Greener Building Through Carbon Taxes?
Over at Max Sawicky's blog, smart dude Gar Lipow has argued that market-based mechanisms (particularly emissions trading and carbon taxes) won't do much to solve global warming. Instead, he claims that energy consumption is, in broad strokes, determined by infrastructure: highways, railroads, power lines, power plants, the layout of our cities, and the like. Market-based mechanisms might affect things at the margins, but major "decarbonization" can only follow from substantial change to infrastructure -- which Gar argues can only come about as the result of major investments by the public sector.
It's a point of view worth considering, and I have no interest in debating him on the point right now.
However, in today's Seattle Post-Intelligencer, I notice that proposed Washington State energy efficiency standards for new apartment buildings were just scrapped, because developers argued that the they would make new downtown high rises too expensive to be worth building.
In other words, a misaligned energy market is making it harder to make the case for the kind of greener infrastructure that Gar seems to think we need.
Lost Highway
The city of Seoul, Korea just tore down a massive urban highway carrying 160,000 cars a day. And the result was an absolute catastrophe: the city's economy soured, drivers were stranded in gridlock all day, and puppies and small children shed tears of remorse and longing for their lost highway.
Just kidding. Really, the results were beautiful, everything went just swimmingly, and the project has gotten rave reviews from residents.
Minimum Wage, Maximum Rhetoric
Well, ok, then:
The state's controversial law calling for an automatic review of the minimum wage each year does little to harm business and benefits the vast majority of low-paid workers, a new study by Washington State University says...
The study...found the increase will have a mostly positive effect on the state economy. [Emphasis added.]
I don't expect this research to be the last word in the minimum wage debate. But it's fairly consistent with other empirical work, finding that -- contrary to standard economic theory -- hiking the minimum wage is generally a net plus to low-income workers.
But try telling that to the critics.
