Thursday, September 8, 2011
Jobs will solve all of our economic woes
By Nick Aldridge
Jobs are our problem. We need more jobs. Jobs will solve our Social Security crisis. Jobs will solve our deficit crisis. Jobs will solve all of our economic woes. What baffles me is that the solution isn’t complicated. It seems we just lack to political will to do what needs to be done.
The energy sector is just waiting to produce an abundance of jobs. If the government were to open up new areas for exploration and fast-track all environmental challenges, oil companies would be hiring thousands of workers for jobs paying well over $40,000/year. The oil industry is booming now in areas west of Laredo and up in North Dakota due to advancing technologies in oil extraction. Given more areas they can explore, many more jobs would be created.
Coal-to-oil technology is an untapped job producer in the US. Germany turned coal into oil during World War 2, and both China and South Africa are doing it today. This would not only produce thousands of jobs in coal mining, petroleum refining and transportation, it creates a cleaner fuel from coal than what we get from crude oil today. Private investors are reluctant to invest in this technology because of price fluctuations caused by OPEC. However if the government entered into a ten-year contract to purchase the oil at a guaranteed price, investors would be willing to invest.
There is a danger however in putting all our eggs in one basket. Should the price of oil drop dramatically, an oil-based economy would plummet into a recession. Nuclear energy is another industry waiting to produce jobs. The recent disaster in Japan has made many nervous about the technology but in reality much of that is caused by the sensationalism in the media used to drive up ratings. There have been no deaths reported yet from the Japanese disaster and only 31 deaths were caused by Chernobyl disaster in 1986. Most of those deaths were caused by mismanagement in reacting to the disaster.
Nuclear energy is not only able to produce jobs in power generation but can also be combined with desalination. Salt can be removed from seawater and pumped hundreds of miles inland to irrigation. Such a plant can produce as much as 137 acre-feet of fresh water per day. There are several locations here in Texas and in California where these plants would create irrigated lands to employ farm workers, distribution centers and transportation jobs.
We have the answers. We know how to get the economy up and going. What we lack is the political will to do it. The government needs to partner with private industry by tapping the energy sector, which will produce thousands of high-paying jobs.
Jobs are our problem. We need more jobs. Jobs will solve our Social Security crisis. Jobs will solve our deficit crisis. Jobs will solve all of our economic woes. What baffles me is that the solution isn’t complicated. It seems we just lack to political will to do what needs to be done.
The energy sector is just waiting to produce an abundance of jobs. If the government were to open up new areas for exploration and fast-track all environmental challenges, oil companies would be hiring thousands of workers for jobs paying well over $40,000/year. The oil industry is booming now in areas west of Laredo and up in North Dakota due to advancing technologies in oil extraction. Given more areas they can explore, many more jobs would be created.
Coal-to-oil technology is an untapped job producer in the US. Germany turned coal into oil during World War 2, and both China and South Africa are doing it today. This would not only produce thousands of jobs in coal mining, petroleum refining and transportation, it creates a cleaner fuel from coal than what we get from crude oil today. Private investors are reluctant to invest in this technology because of price fluctuations caused by OPEC. However if the government entered into a ten-year contract to purchase the oil at a guaranteed price, investors would be willing to invest.
There is a danger however in putting all our eggs in one basket. Should the price of oil drop dramatically, an oil-based economy would plummet into a recession. Nuclear energy is another industry waiting to produce jobs. The recent disaster in Japan has made many nervous about the technology but in reality much of that is caused by the sensationalism in the media used to drive up ratings. There have been no deaths reported yet from the Japanese disaster and only 31 deaths were caused by Chernobyl disaster in 1986. Most of those deaths were caused by mismanagement in reacting to the disaster.
Nuclear energy is not only able to produce jobs in power generation but can also be combined with desalination. Salt can be removed from seawater and pumped hundreds of miles inland to irrigation. Such a plant can produce as much as 137 acre-feet of fresh water per day. There are several locations here in Texas and in California where these plants would create irrigated lands to employ farm workers, distribution centers and transportation jobs.
We have the answers. We know how to get the economy up and going. What we lack is the political will to do it. The government needs to partner with private industry by tapping the energy sector, which will produce thousands of high-paying jobs.
# posted by Raul Garcia Jr. @ 11:07 PM 
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