About The times. (Gainesville, Ga.) 1972-current | View Entire Issue (Nov. 30, 2018)
7A OPINION ®he £ntics gainesvilletimes.com Friday, November 30, 2018 Shannon Casas Editor in Chief | 770-718-3417 | scasas@gainesvilletimes.com Submit a letter: letters@gainesvilletimes.com The First Amendment: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. 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 To submit letters: Send by email to letters@ gainesvilletimes.com (no attached files) or use the contact form at gainesvilletimes.com. Include name, hometown and phone number; letters never appear anonymously. Letters are limited to one per writer in a month’s time on topics of public interest and may be edited for content and length (limit of 500 words). Letters may be rejected from readers with no ties to Northeast Georgia or that address personal, business or legal disputes. Letters not the work of the author listed or with material not properly attributed will be rejected. Submitted items may be published in print, electronic or other forms. Letters and other commentary express the opinions of the authors and not of The Times. SCOTT STANTIS I Tribune News Service PERHAPS |F YOU . MURDER A journalist HE’LL FoRGNE you,,. She Stines EDITORIAL BOARD Founded Jan. 26,1947 345 Green St., Gainesville, GA 30501 gainesvilletimes.com General Manager Norman Baggs Editor in Chief Shannon Casas Community member Brent Hoffman
