classes
at the bottom of the economy have judged that in
critical ways the modern economy is failing them.
This is producing social unrest that threatens
not just the positives of our current economy, but
the body politic itself. Populist uprisings around
the developed world — Trump, Corbyn, Bolso-
naro, the new Italian coalition government, and
more — are upending the current elite consensus.
Many people today, on the left and right, are ready
to blow the current system up. Brexit is perhaps
the most consequential manifestation of this to
date. But more threats could arise, as a possible
U.S.-China trade war looms over the G-20 summit.
It’s time for the Western elite to recognize that
the social and political consequences of the cur
rent policy consensus now outweigh the economic
benefits. Man does not live by GDP alone. The
time is now to engage in genuine, productive
reform that focuses on the social, cultural, and
political dimensions of civic health without aban
doning the economic one.
What such changes will look like is our genera
tion’s challenge to solve. In his new book “The
Once and Future Worker,” Oren Cass makes the
case for focusing on providing productive oppor
tunities for workers rather than just their ability
to consume. That’s a start. We need regulatory
reform at every level. We need to reform the
safety net to reward instead of punish work. We
need to “move to Canada” by adopting a skills-
based immigration system that’s actually adminis
tered and enforced. We need policies to encourage
family formation and stability.
We don’t know what all these new policies will
look like, but we can either be part of productively
developing good policies or cede the ground to oth
ers who will create bad ones. Those who merely
cling to the status quo and yesterday’s dogmas will
be rendered increasingly irrelevant by those look
ing forward to an always changing future.
Aaron M. Renn is a Senior Fellow at the Manhattan
Institute
In the wake of a com
prehensive report on the
projected effects of climate
change nearly a century into
the future — a report funded
by the U.S. government and
compiled by agencies within
President Trump’s own
administration — many on
the right have banged their
predictable drums in order to
either legitimize Trump’s own
kooky conspiracy theories
or to delegitimize climate science as a
purely political enterprise.
Set Trump aside. Of the effects cli
mate change may have on the U.S. econ
omy, he says gruffly, “I don’t believe it.”
That’s his prerogative and an unsurpris
ing one, and should be taken in the con
text of everything else he says: whatever
is convenient for him.
But for Republicans and conserva
tives, it’s both willfully ignorant and
negligent not to acknowledge that there
is in fact a scientific consensus that the
Earth is warming and man is responsible
for much of it.
By all estimates, 97 percent to 100
percent of scientists worldwide agree on
these two facts. That’s about as compel
ling as it gets, and the longer the right
refuses to accept this basic premise, the
longer they’ll be locked out of taking part
in a meaningful solution.
Many of us on the right have long
acknowledged climate change is real,
only to be harangued by liberal absolut
ists who refused to entertain any ques
tions about what, exactly, we
should do about it besides
becoming vegans, signing
meaningless international
treaties and throwing hun
dreds of millions of dollars
into solar sinkholes.
There was good reason
for healthy skepticism.
For example, numerous
scientific projections about
temperatures and sea levels
did not bear out. Likewise,
the rigors of science, by definition,
have resulted in multiple revisions of
once-certain conclusions. A 2006 Inter
governmental Panel on Climate Change,
for example, underestimated the effects
of methane produced by livestock by a
full 11 percent. And scientists are still
divided on a great many things — like
whether global warming is causing
more hurricanes or making them more
intense.
Asking questions is the basis of the
scientific method, and should never
be dissuaded. Conservatives should
continue to debate how to stanch the
effects of deadly climate change and
offer solutions that are both fiscally
responsible and have a high expecta
tion of efficacy.
But for those who would continue to
parrot the president’s dim-witted, Fox-
friendly sound bite that global warming
is a “hoax,” or intentionally confuse
weather patterns and climate while
pointing to a mound of snow in your
back yard, you’re now officially part of
the problem.
Take, for instance, the newest itera
tion of climate-change deflection: “These
scientists are motivated by money.”
It’s a charge we have heard over and
again in the past few days. Among oth
ers, CNN contributor Rick Santorum
argued, “If there was no climate change,
we’d have a lot of scientists looking for
work.” He continued, “And of course,
they don’t receive money from corpo
rations and Exxon and the like. Why?
Because they’re not allowed to, because
it’s tainted. But they can receive it from
people who support their agenda.”
Few in the media have bothered to
find out whether that assertion is actu
ally true. If they did, they’d see that a
majority of climate-research funding
comes either from the federal govern
ment or left-wing foundations.
But this problem cuts both ways. If
the argument is to be taken seriously,
then we must also disregard research
that Santorum might espouse — on, say,
abortion or coal or guns — because it
was funded by conservative think tanks.
I doubt very much he’d like that.
Republicans can continue to protest
reality and stick their heads in the sand,
but the sooner they acknowledge the
very basic facts of climate change, the
sooner they can get to crafting a conser
vative strategy to combat it, instead of
ceding the territory solely to Democrats.
S.E. Cupp is the host of “S.E. Cupp
Unfiltered” on HLN and a columnist for
Tribune Media.
S.E. CUPP
secuppdailynews@
yahoo.com.
DANA SUMMERS I Tribune News Service
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