Valuing labor and leisure

I think that we have the order of summer holidays almost perfect. It is absolutely right that we honor those who have given their lives to protect the right of self-determination for all people, and I personally extend my Memorial Day thoughts to those first responders who have also sacrificed their lives to protect the lives of others. The giving of ones life to protect others sits high in value in any civilization. In the middle of the summer, we recognize the value of thought, and how organizing principles can bring people together. Independence Day in the US is more than just a statement about freedom or quality of life (look at Canada, they have freedom and high quality of life and never fired a shot in independence). The simple statement that every person had equal standing in society stood against almost every successful civilian organization of people since the dawn of agriculture. For those individuals who said it in the face of death, it is right that we remember and honor their efforts. Then we come to the penultimate celebration of the summer, and the one that rightly holds the highest place....

The celebration of labor.

Without labor, no sacrifice or grand statement means anything. Without those who toil, slowly sacrificing their bodies through years of stress and strain, we do not have food on the table, a place to rest our heads, or clean water to drink. Without the struggles of those who have labored previously, we not only would have no infrastructure on which to build our quality of life, but we would not have the concept of the weekend, the virtual elimination of child labor, or the idea that a sick person best serves the market by recovering rather than working themselves to death.

Over the past four decades, there is no question that the great majority of our country, as expressed through the political system, has shown - at best - disrespect, and more likely utter contempt for those who labor. Economically, as a country, we have invested less and less in the productive labor of our own people, and created more and more opportunity for those who work for the accumulation of capital than for those who work to improve the quality of life of people.

Even our economic system devalues the individual who works. We speak of increasing profitability, improving productivity, and chasing efficiency as though they are the greatest accomplishments that we can achieve. Every time we shift capital from production to profit, every increase in productivity, ever efficiency realized means that someone either loses a job, loses wages, or loses freedom. Businesses has no measure of success that seeks to improve the employment of the individual or their access to health and leisure.

This does raise a question, however. Outside of the reasons or intent behind this disrespect toward and devaluation of labor, we need to ask ourselves, how much do we really need to work. As our economy has advanced, little attention has been paid to the thought that as we move toward a more productive economy, that means that we may need to work less. At the turn of the 20th century, almost 12,000,000 people were employed in the agricultural industry...a whopping 16% of the population (not just the workforce). Today, that number sits at around 750,000, or 0.2% of the population. At that same time in history, people died from water outbreaks on a regular basis as we rapidly urbanized our population. Today, approximately 50,000 workers in the water and sewage industry keep us supplied with safe drinking water and separate us from harmful waste. Less than 1% of our population keeps us fed and watered. Since air is free, that means that three out of four of our basic requirements can now be met with almost no labor input.

The last need, shelter, has a more complicated story to tell. Of the entire construction/service workforce of 10 million, it is difficult to separate out how many work directly in the building of residential shelter or support the water and food industries. Some estimate residential construction at as many as 2.5 million, but it is probably safe to say that around 3 to 4 million work directly or indirectly at supporting these basic human needs. Even at that number, and assuming 50 hours of labor a week for each of those individuals, the amount of time each American needs to work in order to maintain the basic necessities of life is about one hour per year.

Although this assessment does not include education or healthcare, it points toward the fact that our efforts to improve quality of life have succeeded. The idea that we have to labor and work hard to provide a basic quality of life no longer holds. We can move away from an economy that seeks to punish us with work, and move toward one in which we all maximize our potential. We will still need farmers, construction workers...labor of all sorts, but in this future, those who sacrifice some of their freedom to pursue those endeavors will receive appropriate compensation for it. We will value labor more highly precisely because we will need to fewer people to do it, and will need to entice those who do away from other pursuits.

Each Labor Day, I thank those who have shortened their lifespan by choosing to use their strength to support a high quality of life for all. More importantly, I hope for a future in which we recognize that we all can work less and still enjoy that quality of life. I look toward a future where the celebration of Labor Day, like the celebration of Memorial Day or Independence Day, recognizes the past sacrifices of a small number so that the larger population can work toward the improvement of our species, and not just its mere survival.

You want jobs? Efficiency not mining

Over the next several weeks, the media will cover ad nauseum President Obama's decision on the Keystone XL pipeline that developers plan to run through the upper Midwest to connect the tar sands mining operations of Canada with the Gulf Coast export terminals of Texas.  Ignoring for now the potential cost in human life due to increased emissions of carbon soot and carbon dioxide, the increased risk to drinking water and arable land from pipeline breaks (which happen regularly), and the increased environmental damage to the Gulf Coast region where the tar sands refining operations will take place, the pipeline makes no sense from the point of view of a financial investment.  Depending on the source, the pipeline plans to create between 1,000 and 5,000 temporary jobs, 50 and 1,000 permanent jobs, and potentially influence the development of as many as 20,000 jobs.  It will cost at least $5.3 billion, and none of the fuel produced from the delivery and refining processes will go to support American machinery...it will all go to a burgeoning Latin American market.  This pipeline represents profits for the corporation that owns it, not energy independence for the US or Canada.  The jobs created by the investment - even if they happen at the highest level imagined - do not justify the expense, and we have much better ways to invest the capital.

For the sake of analysis, I consider a temporary job to have the value of one-tenth that of a permanent job; this assumes that a permanent job will last on the order of ten years, and the temporary job around a year.  This puts the range of direct, combined jobs at somewhere between 150 and 1,500.  At an investment of $5.3 billion, the investment-to-job ratio sits at around $35 million to $3.5 million per job.

The best alternative to the Keystone XL pipeline, energy efficiency investments, not only avoid all the human health problems KXL will cause, but it also creates more - and better - jobs.  Two recent energy efficiency programs serve as a basis for this argument.  The Energy Impact Illinois (EI2) program used ARRA money to match utility incentive program and private homeowner contributions to winterize homes and reduce the demand for heating energy.  In the US Southeast, ARRA funds also contributed to the Better Building Neighborhood Program (BBNP) which operated in the same fashion.  For each of these programs, the investment-to-jobs ratio looks like this:

Program                    Investment                      Jobs created                      Ratio         
EI2                               $24.0M                              140                          $171,428/job
BBMP                          $37.9M                              350                          $108,285/job

For an investment in energy efficiency on the scale of Keystone XL, the $5.3 billion investment would mean somewhere between 30,000 and 50,000 permanent jobs.  With a simple return on investment (ROI) somewhere in the 10-50% range for the direct savings (reduced utility costs), and a multiplier effect resulting in an ROI of up to 375% regionally from the boost to jobs and economic growth.

For decades, many have argued against investments in renewable energy and energy efficiency because they "cost too much".  This argument had merit on the renewable energy side when new technologies had no scale or access to market, and on the energy efficiency side when energy costs remained artificially low due to market manipulation and the absence of externalities (like the additional healthcare costs and property damage that results from burning fossil fuels).  The charge that clean energy costs too much no longer holds water.  Investments in energy efficiency bring greater ROI than investments in fossil fuels, and result in hundreds of times more jobs.  In a time when we see coal plants shuttered because owners cannot afford to pay for maintenance, and power producers investing in wind over natural gas, the time is right to stop investment in fossil fuel projects that will lead to forty more years of guaranteed, high volume use of fossil fuels.  The time is right to say, "No!" to Keystone XL, and instead put that money into energy efficiency (first) then renewable energy.

Because it will put Americans back to work and make our quality of life better.  Is that not what we should expect from our economy?