January 20, 2017
It seems being great again ain’t what it used to be. On its first day in office, the Trump administration is pushing an “America First Energy Plan,” which it tells us will “increasing wages by more than $30 billion over the next 7 years.”
For those who don’t happen to know offhand how large $30 billion is relative to projected wages over this period, the Congressional Budget Office tells us that we can expect the cumulative wage bill to be roughly $69,700 billion over the years 2018–2024. This means that the $30 billion wage dividend from removing all those nasty environmental restrictions amount to 0.04 percent of projected wages over this period. For a person earning $50,000 a year, this means Trump’s plan will get them another $20 a year, according to the Trump administration’s projection.
Of course, this doesn’t factor in any costs that might be associated with things like increasing incidences of asthma, heart disease, cancer, or other diseases associated with pollution. Nor does it factor in any losses that workers may experience as result of natural areas being destroyed or made unsuitable for hiking, hunting, fishing or other types of recreation.
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